Tempt Me (33 page)

Words spilled from him like a dam had been breached: how he'd been plucked off the street and shoved into a limo by gun-carrying goons. How he was certain the man knew everything, absolutely everything, about his extracurricular work. “He knows it all, every gig, large and small, from the time we worked together until now. He’s threatening to turn me in.”

She let the ‘we worked together’ statement slide. “Turn you in to whom? Who does he work for?”

“I...don't know,” he admitted. “I get a whiff of law enforcement from him, and he obviously uses top-of-the-line tech, but—” he wiped away a bead of sweat trickling down his temple “—the guy is creepy. I overheard one of his minions call him something that began with the letters B-A. Whether it’s a first name, last name, or a title, I don’t know.” He lifted his seltzer glass halfway to his mouth before noticing it was still empty. “Where the hell is that waitress?”

Keep him focused.
“Why is he so interested in Sebastiani Labs?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t been able to penetrate yet, so I don’t know what’s there to interest him.”

You can’t begin to imagine.
“Is he human?”

“I don’t know. You could find out.
We
could find out.” He leaned in, eyes glowing like they were lit from within. “Team up with me again, Bailey. Help me get this guy off my back. And after that? We could be lovers again, business partners again—partners in every sense of the word.”

His pheromones bloomed, filling the air between them with dark, luscious musk. His eyes locked onto her lips. When he slowly leaned closer, it was all she could do to not recoil, to not back away. A small sound escaped her throat as he brushed his lips over hers, back and forth in a soft, testing touch that firmed when she didn’t pull back. He opened his mouth slightly, deepening the kiss, nudging her lips with his tongue and inviting her to reciprocate.

Perfect technique, really, but the kiss tasted of mint and manipulation, and left her utterly cold.

Over Wyatt’s shoulder, she saw Lukas, Jack and Chico enter the foyer. Gideon Lupinsky, Jenny Williams, and a couple of his cops closed in from the restaurant.

Wyatt pulled his head back slightly. “Your technical abilities, combined with my pretexting skill?” he murmured against her mouth. “We could rule the world.”

She jerked away, wiping her lips with the back of her hand. “That's the difference between you and me, Wyatt. I don't want to.”

“Cooper.” Jack’s voice was flat and cold.

Wyatt looked around and saw he was surrounded. “You bitch.” He lurched to his feet, knocking his chair over with a clatter, and shoving the table so the empty seltzer glass fell and shattered on the floor. He bolted toward the entrance, dodging and weaving, but Jack caught him, slamming him against the wall. A gorgeous piece of art crashed to the floor, sending colorful pottery shards flying.

The spacious bar suddenly seemed too small to hold so many large, jostling bodies. Behind her, she heard Jenny and Winnie clearing the room. 

“You fucking bitch,” Wyatt snarled at her.

Jack plowed his fist into his face. There was audible crunch. Blood sprayed, and Jack followed through with a hard knee to the groin. Wyatt sagged against the wall, but Jack jerked him upright, holding him up with a hand at his throat.

“Jesus.” She scrambled out from behind the table.

Jack brought his face close to Wyatt’s. Whispered something she couldn’t hear. Wyatt’s color bleached to white.

“Jack.” She pulled on his arm. “Stop it.”

Jack kept whispering until Wyatt gave a short, jerky nod. Stepping back, Jack let him wilt to the floor. Gideon moved in, rolling Wyatt to his stomach and jerking his arms behind his back. He efficiently lashed Wyatt’s wrists together with zip cuffs.

“What was that all about?”

He smiled tightly. “My fist slipped.”

As Gideon and Lukas yanked Wyatt out the door by his elbows, Chadden joined them. Over in the corner, his employees were already straightening the table, picking up the fallen chair, and sweeping up shattered glass. “Okay, that got a little rowdier than you said it would,” he said to Jack.

Jack flexed his fingers. “Bill me.”

“Believe me, I will.” Chadden gestured to the entryway between the bar and restaurant, where dozens of patrons craned their necks to see what was going on. “The next round’s on you. And that?” He pointed to the yellow and blue pottery shards lying on the floor. “That was one of Rafe’s earliest pieces. It’s gonna cost you.”

Reaching down, she picked up a bug she’d affixed to the back of the work earlier in the day—and remembered an important question she’d forgotten to ask Wyatt. “Damn it.”

“He’ll make me another one,” Chadden assured her. “After he gets done with your nudes, of course.”

“Shut up,” she said without heat, handing the bug to Jack. “I didn’t get a physical description of Buddha.” Wyatt had distracted her with his goddamn lips.

“We'll work him in interrogation.” Jack wrapped his arm around her shoulders, pulling her in for a hug. “Good job, kid.”

Thank God the entire conversation had been recorded, because right now she couldn’t remember a single detail to save her life.

“You worked him like a lion tamer cracking a whip.”

“I was pissed. That helped.” It also helped that she hadn’t been overcome by his pheromones. Her body might have responded, but in her mind, she’d felt more like a Method actress, giving the performance of her life. She hadn’t drowned in him. Hadn’t wanted to.

She wanted Rafe.

Jack reached for his vibrating mini and read the tiny screen. His knuckles were scuffed and speckled with blood. “Cooper’s secured in the van. They’re on their way to Holding.”

Given the severity of the charges Lukas planned to lodge against him, it wasn't likely Wyatt would be allowed to roam free while his attorney mounted his defense. She allowed herself a tiny smile. Wyatt would
not
be pleased with his new accommodations.

“Gideon wants us to meet Jenny over at Wyatt’s apartment.”

She nodded. She was dying to get a look at his set-up.

“I'll have to recuse myself when this case comes before the Council,” Jack muttered.

“That's what you get for physically assaulting the suspect.” She’d no doubt be called upon to testify—an extremely unappealing prospect.

“Come on,” Jack said. “Let’s go.”

A short time later, they pulled up to Wyatt's high-rise apartment complex. Dozens of residential floors were stacked above multiple floors of retail, parking and office space. Smack-dab in the middle of downtown, there would be a lot of activity, at all times of the day. “He'd be able to come and go at will here, with hardly anyone the wiser,” she said as they entered the building. “Easy to blend in with the crowd.”

Jack indicated the cameras, staring down from the corners where wall met ceiling. “Decent security system.” They took the elevator to the twenty-first floor, the doors opening onto unremarkable white walls, gray industrial-grade carpet, and the scents of sauerkraut and spaghetti sauce. Jenny Williams waved to them from a door down at the end of the hall.

Bailey pointed. “There she is.”

When they arrived at the door, Jenny hesitated for a moment, letting Jack enter, but blocking her way.

“What's wrong? What have you found?” Oh, Jesus. “Cheyenne...” She tried to shove past Jenny, but the sturdy Valkyrie held firm.

“No one else is here. Cheyenne’s fine.” Jenny held her shoulders, and gave her a little shake. “Cheyenne’s fine.”

She sagged with relief.

“But we found some things you might find upsetting. I want to talk to you—”

“That son of a bitch.” From inside the apartment, Jack’s curse bounced off the walls.

“Let me go,” she said to a grim-looking Jenny. “I’ve dealt with Wyatt before. Nothing he could do would surprise me.” When the other woman reluctantly stepped aside, she entered Wyatt’s apartment.

Man cave, six-figure salary division.
The living room was dominated by an L-shaped leather couch, aimed at a huge, wall-mounted flat screen TV coated with so much dust she couldn’t imagine anyone actually being able to see the picture. The coffee table was littered with ‘zines, newsletters, thumb drives, the last three issues of
The Hacker’s Quarterly,
and empty Red Bull cans. In the galley kitchen, there was a high-tech espresso machine, a four-slice toaster, an open bag of potato chips, and a row of colorful cereal boxes he hadn’t bothered to put in the cupboards. The take-out menus wallpapering his refrigerator door hit uncomfortably close to home.

“Two bedrooms?” she asked Jenny.

Jenny nodded. “He uses one as an office, and the other for sleeping. He has computer equipment in both rooms.”

She peeked into the office, recognizing the high-end equipment, the black Aeron chair, and the familiar snarl of cables, cords, and surge protectors snaking along the baseboards. This room he dusted, this gear he cared for. Despite the cracked window and a small fan, it smelled warm—too much equipment in too small a space. She nodded to the guy kneeling on the floor—one of Gideon’s e-team, taking pictures.

“I can’t let you touch anything,” Jenny said, “but we wanted you to see his set-up before we dismantled it and took it into evidence.”

Four computers—two laptops, and two towers connected to flat screen monitors—and no suspicious-looking peripherals. If she innocently bumped into the desk, it might jiggle the mice just enough to deactivate his screen savers, but no way would Jenny allow her to access his machines, see the tools of his trade: the scripts and ‘bots, the social media sites he mined for information, the bulletin boards, his avatars and personae...thousands and thousands of messages scrolling by, too quickly for any one person to possibly read.

She’d choose a solitary, Red Bull-fuelled coding jag over all that ‘socializing’ any day of the week.

Wyatt was right. Put the two of them together, team them up, and between them they might form one reasonably normal person. His sociability was one of the reasons she'd been so drawn to him in the first place—a moth drawn to the unfamiliar flame.

Moths drawn to flames inevitably got zapped.

“Do you see anything unusual?” Jenny asked.

“No. Go ahead.” Turning away from temptation, she went to Wyatt's bedroom. It smelled citrusy and very slightly damp; he’d probably taken a shower before meeting her at Chadden’s. He had a queen-sized bed covered with navy blue linens, a bedside table with a lamp, and another desk holding yet another laptop. On the screen was a paused video or movie that showed a lot of bare skin. Next to the laptop, a half-dozen DVRs fanned out like playing cards.

“Home movies?” She scanned the corners of the room for cameras. “Cheyenne is going to be
so
pissed off.”

“It’s not Cheyenne,” Jack said between clenched teeth. “Look again.”

She did—and all the blood in her body crashed to her feet.

Rafe’s head, nuzzling between her spread legs. His hair, draped over her stomach and legs as he—

She swayed as black spots danced in her peripheral vision. Wyatt had watched them, recorded them, whacked off to their private—

“Let’s sit down.” Jack wrapped his strong arm around her waist.

“Not on the bed,” she gasped. “Not in here.”

Jack led her to the living room, to the couch, and pushed her head down between her knees. She heard the faucet running in the kitchen, and then he handed her a glass of water. “Drink this.”

Had Wyatt made copies of the files? Uploaded them somewhere? Had he paid off his minions with amateur porn? A hysterical giggle escaped. She was going to have to scour the dirtiest back alleys of the Internet for copies of her very own sex tape.

If her parents hadn't already disowned her, this would probably do it. “Jack?”

“Hmm?”

“I have to quit.” She’d known that her presence at Sebastiani Security might draw unwanted attention, but this was ridiculous.

“No, you don’t.”

“I do. I should've done it along time ago.” She sat up. “We’re getting hacked left and right, and now Rafe’s privacy has been unconscionably compromised. How much risk do the people I love have to take on because of me? I’m a target, Jack.” She sighed heavily. “I’ll always be a target.”

Resting his hands on her shoulders, he gave her a tiny shake. “I know seeing that recording is a shock. The sense of violation has to be outrageous. But you know better than to make decisions based on emotion instead of facts. You
know
better. Take some time to assess the data, to draw conclusions based on actual information.” Another tiny shake. “Use that outsized IQ to find another solution, because this one is not acceptable.”

She took a deep breath. “How am I going to tell Rafe? This is all my—”

“No,” Jack snapped. “It's Wyatt Cooper’s fault.” The couch dipped with his weight as he sat next to her. “Bailey, Rafe will be fine,” he said quietly. “He loves you.”

She shot him a sideways glance. “Yeah, so much that he hasn't contacted me since he walked out the door of my hospital room.”

Jack pulled his mini off his belt, pressed and clicked, and then handed it to her. “Read.”

She looked down at the tiny screen. Texts, dozens of them, from Rafe. How was she? Was she eating? Sleeping? Being careful with her workload? “Why didn’t he contact me directly?”

“I imagine he thought you were ass-deep in alligators—and that you could use some breathing room.” He glanced grimly at the bedroom. “I’ll have to go over to Rafe’s from here to recover the recording equipment and take it into evidence. Why don't you come with me?”

She wanted to see Rafe—too much—but before she could, she had to take a shower, cleanse herself, wash Wyatt’s touch off her skin. “I need to clear my head first.” If she saw Rafe now, her will would disappear like water down the drain. Jack had told her to find another solution, and the tiniest hint of an idea was sparking to life—an idea that, if carefully nurtured, might solve about eight problems once and for all.

“How are you doing with the pheromones after that kiss? Are you okay?” Jack eyed her closely. “Being in the van while Cooper patted you down gave us all a couple of bad moments.”