A Dangerously Sexy Affair

by Stefanie London

  “My assignment is to investigate an information leak for Third Planet Studios.”

  Pause. “Oh.”

  “Yeah.” A dull pain thudded behind her eyes as she walked along Broadway, dodging a fancily dressed woman coming out of Bloomingdale’s with an expensive purse tucked under her arm. “What do you know about it?”

  “Not a lot.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve been getting information from this guy for a while, but he got spooked a few months back because someone caught him emailing stuff out of the company.”

  “What’s his name?” She knew, but hearing Alana say it would mean that there was still some trust left between them.

  The silence dragged on until a sigh sounded on the other end of the line and Alana finally said, “Christopher.”

  “What information has he been sending you?”

  Bloomingdale’s blurred past as she stormed ahead. People moved out of her way as soon as they caught her expression. The Third Planet building was close by and she needed a plan. ASAP.

  “Documents with their plans for future games.” A note of hesitation in her voice made Quinn’s ears prick.

  “What else?”

  “There’s this guy who works there and he’s been victimizing female staff. The company does nothing about it because he’s related to the owner.” Her voice wobbled. “It’s bullshit, Quinn. The industry does not need people like that. He basically attacked my friend Sarah.”

  “She was an intern there?” The pieces clicked into place.

  “Yeah, she made a complaint and he threatened to come after her. How did you know?”

  “But you never received information about the game design engine, right?”

  “What are you talking about? I don’t know anything about a game design engine.”

  Quinn believed her. Alana wasn’t in the business of trading corporate information. She wasn’t playing spies and profiting off trade secrets.

  She wanted to change the industry to make it safer for women. That was all she cared about.

  “The leak I’m investigating is around the engine, not this thing with Zach Levitt.”

  “So you do know who I’m talking about. He’s a predator, Quinn. Tell me you don’t have anything to do with him. He scared Sarah so bad—”

  “I can imagine.” Quinn came to a stop at the entrance to the Third Planet building and looked up the tall, reflective column. “But what does he have to do with the game design documents?”

  “Nothing, directly. But I’ve been searching for a way to take Third Planet down for a while. The stuff about Walt’s nephew never seems to stick, though.” She sighed. “So I got creative. If I can’t get Walt for sexist work practices then I’ll expose him for sexist game designs. If enough people boycott the company maybe he’ll change his ways.”

  “Tell me you didn’t do anything illegal to get this information.”

  Silence.

  “Alana.” She ground the heel of her hand against her eye to quell the throbbing. “What did you do?”

  “I might have gotten access to Christopher’s email and found out that he was cheating on his wife...and blackmailed him a little.”

  “And how did you get access to his email?” She shook her head. “Wait. Actually, I don’t want to know.”

  “Please, Quinn. We won’t ever be able to change things unless people like Zachary and Walt are taken down.” She clucked her tongue. “So maybe my methods weren’t one hundred percent ethical, but it’s for the greater good.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me about any of this?”

  “I didn’t want you to be ashamed of me.”

  How could this have gotten so messy so quickly? There was no way Aiden would back off on Alana’s informant if she brought it to his and Rhys’s attention. But if she didn’t, it could be her job. Shit.

  “I’m not ashamed of you, Alana. I just...did you have to blackmail him? That’s a fucking crime.”

  “It’s his word against mine. They can’t prove anything.” She drew a shaky breath.

  “You’d better hope not.”

  “Please don’t let them go after Christopher. He’ll fold quicker than a shitty poker hand. All I wanted was enough evidence to do an exposé on Third Planet. They can’t keep covering up this kind of behavior. Sarah still hasn’t been able to find work because she’s terrified it’ll happen again.”

  Quinn wanted to be angry. No, scratch that. She wanted to be furious.

  But she thought of Sarah, this girl she’d never met—probably never would meet—and how frightened she must be. Quinn understood that feeling all too well.

  She sighed. “I can’t make any promises. But I’ll do my best. Just stop talking to this guy.”

  Her best friend had done something monumentally stupid. But Alana had been there for Quinn when she’d needed someone, and in a way this was also her way of being there for Sarah. Quinn had to help them both. As for Aiden...well, she had no idea whether or not she could trust him with this. His job was everything to him. What if he wanted to throw Alana under the bus to get his runs on the board?

  She couldn’t risk it. She’d have to fix this situation on her own.

  * * *

  AIDEN ALWAYS RELIED on his instinct. He didn’t act on it without proof, but he listened to it nonetheless. And today it was screaming loud and clear: warning, shit-storm ahead.

  Logan had caught him on the way out and suggested they walk together since he was off to a client meeting in the same direction. The last thing Aiden had wanted was company, but he’d barely seen Logan since he started. The guy was busy with a capital B. No one worked as hard on their business as he did. It was part of the reason Aiden wanted to work for him. Success was catching, and Logan had it in abundance.

  “How are you settling in?” Logan asked as they crossed an intersection. “Sorry I haven’t been able to catch up with you until now.”

  “You know me. I don’t need a babysitter.”

  Logan slapped him on the back. “I know. But I begged you to come and work for me so I didn’t want you to think it was all talk. I have big plans for you.”

  The words echoed in his head. It was exactly what Rhys had said. Big plans. “Hey, can I ask you something?”

  “Sure.”

  “Does everyone know you brought me across?”

  Logan raised an eyebrow and ran a hand along the edge of his stubble-coated jaw. “I shared your experience with Rhys and our office manager, Addison, before you came in for an interview. I wasn’t planning on keeping it a secret.”

  “Right.”

  “Worried that people will walk on eggshells around you?”

  He laughed. “Nothing gets past you, does it?”

  “I’m not running a security company because of my good looks.” The creases around his eyes deepened as he smiled. “But I won’t hesitate to back you if anyone tries to say you weren’t the best damn candidate for the job.”

  “Even over one of your own staff members?”

  “Are you talking about Quinn? She’s smart and I want to see her succeed, but this wasn’t her time.” They rounded a corner, sidestepping a woman with a stroller. “You need to stop worrying so much about other people thinking you’re worthy. I don’t care that you’re my best friend. If you were a Muppet I wouldn’t have hired you. And I’d tell you that to your face.”

  He didn’t doubt it. Logan was known for being blunt to the nth degree; he had a short fuse and an even shorter attention span. He’d burned through a lot of employees when he’d first taken over the reins at Cobalt & Dane. Weeding out the deadwood, he’d called it. Then he’d filled the gaps with guys like him—dedicated, hardworking. Loyal.

  Aiden was honored to be counted as one of them. “She’s got more potential that you give her credit
for.”

  “Don’t tell me she’s gotten under your skin?”

  “She can do more than fixing printers and screwing in lightbulbs.”

  “Screwing in lightbulbs?”

  “You know what I mean. Mundane crap. You could hire a monkey to do that.”

  Logan snorted. “What you do on your personal time is your business. But you keep it out of the office, okay? And leave running my business to me.”

  That was as close as he would get to having Logan’s blessing. But it was enough for him.

  “I’m just saying, you have talented staff. If you don’t utilize them, they’ll leave.”

  Logan gave him a look that said the conversation was over. “How’s your brother doing? I heard he split up with his wife. That really blows.”

  “Yeah, Marcus is pretty cut up about it.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” His face softened. “Maybe we should take him out for a drink, or is he doing his usual withdrawal thing?”

  “He stopped by my place two weeks ago, but he didn’t want to talk about the separation.”

  “Like father, like son.” Logan shook his head. “You’re an unemotional lot, you Odells.”

  “You can talk.” Aiden moved to sock him in the arm but Logan dodged the blow easily.

  “I don’t put myself in a position where I need to get emotional.” He tapped the side of his head and winked. “See, I’m smart like that.”

  Aiden slowed his pace and they came to a stop in front of the coffee shop a few doors down from Third Planet Studios. He needed caffeine before he could face Quinn.

  “Okay, big guy.” Logan slapped his palm on Aiden’s back. “I just wanted to say I’m glad you saw the light and decided to come and work with me. And let’s take Marcus out soon, okay?”

  “Absolutely.”

  Ten minutes later Aiden walked into the Third Planet Studios office with a coffee in one hand. He’d wanted to buy one for Quinn, the order had hovered on the tip of his tongue, but it would draw unnecessary attention to them. Still, he felt the need to make some kind of connection with her. Talk to her. Something to put his mind at ease after she’d shot out of their meeting like a rocket.

  “You’re back,” Joan said, falling into step beside him. “What’s the plan for today?”

  “Just a few follow-up questions.”

  “Well, your meeting room is set up. I wasn’t sure what time you were coming in so I haven’t booked anyone in to see you. But if you want me to sit in on any meetings, I’ll be free in the next hour.”

  “Thanks. Do you have those access card reports I requested?”

  “Of course. Come to my office and I’ll give them to you now.” She bustled ahead, a stack of folders under one arm. “Whatever you need.”

  Quinn wasn’t at her desk when he walked past. Her desk looked untouched, too neat. Given the state of her apartment, he wouldn’t say she was a messy person, by any stretch...but she wasn’t exactly meticulous, either. He paused.

  Her laptop screen was locked, the background set to a page displaying “Galactic Warrior” fan art. The cursor flashed in the field where her password would be typed.

  There weren’t any papers on her desk, no coffee cups or water glasses. Her toy llama was shoved into the corner of the desk, almost as if someone had pushed it out of the way. The last time he’d walked past her desk he’d noticed a notepad covered with her dainty cursive. Numbers, little bits of code and a few doodles. But it was nowhere to be seen.

  Checking to make sure Joan wasn’t watching, he ducked into Quinn’s pod and opened the drawers in her desk. It was virtually empty, save for a few loose paper clips, a couple of pens and a pad of rainbow sticky notes.

  He closed the drawers quietly and made his way over to Joan’s office just as she walked out.

  “I thought you were right behind me,” she said, laughing. “I was talking to myself like a big old doofus assuming you were right there.”

  “Sorry, I got distracted.”

  “Never mind.” She thrust a stack of papers into his hands. “This is the report. All the cards that have been activated and deactivated are listed on the first page. Then the last month’s usage report is behind that. It’s long, though. We have a lot of comings and goings ’round here.”

  “That’s fine. I have an eagle eye.”

  Her lips formed a tight smile and she nodded. “I’m sure it serves you well. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and offer someone a job.”

  “That must be the best part of your day.”

  She shrugged, the smile slipping from her lips. “Another one of Walt’s nephews mooching off him and taking away jobs from people who deserve them. There’s no joy in supporting that.” The minute the words slipped out she blinked and waved her hand. “Oh, don’t mind me. I’m a grouchy old lady. Please don’t say anything to Walt.”

  “I didn’t hear a thing.” Aiden tapped his free hand against his leg as he walked back toward the meeting room, his mind whirling.

  There was an important piece of the puzzle missing, and it wasn’t just the name of the person leaking information. He had a feeling that everything was laid out in front of him; all he had to do was figure out how it fit together.

  14

  IT WAS SEVEN O’CLOCK before Aiden realized that the office had cleared out. He’d been poring over the reports Joan had given him for hours, trying to figure out if someone had accessed the building to get information.

  So far, nada.

  The access cards also activated the printing and scanning machines, and every item was logged with a time stamp. All emails to external addresses were run through a filter to catch any sensitive information leaving the company. And no laptops, tablets or mobile devices had been reported stolen for months.

  He had access to piles and piles of data, but none of it pointed to a leak.

  It was possible the informant had passed the information on via a call from a personal cell, or perhaps they’d taken a photo of the document with their phone. But trying to find evidence of that would be like trying to find the proverbial needle in a haystack.

  He couldn’t fail at his first assignment. There had to be a clue somewhere, and if the “how” wasn’t presenting itself, then he’d have to dig deeper into the “who” and “why.”

  Motivation. That was where people always tripped up. It was easier to cover a paper trail than it was to hide intention...at least in his experience. The simplest reason for leaking information would be for financial gain. Perhaps someone was paying an employee for each bit of data that left the company.

  But in his gut he knew that wasn’t it. There was something more going on here.

  That suspicion had only been confirmed when he’d interviewed Christopher again earlier in the day. The guy had sweated a bucket, and Aiden was positive he was hiding something.

  Tapping at the keys on his laptop, he pulled up LinkedIn. Christopher’s profile was sparse, and his picture looked like it had come from a wedding where he’d cropped out the person standing next to him. He had only fifty-seven connections. Aiden clicked on the list. One name jumped out at him like a jack in the box.

  Alana Peterson.

  Aiden switched over to Alana’s profile. Quinn’s friend had over five hundred connections, most of them female, from what he could tell. Looking at her job history, he couldn’t see how she would know Christopher specifically, but then again, they were both in the technology industry. Maybe it was nothing.

  “Doesn’t feel like nothing,” he muttered to himself. He drummed his fingers against the desk.

  Instinct told him that Alana was connected to this whole thing somehow. He’d had a niggling suspicion about it that first night at the cocktail party before he’d started with Cobalt & Dane.

  But he h
ad nothing solid that connected her to the leak. And he’d been positive that Quinn was telling the truth about Alana’s reason for being angry with Third Planet Studios. So what did her beef about their lack of female protagonists have to do with the information about the game design engine? The two things seemed completely separate.

  “What is your deal, Alana?”

  He continued to scroll through her connections until another name jumped out at him. Sarah Newell.

  One click confirmed that Sarah had worked at Third Planet Studios for eleven months and hadn’t taken a job since. She’d listed one freelance job for Alana’s website and Alana had written her a glowing recommendation for her LinkedIn profile.

  Aiden checked Alana’s website and quickly found two articles detailing exclusive information on the design plans Christopher had been caught sending to his home email address. Two weeks apart, but the articles must have been small enough that no one at Third Planet Studios had picked up the connection.

  He needed to find Quinn—if she knew anything at all he wanted to give her the chance to come out with it before he took this information to Rhys. He’d be pissed if she was keeping information about the case from him, but he owed her the benefit of the doubt.

  Snapping shut the lid of his laptop, he packed up his things and slung his satchel over one shoulder. Hopefully, he could get her to trust him.

  She’s got too much baggage. His brother’s voice circled around in his head. She’ll complicate your life.

  And what if she spilled the beans to everyone else at Cobalt & Dane about his connection to Logan? He’d lose their respect before he’d even had a go at building his own reputation. Then what? He could hardly go crawling back to his father or the FBI.

  The sound of his footsteps echoed around the quiet office. A few workers remained. One guy chatted into a headset as he typed, and another was scribbling madly on a whiteboard.

  “Quinn?” He stuck his head into her pod but no one was there.

  It was after seven, no surprise she’d gone home. Still, that wasn’t going to stop him from trying to find her. He pulled his phone from the depths of his satchel and dialed her number as he walked down the rows of desks. The “Super Mario” theme music cut through the air. He stopped dead in his tracks.