Just Once
Page 2
“Is there a philosopher lurking beneath the dress blues?”
“Only on the formal occasions where my dress blues are required.”
“Fair enough.”
The moment was small—silly—yet she couldn’t shake the subtle sweetness that pervaded the conversation. He wasn’t what she expected, and she’d expected a lot. Tech geek. Neighborhood hipster. And victim.
Yet he seemed more resigned than upset.
“Any idea who paid you a visit last night?”
“None. I’m usually here late, but I left early last night for my brother’s engagement party. None of us keep formal hours, but there’s usually someone here until at least ten. Often much later.”
“And yet you show up here at six?” She consulted her notebook. “According to dispatch.”
“I don’t sleep much.”
Something small jingled at his words, but Daphne kept her features still. “No?”
“Not since I was a kid. Add on a game idea that’s taking shape, and I’m sort of obsessed.”
“What sort of game?”
“Zombies. Adventure. Multiple players. It’s awesome.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
His lips curved up, the expression boyish except for the day-old stubble that lined his jaw. That was not boyish. Or easy to ignore.
“You pointed out the mess in the front. Anything else missing? The desks don’t look nearly as cleaned out as I’d have expected.”
“Most of my suitemates take their laptops home so they’ll need to confirm if anything’s missing, but the desks don’t look like they were hit at all.” He glanced toward the back of the office. A long galley kitchen took up half the space, positioned next to an extended wall with a thick black door. “Two servers are missing in our back room. Our locked back room.”
“Locked?”
“Yep. Found it when I checked everything this morning.”
“You were here alone.”
He shrugged. “The office was empty, but something felt off.”
“Another reason you should have called us.”
“I did call you.”
“You should have left the moment you saw anything out of place.”
“No one was here. And seeing as how they were my servers, full of my work, I didn’t want to wait.”
Once again, that sense of something out of place—out of time—struck her. He wasn’t exactly what he seemed, even as she couldn’t identify anything that felt threatening or off.
No, it was something else. Something more. Something that said this man had seen things. Knew things. Which had her looking at her notebook again. “Do you have any enemies, Mr. McGee?”
“Landon is fine. And none that I’m aware of.”
She glanced up sharply, her pen going still. “None at all?”
“That surprise you?”
“Frankly, yes.”
It was Landon’s turn to go still, his dark eyes wary. “Why would you think I have enemies, Detective?”
“I ran your name on the way over here. You have a well-respected, adoptive mother. A brother who played professional football. There are more than a few local stories that pop online.”
“Since when did adoption become a big story?”
“When you raise three of the most upstanding citizens in the borough, people notice.” Daphne pointed toward the windows and the bridge that rose up in the distance beyond. “Citizens who’ve done quite well for themselves in their own right. Which takes me back to my first question. Are you sure there’s no one from your past who wishes you ill?”
Landon kept his features still, forcing a blank stare. He’d perfected the tactic as a kid and continued to use it to great effect. His mother called it his “still waters” look. Landon just considered it self-protection.
“Why would anyone come after me? I make games.”
“Why don’t you tell me about your work?”
Detective Daphne Rossi settled a hip on the long row of desks, just enough stubbornness in her chocolate gaze to confirm she wasn’t going anywhere.
Landon made a show of setting his laptop down before he retrieved two of the rolling swivel chairs that lined the row of desks. Pushing one toward her, he gestured toward the seat. “Please.”
She took the proffered chair and, once settled, glanced at her notebook. “Why don’t we start with this place? Tell me about the people you work with.”
The implication the theft was an inside job was unsettling, but he was hard-pressed to ignore her logic. Other than shared space, he and his office mates came and went at all hours, their individual areas relatively unsecured from each other. Even with that reality, he struggled to believe one of his officemates did this.
“I share this space with about five other businesses. That number’s been as low as three and as high as eight, but there are six of us now. The office is congenial and we get along. I also shot all of my fellow leads texts to let them know what was going on after I called this in.”
“You didn’t call them?”
“You every work with tech folks? Most aren’t morning people. The ones who have replied promised to be in soon, but no one’s bothered to call.”
“No one cares? You all share this office. Different businesses without locked-down technology.”
He knew it didn’t appear as such to an outsider, but the hardware on the desks was the least of his investment. His time, effort, and energy were worth far more than the relatively few thousands he’d invested in equipment. “That’s not what we’re going for here. It’s a collaborative atmosphere.”
Her gaze grew sharp at that one. “Collaborative and competitive.”
“How long have you had your detective’s bars?”
“I’m not sure why—”
“Indulge me. How long?”
Landon didn’t miss the slight grimace, or the subtle pride that tilted her chin before she said, “A little over a year.”
“Did you compete with others?”
“Of course.”
“Yet you still work together? Have each other’s back?”
“Of course we do, but—”
“Technology is competitive, but I pick the people I surround myself with carefully. Sure, we’ve had a few assholes in here. Or people whose asshole factor rose when they got a bit of success. But on the whole, everyone’s decent.”
“I’ll need to question them as well.”
“You should. I’m the one who got here first and called this in. It’s entirely possible they’re missing items as well. We’ll know once everyone starts trickling in.”
Quiet descended once more. Landon suspected his diversion tactics wouldn’t last much longer—the very attractive detective looked too smart for that—but he did admire how she took notes and seemed intent on doing a thorough job. While his corner of the world had cleaned up considerably since he was a kid, there was still plenty of crime in Brooklyn. Robberies were, sadly, still a dime a dozen.
“I’m going to take another quick walk around. Get a few impressions before this place is filled with people.”
She got up before he could even acknowledge her comments and began a careful perusal of the office perimeter before moving on to the individual desk spaces. Landon stayed where he was, pleased not to have the focus on him for a few minutes.
Even more pleased he could watch the striking detective in action.
She was on the taller side of average—he’d give her around five seven—and she was solid in that attractive way of athletic women. She was fit, but he’d wager a week’s delay on his zombies that the woman knew how to enjoy a cheeseburger and fries, too.
The pride he’d sensed before, when he’d asked her about her detective’s bars, pervaded her movements as well. She knew her job, and she was thorough—traits that didn’t always go hand in hand. Yet competence seemed to settle over her, a mantle he suspected she needed to pull on all too often in the male-dominated field of police work.
Her review of the office at an end, the detective came back to their grouped chairs and took hers once more. “I’ll talk to your suitemates, but it looks like your server room bore the brunt of this attack.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“Which brings us right back to where we started. Who would want to harm your business, Mr. McGee? If my suspicions are right, those servers are the nerve centers of your business.”
While losing the servers was a hard blow, it wasn’t a full destruction of his business. “I keep active work there as well as backup copies in the cloud. I’d never take a chance on storing all my work in one place. Other than whatever I’ve worked on between now and last night, the code is secure and intact in the cloud.”
“But there’s a full copy of everything in play.”
“Meaning?”
“If someone stole your servers, then they have access to your work? To the code and the effort that’s gone into the development?”
“Yes.”
“It is possible your mother is involved?”
Even though she’d prepped him for it with her earlier questions, the shock wave of anger and embarrassment still caught him by the throat and squeezed, sending reflexive shivers straight down to his toes. Summoning every ounce of calm he possessed, Landon pushed it into his response. “My mother’s been focused on running her campaign for Brooklyn borough president. Add on the fact that she barely knows how to use the sweet little MacBook I got her last year for Christmas, and I hardly think she’s out hunting for code to sell on the dark web.”
“I was referring to your biological mother.”
“Then you’d need to ask her yourself. I haven’t seen nor heard from her since she walked out of my life twenty-three years ago, still riding the aftereffects of a speedball.”
Two
Daphne let the sounds of the squad room fade into the background as she transferred her notes into her antiquated—yet functioning—computer. She’d give her right arm for the sweet little MacBook McGee had referenced, but she was stuck with her functional piece of shit, circa 2006.
Their conversation had ended rather abruptly after she’d started tugging lines about his biological mother, and then several of his suitemates had arrived in quick succession. All had appeared relatively harmless, the clichéd expectations she’d had of Landon McGee reflected all the way down to the ankles of their skinny jeans and back on up to their Warby Parkers. It had only made Landon stand out more, the thick, tousled hair, well-worn Levis, and black T-shirt a sexy, appealing combination.
Too sexy, if she were honest with herself. The man had a subtle appeal that sort of sneaked up on you. And the moment you looked twice to make sure he was as attractive as your first impression, you sunk a few more feet in the hormone stew.
And God bless, she’d sworn off the hormone stew. Her experiences to date had left her convinced it led to nothing but heartache and trouble. Of course, if she were even half right about Landon McGee, the man looked like he could pull you right past stew and into a whole Thanksgiving dinner before you were halfway aware of it.
That was why she’d latched onto his hipster suitemates like cold on ice and hadn’t let go. She’d spent another half hour questioning the new arrivals, but was quickly assured their equipment was intact and all preliminary reviews pointed toward untouched software.
Which left McGee and BKNY Games as the intended target of the break-in.
The preliminary run she’d managed on the walk over had been rudimentary at best, outlining the basics only. Landon McGee was the adopted son of Louisa Mills, and adopted brother to Nick Kelley and Fender Blackstone. Kelley’s name popped because of his time in the NFL and because she’d spent more than a few evenings in his bar, the End Zone. As soon as she made the connection, she had another one. Her brother, Cade, had run a vice op out of the bar earlier in the summer, culminating in the capture of a small-time thug in the neighborhood who fancied himself an up-and-coming player in the local drug trade.
They’d discussed it at the time, and the general consensus was that the End Zone had been hit due to its high-profile stature in Park Heights. McGee’s family hit a few notes on the local celebrity meter, for those who cared about those things. It wasn’t Hollywood glitz and glamour, but the people of Park Heights paid attention to Louisa and the sons she’d adopted as boys.
The adoption angle that had given Daphne the idea on her walk to DUMBO that the man might have a past, but even she couldn’t have imagined how quickly he’d clam up when she mentioned his birth mother. The immediate shuttering of that warm, rich, gaze, along with his inflectionless speedball reference, gave Daphne all the information she needed.
In moments, she had one of the city’s most extensive databases pulled up and running on her POS. And in a few more moments, she had Landon McGee’s background, punctuated with a series of dates documenting when his mother had put her own addiction before the care and well-being of her son.
“Daph!” The heavy holler of her name, matched to a hard slap of her computer monitor, had Daphne glancing up. “Took you long enough. You’ve been staring at that monitor like it’s about to propose.”
Her brother Cade—youngest of the four brothers who outranked her in age—stood over her computer, that special, maniacal, older-sibling-tormentor grin zeroed straight in on her.
“I’m working. Go away.”
“Maybe I can help.”
“Not likely.” She added a snort to the thinly veiled insult, just for fun.
“You know, most people like me.”
“Don’t delude yourself.” He irritated her to no end, but since she philosophically considered it his job, she was hard-pressed to keep a sour look on her face. “It’s a good thing you’re my favorite brother.”
“That’s not saying much.” Cade pushed a stack of papers away and took a corner of her desk. “What’s up?”
“Doing some research.”
“On?”
“A case I caught this morning.”
Cade had the monitor whirled around before she could stop him, his interest already ratcheting up at her search query. “You’re looking into Landon McGee? Why?”
“I’m looking into his case. He called in a robbery. His business was hit this morning.”
“Guy’s into computers, right? Someone steal his stuff?”
“It’s more like they were after his intellectual property. His storage system was hit, and I’d only give it a fifty-fifty shot it’s an outside job. Although Landon doesn’t agree it’s one of his suitemates or the few people he employs.”
“Landon, is it?”
Daphne ignored the innuendo, doing some quick math with her various brothers’ ages. “Rory went to school with him, right?”
“Yeah. Same class. They were two years ahead of me.”
Which meant five ahead of her.
“Why are you pulling McGee’s file? You don’t think the guy’s involved, do you?”
It was her responsibility to consider all angles, yet pinning the job on Landon simply didn’t jingle. Based on the look on her brother’s face, she could see Cade didn’t figure him for it, either. Which was a dismal sign that both of them probably needed a bit of distance from the neighborhood.
“Doesn’t say much for our cop skills if we both think the guy’s innocent and squeaky clean just because,” Daphne said.
“Don’t let the nice-guy exterior fool you. He’s a good man, but I wouldn’t call him squeaky. Nothing illegal or anything, but he’s tough. I’d take him into a fight with me if I needed backup.”
Since that was basically the highest compliment her brother could bestow,
Daphne figured it was time to stop looking and start listening. She ignored the computer and sat back. “All right, Facebook, lay it on me. Tell me all you know.”
He rewarded her with one of his rare, floppy grins and launched in. “All I’m saying is he’s easy to underestimate. He was skinny as a kid, and most people around here don’t see us as the grownups we’ve become. That includes the people we went to school with. To most he’s still the gawky kid with size thirteen feet.”
Her eyes widened and she made no effort to stop them. “Thirteen?”
“Last I heard Stephanie Sullivan bragging about them, they were.”
“He hooked up with her?” Damn, and here she’d let her interest begin to run away with her. Ratcheting back disappointment she had no business feeling, Daphne ignored the very real fact that she had no interest in a man who had interest in a woman like Stephanie Sullivan.
“Hooked is probably too strong a suggestion on that one. She attempted to get her claws in, but Landon kept his distance.” Cade’s eyes narrowed. “Interested much?”
“You know how I feel about Stephanie.”
“Sadly, I do.”
“Enough said.”
“Probably not, but we’ll save that for another day.”
“So is he seeing anyone?” The words slipped out before she could stop them, and her brother’s grin went from floppy to wolfish in a blink. “You are interested in the guy.”
“I’m doing my job. He might not think anyone’s out to get his business, but if he’s seeing someone, she—or he—” she quickly amended, attempting to be as fair and open-minded as possible, “—could have been the one to attract attention to the business.”
“You’re subtle, Daph. As far as I know, the guy plays squarely in the she camp. And as far as I also know, he’s not seeing anyone.” Her brother tapped her computer screen. “Since you’re clearly interested, there’s nothing I can say otherwise. But be careful where you dig. Landon and his brothers are easy, affable, good guys, but you go digging into sensitive spots and you’ll have all three in your face in a matter of moments.”
“Is that supposed to scare me?”