Code of Conduct (Cipher Security Book 1)

by Smartypants Romance

  “Well, tell them I need answers. How hard can it possibly be to find the bitch who stole my money?” Quimby hurled.

  Gabriel tensed next to me, and I put my hand on his arm. I didn’t bother examining the instinct too closely because it calmed my own anger to touch him.

  “I’ll give them the message, Mr. Quimby,” Van said, his voice tightening to a degree that a person with the smallest bit of sense would have known meant it was time to back out of there. Quimby did not have that sense.

  “On second thought, get me Sullivan. He’ll sort this out if I have sue him to do it.”

  That did it. I slipped my phone from my pocket and pulled up Quimby’s number, dialed the code to mask my caller ID, and texted him the message, I hear your wife’s missing. Meet me at the Market Grill, north side in twenty minutes.

  I hit send and a moment later heard Quimby’s text alert. He cut off his own tirade to read the text, and Gabriel reached over and tilted my hand to see what I’d written on my phone. His expression was grim when he let go of my hand.

  “You people are useless. Make sure O’Malley gets that message, right?” Quimby said as he moved toward the doors.

  “He’ll get the message,” Van said in a tone that told me what kind of earful O’Malley would be getting about asshole clients.

  The door opened to the sounds of traffic and then closed behind Quimby, shutting the room into peaceful silence once more. I let my hand fall from Gabriel’s arm with a sigh.

  “You can come out now. He’s gone,” Van called from the reception desk.

  We emerged from the elevator alcove. My eyes immediately went to the glass doors, and I exhaled quietly when I confirmed that Quimby wasn’t in sight.

  Van studied me. “Know anything about the ‘bitch’ he was talking about?”

  Gabriel tensed, but I straightened my shoulders automatically. “You’re looking at her.”

  His gaze narrowed, and he nodded. “Right.” He looked at Gabriel, then back to me. “That little shit know you work here?”

  I shook my head. “We need a tracker on his car,” he said to Gabriel.

  His eyes were locked on Van’s. “Apparently we do.”

  “I’ll tell Sullivan about the threats. He’ll authorize it,” Van said, as if that ended the conversation. He made a note on the pad in front of him and then picked up the phone.

  Gabriel steered me outside with his hand at my low back, and I was absurdly comforted by his touch. Neither of us spoke until we’d turned the corner down a side street.

  “Quimby’s a little nuts,” I said, the understatement of the year.

  “I don’t want you to go back to ADDATA,” Gabriel said grimly.

  “I don’t want global warming or stump-ache, but we don’t always get what we want, do we?”

  “Stump-ache is a thing?” he asked.

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s a daily thing, like tired feet and itchy eyes. You get used to it.”

  “Do you have a cream or something that helps?”

  I shot him a pointed look. “Why are we talking about my leg?”

  “To distract you from my autocratic tendencies,” he said.

  “Hmm, you noticed it, so I’ll let it pass – this time.” I held up a finger before he could interrupt. “But here’s the thing. You suit-types hired me to talk to people. I can’t do that from glass towers.”

  “Quimby is afraid of you—” he began.

  “And I’ll be honest, it makes me nervous that a guy with a Napoleon complex and a firearms permit is afraid. I also don’t like that he knows the neighborhood where I walk my dog, but I’m not going to let him make me afraid too.”

  “Can I make a request?” Gabriel asked. His seriousness startled me.

  “Sure.”

  “When you and Oscar go out for walks or runs, will you text me when you go, and when you come back? I realize it’s very mother-hen of me to ask, but I find ridiculous amounts of comfort in proof-of-life emojis.”

  I laughed, and was surprised at how not-annoyed I was by the request. “Fine. But no hearts. I’ll figure out something better.”

  26

  Gabriel

  “The most valuable treasures are the ones you didn’t know you were seeking.” – Miri Eze

  I’d been home for an hour when she texted me a prosthetic leg and a Bernese mountain dog emoji at 7:30 p.m. I was almost out my door when I realized what I was doing. If I met her in the lobby, she would feel as though I was stalking her. It was bad enough I had asked her to text me her plans, but using the knowledge to spend time with her wasn’t appropriate, or perhaps even welcome.

  I looked around the apartment for something with which to occupy my brain or hands so I didn’t get twitchy and follow her to the park. Sullivan had indeed approved the tracker for Quimby’s car, so I’d spent the afternoon learning how to use it. I was debating between a nighttime plant at Quimby’s house, thereby risking a nosy neighbor’s call to the police, or a daytime public garage plant at ADDATA. I decided the odds against an arrest were likely better during the day, particularly if I wore a suit.

  I had Hamilton in my earbuds as I dismantled and reassembled the tracking device for the fifth time, which meant I almost didn’t hear the knock on my door as the last pieces were going back into place.

  I checked my phone, surprised to see that an hour had passed since Shane’s text. I disliked the worry that wound its way past my reason, and got up to answer the door with the dread of someone for whom nighttime knocks on the door had been the portend of bad news.

  Shane stood there, holding Oscar’s leash. “I half expected you to follow me out,” she said.

  “I almost did,” I admitted.

  She took a breath, hesitated, then said, “I set up a meeting with the ex-girlfriend at ten tomorrow.”

  “That was fast. Would you like company?”

  “Actually, yeah, come with me.” She looked uncertain.

  I stepped back. “Do you and the beast want to come in?”

  “Do you mind? I can keep him on leash if you don’t want him to give himself the tour.”

  “Let him off. He can check the place for brownies and house elves.” I gave Oscar’s ears a scratch as he strolled in like he owned the place.

  Shane was dressed all in black, and I remembered the handy flashlight attachment she had on her prosthetic. I struggled to contain my dislike at the idea of her alone in the dark at the park, and I gave Oscar an extra rub for protecting his mistress.

  “Brownies and house elves? Those sound like distinctly British problems. I don’t think this building is old enough for an infestation of magical creatures.” She looked around at the few furnishings I’d moved into the flat. “If you have them though, they came from that cabinet.”

  She stood in front of the antique secretary I’d inherited from my nana – the one piece of furniture that her father had brought with the family from Jamaica, and which had moved with us from flat to flat. I’d had it shipped from London when Mum followed Kendra to Chicago, and it finally rested in a flat that felt worthy of its age and dignity.

  “I think I understand your fascination with your photographer’s bag,” she said as she ran her fingers lightly across the wood. “This probably has about ten secret compartments.”

  “It has six, actually,” I said. Her expression was like a curious child, and I smiled. “See if you can find them.”

  “Really?” It was a rhetorical question, because she was already searching the cubbies and drawers. Oscar emerged from the hall and came over to sniff the secretary to determine the source of his mistress’s interest. Apparently finding nothing to intrigue him, he came to me for the attention she wasn’t giving him.

  Shane quickly found the two most obvious compartments – behind decorative panels in the cabinetry. She searched carefully and methodically, and her searching fingers mesmerized me with their thoroughness. I shook myself out of the fantasy of being caressed by those fingers, and sat back to enjoy ea
ch of her triumphs as she found three more compartments.

  The last one eluded her, as I knew it would. Nonetheless, I was impressed with her persistence. She had been over every square inch of the secretary, and even measured the depth of it against her arm before feeling around in the back of every drawer. The various views of her, from bent over the top of the desk to crawling beneath were sending my imagination into overdrive, and I finally spoke up, just to save myself from the embarrassment of the near-constant erection I was having in her presence.

  “Shall I show you?”

  She blew a piece of hair out of her eyes and regarded me mischievously. “I’m not giving up.”

  I raised an eyebrow and sat back. “Fine. I’ll just sit here and enjoy the view.”

  She looked down at herself and scoffed. “Of me on my knees?”

  “You said it, not me.”

  She laughed playfully. “You didn’t have to.” Then she sat back and regarded the secretary. “What do you know about the history of this?”

  “I know it came from Jamaica on the Windrush with my nana’s family, and Kendra and I used to hide messages for each other in it when we were small, but beyond that, I don’t know its story.”

  “Hmm. Then I’m going to make up that it was built for a ship, because it looks the right size for a captain’s cabin.” She began to push on the decorative woodwork scrolls that did look rather like waves. “And if it had belonged to a ship’s captain, he would have required a locked drawer.” She found the loose bit of trim, and with a little jiggling, was able to slide it to the side to reveal a hidden keyhole.

  Shane looked up at me with an expression of delight that punched me right in the solar plexus. I grinned back at her and indicated a leather box on the desk.

  “The key’s in there.”

  She found the small iron key and fitted it into the tiny lock, which turned with only a little difficulty. The slim drawer that was hidden behind the decorative scrollwork slid open, and she gasped with pleasure. “See? Just right for maps or letters.”

  “I found it when I was about twelve, but it was empty.” I said, enjoying the way Shane stroked the velvet tray of the shallow drawer. Her eyebrow raised, and she did a more thorough search of the edge of the velvet with her fingertips.

  “There’s something here though – a tiny catch,” she said. “Can you feel it?”

  She drew my hand to the drawer and ran my finger tip along the edge of the trim. Her hand guiding mine was the most erotic thing I’d ever felt, and through the haze of desire, I did, indeed feel a small depression in the wood.

  She pulled up the right leg of her trousers, and I was almost surprised to see the prosthetic leg underneath. I’d been so intent on the soft shape of her curves and the touch of her hand that I’d forgotten about the hard metal bits she wore.

  She extracted a sliver of metal from somewhere inside the prosthetic and carefully slipped it into the catch. She twisted gently, and the velvet drawer liner released.

  “You’re quite handy with that, aren’t you?” I said, impressed.

  “You have no idea,” she said, concentrating on the careful extraction of a bit of paper from under the old velvet. When enough had been revealed, she reached for her prosthetic and pulled out a long pair of tweezers and used them to inch the paper out.

  “I don’t know what impresses me more – the sheer quantity of hardware you carry around with you in the most remarkable places,” she looked up at me with a smile that nearly made me lose track of my voice, “or the care with which you are handling both the desk and that paper.”

  “I used to dream of being an underwater archaeologist,” she said, concentrating on pulling the last of the paper free from beneath the velvet.

  That fascinated me. “Why didn’t you?”

  “I can’t clear my ears underwater. It’s hard to explore deep wrecks when you can’t dive, you know? And despite the thrill of the hunt and the satisfaction of solving the puzzle, just finding the wrecks wasn’t going to be enough.” Shane carefully laid an envelope, yellow with age, on the top of the desk with her tweezers. She studied it thoughtfully while I studied her.

  “Probably reveals a lot more about myself than I want it to,” she said finally, meeting my eyes.

  “It explains your profession perhaps,” I allowed, “but I’d like to think our childhood dreams of romantic or heroic futures can be allowed to fade quietly into the background of who we become.”

  She looked sharply at me. “Have you allowed your childhood dream to fade then?”

  I thought about the South London streets where I’d spent my childhood, and the Nigerian man who fathered me and Kendra but stuck around only long enough to get his citizenship. “When my dad still lived with us, I dreamed of being a firefighter like he was. He’d come home from work with stories of saving lives, saving buildings, saving cats from tall trees …”

  She smiled at the stereotype, and Oscar moved over to lay his head on her lap as she sat cross-legged on the floor. I leaned forward in my chair and rested my forearms on my knees. “But then he went back to Nigeria, and I spent the next six years angry at everyone and everything. The British military managed to kick that out of me with impressive haste, and then I put myself through university to make up for the angry years of dismal scholarship. Whatever childhood dreams I might have resurrected at uni were effectively diminished to just one during my Peacekeeper years – stay alive to care for my family.”

  I glanced at Shane, suddenly self-conscious about how much of myself I’d revealed – things I wasn’t proud of – and then looked away so I didn’t have to see what she thought of it all.

  “I think we should go plant that tracking device on Quimby’s car tonight,” she announced. My eyes snapped back to hers.

  “Tonight?” I asked, dumbly. “I’d been thinking tomorrow at his office garage.”

  She checked her watch. “It’s eleven on a weeknight. Still a plausible time to be getting home from work, but late enough that the casual looky-loos will be asleep.”

  She stood up and brushed off her trousers. “Aren’t you going to open that?” I asked, indicating the letter she’d left on the desk.

  “I’d love to, but it’s yours, and it should be done with gloves on to try to preserve the paper. It looks pretty old; oils from our skin would potentially damage it.” She looked longingly at the letter, but then snapped her fingers for Oscar, and he lumbered to his feet.

  “I can’t believe you can just walk away. I would think the archaeologist-dreamer in you would be swooning at the romance of it.”

  She smirked. “I’m not really the swoony type. Probably not too romantic either, if I’m honest.”

  I stepped closer – likely too close, but she didn’t back away. “And how do you feel about adrenaline? Risk? Danger?” I couldn’t help looking at her lips, nor at the pulse I saw beating in her neck.

  “There was that whole underwater component to my dream of being an archaeologist,” she said in a volume that was only a little more than a whisper.

  “Where it’s dark…” I said, my eyes catching hers in a gaze that didn’t let go. “And deep….” I said, even more quietly.

  Then a smile played on her lips as she said, “And wet.”

  And I was done. Well and truly gone.

  I swallowed hard, and Shane’s smile grew bigger as she watched me stumble for the next words. She didn’t let me say them though, because she whispered, inches away from my mouth. “Let’s go bug a car.”

  27

  Shane

  “You can teach a cat to do anything … that it wants to do.” – Shane, P.I.

  Quimby’s house was dark when we pulled up to it in Gabriel’s hybrid car. It was a new enough car not to raise eyebrows in the neighborhood, which was why we decided to take it.

  We parked in front of a house under construction three doors away from Quimby’s, and we sat in the dark for a few minutes listening to the silence. Quimby’s red Tesla was
parked in his driveway, but Denise’s Lexus was gone.

  “I need to check Quimby’s garage for the Lexus,” I whispered to Gabriel.

  “Why?” He had the remarkable ability to speak in such a low tone that it sounded like a whisper but felt like the brush of his skin on mine.

  “To see if it’s still here. He wouldn’t get rid of his wife’s car if he was hoping she’d be back.”

  Gabriel studied the attached garage. “Is there another door besides the roll-up one?”

  “There’s got to be one inside the house.”

  “No,” he said.

  I bristled but kept the bristle to myself, storing it away for use in the wall I’d eventually build to brick off the part of me that was attracted to him.

  Then he sighed and said, “Sorry. How can I help is what I mean to ask.”

  Just like that, the bristly brick was discarded. “There’s a window to the laundry room in the back. It was unlocked when I was here a couple of days ago, and there’s no alarm. If you’ll set the tracker on his car and then keep watch, I’ll get in, check the garage, and get out. We can be gone in ten minutes.”

  His mouth was tense, but he nodded. “Take your phone.”

  “I’d better set it to silent mode then, or the sexy sigh I use as your ringtone will get us caught.”

  He looked sharply at me, and I grinned to show him I was messing with him to break the tension. A tiny smirk hit one corner of his mouth. “As it would,” he said, but then he turned serious. His hand reached for me, as though of its own volition, and then settled lightly on my arm. Even through the long-sleeved fabric of my black t-shirt, his touch burned. “Be careful,” he said.

  I swallowed against the urge to kiss him, and nodded. “You too.”

  The dome light remained dark as we opened the car doors, got out, and then pushed them closed behind us with a soft click.

  A car turned onto the street and Gabriel quickly put his arm around me and pulled me to his side so we could walk as though we were a couple coming home from an evening out. As the car drove past us, I leaned my head onto his shoulder and inhaled the warm scent of his skin as I felt his lips in my hair.