Betrayed

Chapter 8

Elena moistened her dry lips. “What information? What are you talking about?”

“I don’t know what it is. I only know it’s my ticket to freedom.”

She tried to take in the reality of what he was saying. “You’re asking me to steal something that belongs to S&D?”

He waved his hand dismissively. “No.”

“Then what?”

She heard the exasperation in his voice. “Just find where Blake put it, and give it to me.”

“Alesandro, you know I can’t do that.”

“You want me to get beat up real bad? Maybe killed?”

“No. Of course not. But I thought this was about not getting arrested.”

“It is. It was.” He made a low sound. “The bastards set me up. They can turn me in to the cops, or they can make me wish I was in protective custody.”

She gasped, trying to understand but not really getting it.

“Think about helping me. But don’t think about it too long because I don’t have much time.”

“What if I get caught?” she blurted out.

“Blake took the information months ago. They won’t link you to him.”

“What you’re asking could get me fired.”

“They won’t know you did anything.”

She couldn’t believe he’d said that so casually. He was asking her to do something immoral, and he wasn’t worried about it at all.

“I’d better go,” he said, standing up abruptly.

She jumped out of her chair. “Wait, you can’t just drop something like that on me and leave.”

“I have to go. They could be tracking me. I have to keep moving.”

He strode out of the dining area, down the hall, and out of her apartment, where he carefully closed the door behind himself.

She stood, rubbing her hands up and down her arms to try and ward off the sudden chill that had gripped her body.

When she looked at the food still on the table, she knew she couldn’t choke down another bite. Mechanically, she picked up the dish, carried it to the sink and scraped the rest of the meal into the sink, then ran the disposal and washed the mess away. Looking back at the table, she saw the glass of ginger ale she’d set in front of Alesandro and poured that down the sink, too, then stood with her fists clenched.

Damn him.

It was easy to get rid of the evidence that he’d been in her apartment, but not so easy to figure out what to do.

For a split second she thought about calling Shane Gallagher. He’d know how to handle this. But then she’d have to explain about her brother’s gambling and about what he’d asked her to do.

Not stealing, he said.

She didn’t know if she agreed with that interpretation, but whatever you wanted to call it, it was wrong. And she didn’t even know if her brother was lying. He said he wanted the information from S&D to settle a gambling debt. But that might not even be true. It might just be a story he’d told her.

She pounded her fist against the counter, hating Alesandro for putting her in this position.

Shane knew if he went home and tried to relax, he was only going to let the scene with Elena and her brother keep spinning around in his mind. Instead he stopped for a small pepperoni pizza and took it back to the S&D office to eat at his desk.

While he ate, he checked his email. There was a message from Max reporting that Jed Lansing and Roy Newman were both on record as complaining about not getting adequately compensated for new products they had developed for S&D. Did that mean one or both of them would be willing to get back at Kinkead by stealing from the company? He didn’t know, but it left him with a feeling of relief. Maybe it was one of them—and not Elena.

The sound of footsteps in the hall made him switch from Max’s message to a Google search of camera equipment that he could put on the screen if needed.

Glancing at the clock in the lower right-hand corner of the screen, he saw that it was nine thirty. Late for someone to be in the building, besides the security guards.

When he looked up, he saw the bulky form of Bert Iverson standing in his office doorway.

“You’re working late,” his second-in-command said.

“I could say the same for you.”

“I had a few things to finish up.”

“Me, too.”

“I was about to leave. Then I saw the light on in here. You need any help?” Bert asked.

“No. You go on home. I’ll be leaving soon.”

He watched the big man head for the elevator, then reread the email from Max on Lansing and Newman.

Next he checked their office emails, looking for patterns that would clue him in to suspicious activity. When he found none, he went back to another office email account—that of Elena Reyes. At first he found nothing interesting. But when he scrolled back to a year ago, he stared at the screen. There had been a fair amount of correspondence between Elena and Arnold Blake.

A lot of it had been work related, with the new employee running questions by the old hand. She could have mentioned that at lunch. She could also have mentioned that Blake had sent her jokes and asked for advice on puzzles that he was working on. He’d called them SIMon Sez. There had been quite a lot of back and forth between them, so she’d known Blake better than she’d let on.

Could the puzzle stuff be some kind of code he was sending her? Why? And a code for what?

Shane made note of the puzzle queries and saved them into a work file.

Then he pushed his chair away from the desk and leaned back with his hands laced behind his head.

Was he looking at evidence of suspicious behavior on the part of Elena and Blake? Or was he looking for more reasons to question her? Translated—spend time with her.

With a snort, he shut down the computer and got up, thinking about his next move in the game they were playing. Or maybe he was the only one actually playing, and she was perfectly innocent.

But he knew that he couldn’t stay away from her. She might be a suspect, but it had been a long time since he’d found a woman so appealing. Maybe it was the combination of innocence and strength he sensed in her. Or was he making up the innocent part?

He’d asked her to lunch. What if he asked her to dinner?

Would she go with him? Or make it clear that there wasn’t going to be anything personal between them?