by Emma Shortt
Jack Richards.
Meg’s grip on the handrail tightened as she thought about him. It was common knowledge that he didn’t work a nine-to-five day. It was said that he arrived at work late in the evening and stayed until the early hours of the morning, using his own private elevator to get from his private parking lot to his office. The tech forums all said that he did this for two reasons. One, he wasn’t a morning person, and, two he didn’t mix with his staff.
Jack Richards, one of the richest men in the world, and a genius of his generation, was a recluse. That was fine with Meg. In fact, it played into her mission perfectly. He was easier to get to and hopefully would be easier to talk to than some flamboyant, fame-hungry character. She nodded to herself as she hit the eighteenth floor. Meg was going to bring Jack Richards out of his shell—with a resounding dollop of what-the-fuckery. And by the time she was through, she would have her justice.
Floor twenty.
Meg paused at the top of the stairs, let out a deep exhale, and tried to fan her face. This whole building seemed to be notched up a few degrees higher than it should be, and she found herself wondering how anyone got any work done. High temperatures always made her tired. Well, that and stress.
She stepped forward along the corridor, taking a quick peek out of the huge window as she did so. From this perspective, she couldn’t see the building that Kate was hiding behind, but she could see that it was pretty much dark out now. She hoped Kate was okay.
The door to the twentieth floor, home of the management suite, was one of those heavy metal affairs. Meg grabbed the handle and pulled slowly. It didn’t budge. She frowned and gave another tug. Nothing. For a moment Meg was confused, but then she remembered the swipe card Jimmy had given her. She pulled it out of her pants pocket and spotted the scanner just off to the left. It beeped green as soon as her card came near it.
She pulled again, and even with her being super stealthy, the door still creaked. She bit down on her lip, let out a deep exhale, squared her shoulders, and then pulled it open in one quick swing. Once it was at a wide enough arc, she slipped through and got her first look at the top floor of X-Tech Towers.
So, this was where all the money was spent. Meg shook her head slowly as she stepped forward, the lights on the ceiling increasing in illumination with her movements. Gone were the beige walls and beige flooring. Instead, the entire floor was a riot of color. One wall was painted a bright electric blue, the opposite emerald green. The floor was covered in black-and-white tiles, and every so often a vending machine awaited. They held computer parts as well as snacks. Meg passed an alcove and spotted three electric scooters and a bunch of Segways. Farther on, a rack of roller skates beckoned.
Eyes wide, Meg took it all in, and though she was impressed—because it all looked awesome, and this was only one corridor—the anger burned all the brighter in her chest. How much of this stuff was bought with money stolen from small-time developers like her? How many people were struggling because X-Tech was simply too big to stop?
She stalked forward, glancing from door to door. They each had a little plaque on them, and Meg recognized a few of the names from her investigations. None of them were the CEO’s office.
At the end of the corridor, Meg had two choices. One route snaked around to another, equally as long, corridor painted bright red, whilst the other led to only one plain door. She narrowed her eyes and tried to remember what she had worked out regarding the layout of X-Tech. She hadn’t managed to get the actual blueprints—neither had Jimmy—but between them they’d sketched together how they thought it should look. Jack Richards was the CEO and therefore was bound to have the biggest office. He also had a private elevator. Where would that elevator likely be?
Mind made up, Meg ignored the lone door and set off down the red corridor. She passed office after office that seemed to be the domains of the finance officers and legal bods. Only when she reached the final one did Meg decide to look inside. It didn’t have a plaque, and it looked to stretch the width of the building. It was bound to be his.
She swiped her card, took another deep breath to try and calm the adrenaline, and then pushed the door open. Her pre-prepared speech danced on the tip of her tongue, sweat trickled down her back, and because of that, what lay beyond the door was almost an anticlimax. It was little more than a lobby, a waiting place to the offices beyond…and there were several of them…and not a single plaque in sight.
Which one was the CEO’s? Meg scowled. She had no way to tell, which meant she was going to have to try every damn door! She moved forward, hoping to hell that, apart from the CEO, whoever worked in these offices had already left for the night. Excuses and explanations raced through her mind, just in case.
I’m the new cleaner. Just here to empty your bin. Do you need more stationery? She nodded. You got this.
The first door revealed an empty office, as did the second. The third? The lights were on, but no one was home. The fourth, fifth, and sixth offices were also empty…which left just one more to try, and it was the office at the very end.
Heart thumping, Meg slipped her swipe card back into her pants and gripped the handle of the final door. The space around her was deathly quiet, and she could hear herself breathing far heavily than she would have liked. Her palm was moist, her shirt still sticking to her back. It all came down to this.
The door swung open with painful slowness to reveal the space inside, and as she stepped into the office, Meg’s first impression was that the lights were already on. Someone was home.
Her second impression? That would be a resounding, Oh fuck! Because the light wasn’t coming from an overhead bulb or a lamp; it was coming from a laptop screen. Someone stood in front of that laptop, standing, not sitting, and even with the dim illumination Meg knew immediately that this was not who she had come here for.
The man, whoever the hell he was, had to be well over six-foot-tall and wide enough that he would have to log some serious hours at the gym. He had his dark hair cropped close to his head, a scruffy beard covering most of his lower face, and he was dressed head-to-toe in black. There were only a handful of images of Jack Richards online, but they were images that Meg had endlessly Googled. He was young in them, in his late teens maybe, but in all those grainy images Jack Richards was thin as a rake, clean shaven, sporting a shock of curly brown hair, and wearing his trademark gray sweater.
This guy was not thin.
He was not clean shaven or curly haired.
And he was definitely not wearing the sweater that all the tech forums insisted that Jack still wore.
This guy was not the CEO.
So, who the heck was he?
Meg froze at the exact same moment that he turned to look at her. Their gazes locked. Meg’s heart thumped even harder in her chest.
“What the hell are you doing in here?”
His voice was low, angry, and laced with something she couldn’t quite identify—surprise maybe? Meg opened her mouth, all the excuses and explanations she had prepared racing through her mind. In there with them was a strong urge to simply turn around and dash back through the lobby and down the red corridor. Because something was screaming at Meg now, screaming hard.
This man was up to no good.
Was it the way he stood in front of the computer? Was it the lines of code she could see, even at this distance, flashing across the screen? Or was it simply that he looked so out of place. So far from any kind of nerd that Meg had ever met. She wasn’t sure, but she knew, she simply knew, that something wasn’t right here.
She rocked back on her heels, the lobby in her peripheral vision. Would she make it in time? More importantly, would he come after her? Meg clenched her fists, a million thoughts whizzing through her mind, chief among them the fact that she couldn’t even scream for help! She was trespassing just as much as he was, and the security her scream might bring up here would probably think they were up to no good together! If not at first, then certainly when they inter
viewed her and realized she was not one of the cleaning staff.
Dammit!
“I asked you a question,” the man snapped.
Meg stepped back, pushing the door open slightly as she did so. What the hell was she going to do?
“Erm…”
He was in front of her before Meg even knew what was happening. She moved quickly, bumping her hip against the door frame. A jolt of pain shot through her, and Meg let out a yelp.
“I’m a cleaner.”
“A cleaner?”
She nodded, her heart thudding in time with the pain from her hip, but also from what she could now see. The laptop was directly in her line of vision. The lines of code continued to flash across the screen. Meg followed them, eyes darting over the text, understanding dawning.
She let out a gasp before shifting her position, and he, perhaps thinking that she planned to make a run for it, reached out and grabbed her wrist. Meg gasped again from the unexpected contact and tugged. He held firm.
“Let go of my wrist,” she demanded.
“Tell me who you are.”
“I already did,” Meg said. “The cleaner.”
“Then where’s your mop bucket?”
Meg started. “Excuse me?”
“Your mop bucket?” The man gestured to her empty hands. “You know, to clean the floors.”
Meg bit down on her lip and tried to get a hold of her frantic thoughts. She was alone on the top floor of X-Tech with this man. He was clearly up to something he shouldn’t be, the code was proof of that, and she could be in real danger if he realized she knew that. The only option she could possibly come up with was to try to brazen it out. And yet even as she thought this, Meg couldn’t quite believe that she had walked into this situation. The one day that she decides to come looking for the CEO and she walks in on a burglary-in-progress? Just her luck!
“That’s actually really cleanist.”
The man frowned. “What?”
The words tumbled out of her mouth before she even had the chance to think them through. “You shouldn’t assume just because someone is a cleaner they should have a mop bucket. Things have moved on, you know. Cleanist.”
The man’s frown deepened. He shifted slightly so that the light from the lobby fell fully upon his face. The moment it did Meg’s eyes widened, and she actually felt her mouth drop open. Because the man, the burglar, was, well, there was no real way to get around it, he was hot. Not just normal hot, but ridiculous, heart-shockingly hot.
“You made that word up.”
Meg shook her head even as she stumbled to find other words. Confusion filled her, and for a moment she didn’t know what to do. She was alone with a possible burglar. He was painfully attractive. He was standing way too close, her wrist was tingling from where his fingers wrapped around it, and the whole thing was just so surreal!
Brazen, be brazen.
She licked her lips, finally, somehow, finding her voice. “I did no such thing. I’m used to guys like you, working in your fancy offices, treating me and my colleagues in a certain way.”
“Guys like me?” he asked, and Meg held her breath even as the confusion continued to thrum through her. “So, you’re going to dust with your bare hands?” he added.
“My supplies are in the corridor, actually,” Meg said, and this time when she tugged he let her wrist go. Meg flexed her tingling fingers and moved as far back as she could. It wasn’t much, just a couple of inches or so, but it gave her some much-needed distance from the ridiculous attractiveness of his face. “I always check the offices before dragging my supplies up here.”
He narrowed his eyes, and then—to Meg’s horror—shifted again so that he was now in front of the open door. No wonder he’d let go of her wrist. He was going to keep her trapped in the office with him by blocking the only exit! She swallowed against the adrenaline trying to claw its way up her throat and automatically shook her head.
“Move out of my way and I’ll get my supplies.”
“I can’t do that,” he said. “Believe me I’d like to, but I can’t.”
“My colleagues are waiting for me—”
“You’re full of shit, sweetheart.”
“No, I—”
“Yes,” he said. “Which means that we have a problem. A big one.”
Chapter Three
Jack Richards, known to his family and friends as “Chance,” was having a bad day. In fact, if truth be told, he was having a bad week, month, and fucking year.
He leaned against the door that led to the lobby and looked down at the woman in front of him. He’d never seen her before, which meant there was absolutely no way she was part of the cleaning crew, as she claimed. Chance knew this because a profile of every new member of staff dropped into his inbox. Every single one. He had instigated that policy many years ago, and not just because X-Tech Towers held countless terabytes of confidential data but because the cleaners were usually the only staff still around when he arrived at the office. Chance liked to be sure that the people in his building were who they were supposed to be. A habit he’d picked up when his first internet start-up had made him painfully rich and more than one kidnapping threat had come his way. So, if she wasn’t part of the cleaning crew, who the hell was she? And more to the point, what was she doing in his head developer’s office?
“Start talking,” he said.
Her eyes widened. She had very pretty eyes. Even given the strangeness of the situation, Chance couldn’t help but notice that.
“About what?” she asked.
“What you’re doing here,” Chance said. “And don’t give me that shit about being a cleaner,” he added. “It’s obvious that you’re not.”
“Is it?”
“Yes,” he said. “You’d have screamed for help already if you were here legitimately.”
“Do I need to scream for help?” she asked, her voice wavering ever so slightly.
Chance almost winced. A prod of guilt hit him. Here she was, a defenseless woman, and he was practically threatening her. He allowed himself a brief moment to consider how this would all look through her eyes, and in that moment, for just a flash of a second, he considered telling her the truth. He opened his mouth to do just that but closed it a second later.
She was not defenseless! Somehow, she’d managed to sneak into a secure building, and whatever reason she had for doing that could only spell trouble, both for him and the investigation he was in the middle of. But, at the same time, he didn’t want her to be genuinely scared of him. Chance hated that thought, whether she was some sort of criminal or not.
“You have nothing to be scared about,” he eventually said. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“Then what are you going to do?” she asked.
“I want to know why you’re here,” Chance said. “Be honest with me, and I’ll happily let you go.”
She lifted her chin. “I have been honest.”
He sighed. “Let the cleaning thing go, sweetheart. It’s not going to work.”
“But—”
“But nothing,” Chance said. “Talk.”
Her chin lifted a little higher. Stubborn. A moment later and she crossed her arms over her more-than-ample chest before moving away from him, back into the office. In Chance’s opinion, it was absolutely the wrong move. If she was genuinely scared, she should have tried to edge around him so she could make a bolt for the door. Her actions only confirmed his opinion that she was not who she was pretending to be.
“Perhaps you can tell me what you’d like me to say,” she said, continuing to move backward. “Then I can leave.”
“Or maybe—”
She stumbled on the leg of Gabe’s chair. Despite himself, and the wrongness of the whole situation, Chance automatically moved forward to help steady her. He only stopped himself when something slithered to the floor between them.
Baffled, Chance looked down. His first thought was that it was some kind of animal. His second? That he had been
right all along. What was now decorating his head-developer’s floor was all the proof he needed.
“A wig?” he breathed. “A wig?”
The woman almost winced.
“And your hair…” Chance shook his head. “It’s blue!”
“Well, yes,” she said, lifting a hand toward it. “Corporate policy doesn’t allow blue hair. It’s why I wear a wig.”
He laughed softly. “Corporate policy? Have you seen the walls outside? X-Tech lets their staff, cleaners included, dress however they want. They believe it encourages creativity.”
This time she definitely did wince.
“So now we’ve cleared that up, Blue,” he added. “How about some truth?”
She uncrossed her arms and shot him a glare. Chance waited, wondering exactly what she was going to say. When she finally spoke, it was not at all what he expected.
“Don’t call me Blue,” she said. “And you know I’m not the only one in the wrong here. Question is, what the heck are you doing trying to hack into that computer?”
Any hope that Chance might have had that he could brazen this out was dashed. And yet…how the hell did she know he was running an intrusive program? She couldn’t have seen more than a couple of dozen lines of text…text that would be practically incomprehensible to anyone but his very best developers.
“That is none of your business.”
“And the get-up?”
“Get-up?”
She gestured to his clothes. “Black jeans and a black tee? It has wannabe burglar written all over it.”
“If I were a burglar,” Chance said slowly, “do you really think announcing the fact that you’ve realized I am is the best thing to do?”
“I—”
“Talk first, think after, huh?” he added. “You have it written all over you.”
“I do not!”
“Uh-huh.”
She glared at him. Chance couldn’t help but match her, stare for stare. As he did so, he started to realize that now she’d lost the wig, Blue was actually quite something to stare at. Sure, blue hair was not something he saw every day, and certainly not the electric shade hers was, but it was something different and Chance liked different.
