DONOVAN (Gray Wolf Security, #1)(162)

Lucien had always been seen as weak in the eyes of the women in his life. And I’d always been seen as too tough in the eyes of the men in my life. Together we finally found an equal, someone who understood. We were a perfect match.

If only we could find each other again. If only he could find me before this ended the way I was afraid it would.

I had no control. I was pretty sure my kidnapper was quickly losing control, too. And that was not good.

Someone had to be in control.





Chapter 29


Lucien

The building was quiet. It was well after five now, and most of the employees were gone for the day. The labs would still be humming, but those were in the basement. Sergio and I made our way up to the executive floor, where my office was. Ruben was there with a couple more goons, staring as a tall, thin man worked at my computer.

“What’s going on?”

Ruben didn’t even look up.

Sergio went to one of the other men and bumped fists. They whispered to each other for a moment, but Sergio didn’t seem to be in much of a hurry to tell me what was going on. He stepped back and stood in the doorway with his arms behind his back.

“What’s going on?” I repeated.

“If you’d give us a second,” Ruben finally said, “you might actually find out.”

I glanced at the couch, thinking about the first time Adrienne had been up here. I’d explained to her how the company worked and who might be behind the leak. I remembered her watching me as I explained it all, the way she crossed her legs, the way she scratched at her brow. I remembered thinking I’d like to be doing something other than talking about business with a woman who looked like that. I also remembered how awkward she’d been with the clothes that were clearly new and the little purse that kept grabbing onto her cellphone, making it impossible for her to pull it out with anything like sophistication. I’d nearly laughed that first time when it caught on the lining of the purse.

I’d never make it as a woman. And Adrienne… She was so beautiful, she didn’t need all those trappings to make her femininity obvious.

I wished she was here now. I wished she was sitting on that couch, watching all this hub bub with the same look of amusement in her eyes she’d had that day.

Where the hell was she?

“There!”

The man behind the computer suddenly looked up and pointed across the room. Ruben quickly crossed to a bookshelf that sat just off of the door, running his fingers over books and along keepsakes I had set there. He found what he wanted about halfway down, tucked into a corner.

“What is that?”

Ruben turned and held up a tiny tube-like object for me to see.

“A camera. Adrienne set up a camera in here.”

“A camera? Why?”

“To catch whoever was sending those emails from your computer,” the man at my desk said. He studied me a minute, then slowly stood and awkwardly came over to me, sticking his hand out. “I’m Robert, by the way. I don’t know if Adrienne ever mentioned me, but I’m Ruben’s tech guy.”

I nodded as I shook his head. “She mentioned you helped figure out where the emails were coming from.”

He smiled widely, like a child who’d just been given the best compliment ever. “I was the one who did that. She mentioned me?”

“Do you think you can figure out what mija saw on this?” Ruben interrupted.

Robert looked over at Ruben, and the smile disappeared from his face. He straightened up, snatching the camera from Ruben’s hand, and went back to my computer. I moved behind him and watched as his fingers flew over the keyboard. He was doing things to the computer system that I barely grasped. He was moving so fast, but I could see he was connected to an offsite computer and he was overriding some sort of software to get access to the camera.

“It’s one of ours,” he said, “so it should have backup on our system. But I think Adrienne overrode the system protocols.”

“Why?” Ruben asked.

Robert shrugged.

“Because she knew you thought it was me and she was trying to prove it wasn’t.”

“Or she was afraid I was right.”

I glanced at Ruben. He was watching me closely, his eyes narrowed. He still believed I had something to do with all of this.

“Here,” Robert said. “I’ve got the images.”

Ruben came around the desk, and we both watched as the camera footage began playing.

“These cameras only record twelve hours of footage at a time. They record over the footage if the user doesn’t save what was on it.”

“Did Adrienne—”

“It looks like she did,” Robert said as he tapped at the keys on my computer keyboard. “She saved footage from last night just after midnight.”

I nodded slowly. “Her computer was gone. She must have been checking the footage while I was out.”

“When the ‘kidnapper’ came in?”

I glanced at Ruben, at the speculation in his voice. “Exactly.”

“How do we know that you didn’t catch her looking at it? How do we know that she didn’t find evidence that you’d done something to her?”

“Because I would have been smart enough to erase the evidence.”