by Tara Wylde
“Ah, here it is.” He taps the screen with his thumb and reads the article. “I was right. The thieves who broke into the zoo stole several monkeys, including a breeding pair.”
He lets out a low whistle.
“Apparently, these are really rare monkeys that are worth tens of thousands of dollars on the black market,” Trey says, sounding awestruck. “A couple of those babies would pay for medical school.”
“When did this happen?” I ask.
Trey skims through the article a second time and reads off a date.
I do a little mental calculation. “That was about thirty-six hours or so before Northwest had me fly to Berlin.”
“You don’t honestly think the airline had anything to do with a robbery at a zoo?” My dad is staring at me like I’m losing my mind.
“No, the odds of that being the case are enormous.” Still, it gives me something to ponder.
Cassie
Northwest Airline’s main offices aren’t located at the airport, but rather in a dull brick building that sits just outside the airport fence.
The building was built during WWI and as far as I can tell, very few efforts have been made to update it. The people who work inside of it make do with fans and small air conditioners because there is no HVAC system. Massive surge protectors are plugged into every single outlet because when the original wiring was put in, no one fathomed that every person who worked in the building would rely on a minimum of three different electrical devices, none of which had even been close to being invented when the building was constructed.
Most of the people who work with Northwest’s planes, myself included, avoid setting foot into this building if at all possible. Still, since it’s the only way to resolve the matter of my missing paychecks and I desperately need the money, in it I must go.
I pull the heavy steel door on the front of the building open and step in.
A girl who’s maybe all of eighteen is sitting at the counter that makes up the front desk. She glances up as the heavy door swings closed behind me.
“Hi!” Her sugar sweet, cheerful voice grates on my nerves. “Welcome to Northwest Airlines. How may I serve you today?”
“I need to talk to Lynette.”
The girl frowns. “Who’s Lynette?”
Oi vey! She works here and doesn’t know the name of the only person who works in the finance department. Not a good sign.
“Lynette in finance.”
“Oh, okay.” The girl looks down at something on the counter. “Why do you need to talk to her?”
“Two of my paychecks didn’t get direct deposited. I need to find out what she did with them.”
“Got it.” The girl nods sagely. “And you are?”
Good grief. Getting into a federal building would take less time.
“Cassie Mayers. A pilot. A person who is pissed that they haven’t been paid and is very likely to take out her frustrations on the person standing between me and Lynette. Do you understand me?”
The girl laughs and nods. “Cassie, you’re the shit. I hope you come here lots. I think you have a thing or two you can teach me about being a complete and total bad ass.”
I’m too cranky to appreciate her respect for me. “Thanks.” I spin on my heel and start walking in the direction of Lynette’s office.
“Hey,” the girl calls after me. “Do you need me to tell you how to get there?”
“Has it moved in the past year and a half?” I say over my shoulder.
“I don’t think so.”
“Then I shouldn’t have any trouble finding it.”
“Okay.” There’s a long pause before the girl adds, “Good luck.”
I don’t know why, but her final comment sends a cold wave of dread surging through me.
Pushing the sudden apprehension aside, I focus on my dull surroundings.
The air always smells unusual here: kind of stale and musty and there’s a hint of something else that I’ve never been able to identify. Every time I’m here, I always wonder if this was what the 1920s actually smelled like.
I glance at the drywall on the ceilings and walls. I can’t say for sure that they’re full of asbestos, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Breathing as shallowly as I can, I make my way down a long hallway toward a room that’s near the far wall and houses what passes as Northwest’s finance department.
The rubber soles of my sandals slap against the age-yellowed linoleum flooring. Occasionally, I spot someone working at their desk or pass someone else in the hallway, but for the most part, the place is quiet. I assume that Northwest has cut back on their office staff or at least reduced hours to try saving money.
The door to Lynette’s office is closed. I don’t care. I’ve looked at my finances and I really need to get those checks into my bank account today. There’s no good reason for two paychecks to have gone missing.
Without knocking, I twist the handle and shove the door open.
“Listen, Lynette. My last two paychecks are AWOL, and if you think I’m going to sit on my thumbs for two weeks like you had me do the last time you can …”
My gaze lands on the large desk that dominates the small room, and my speech dries up in my throat.
The middle-aged, eagle-eyed accountant who should be sitting behind the desk is nowhere to be seen.
Instead, sitting in her place is my copilot, Ronan Smith.
Cassie
I slam the door shut.
“What the hell are you doing here? Where’s Lynette?”
Ronan takes a second to study my expression before turning his attention to Lynette’s laptop, which is open on her desk.
“I could ask you the same thing,” he says calmly.
“But I asked first,” I point out. “And why are you looking at Lynette’s computer?”
Ronan rubs the back of his neck. “When I got here, Lynette was in the process of walking out the door. She was with another gentleman and they were making lunch plans.” He glanced down at his watch. “That was a little less than fifteen minutes ago.”
I grimace. “Why didn’t the girl at the front desk say anything when I told her I was here to see Lynette?”
“Maybe she didn’t know Lynette left. She didn’t say anything to me about it when I said I was a new employee and had to work out some issues regarding Northwest depositing my check and my bank.”
“And you’re snooping in her computer because?”
Ronan pulls his gaze away from Lynette’s laptop and meets and holds my gaze. I can practically see the wheels turning inside of his head.
“There’s something fishy going on with Northwest,” he finally says. He speaks slowly, like he’s not entirely sure of his decision to share.
I nod. “I’ve been saying that ever since they hired me, but I don’t see what that has to do with you snooping in Lynette’s computer.”
“Since she’s the head of the finance department, I figured her computer would help me understand just how Northwest managed to go from being a wildly lucrative airline to one that is practically knocking on bankruptcy’s front door.”
“So you hacked her computer?” Noticing that my voice has shot up a full two octaves, I take a deep breath and tell myself to be calm. “You know how to hack a computer?”
I struggle to figure out how to run the word processing program on the five-year-old laptop I have at home. I can’t begin to imagine being able get into private files and discover all the dirt a person has saved on their computer.
Ronan shakes his head. “I don’t know the first thing about hacking, but I have a cousin who does. When I realized that Lynette was going to be out of her office, I gave him a call, and he walked me through the process. It was surprisingly simple, not that I’d be able to do it again without him walking me through it.” His eyes meet mine. “How come some people have such an easy time working with computers, and I’m always surprised when one doesn’t blow up the second I touch it?”
I shrug. “I guess it’s not
all that different from how we can fly a plane and others can’t.”
“True,” Ronan agrees. “You’re here because of missing paychecks?”
He turns his attention back to the screen and moves his fingers around the touch pad.
Brimming with curiosity and unable to stop myself, I round the side of Lynette’s desk and stop beside him so I can see what he’s doing.
“This is the third time this has happened,” I tell him as I brace a hand on the desk. “The other two times, she swore there was a problem with the bank. She managed to correct it on her end, but it always took a full pay period to do so. I can’t afford to wait that long this time. I need the money now.”
“I can give you some money,” Ronan says as he clicks on an icon.
“You have money? I thought this was your first flying job.” I think back on a conversation we had while flying from Barcelona to London. “Didn’t you say that you signed on with Northwest because they were the first airline to offer you a job right away and you were desperate to start flying, so you took it, even though you were pretty sure they paid new commercial pilots about ten percent less than the other airlines?”
Ronan stiffens and winces. “I’m not completely destitute. I have a little money set aside to live off until I’m making a regular paycheck. And I live cheap. If you’re in a bind, I can give you a little to help tide you over.”
He’s lying. The thought shoots through me. I don’t know how I know, or what he’s lying about, but I’m certain he’s keeping something big from me.
Before I can push, he clicks on another icon, reads through the columns of information that appears on the screen and lets out a low whistle.
“You’re not kidding about how you didn’t get paid.”
I lean closer. The scent of his spicy aftershave tickles my nose.
“What did you find?”
Ronan uses his index finger to point to a long list of numbers. They’re all identical except for the last two.
“This column shows the account number your paychecks are deposited into every two weeks. For whatever reason, the last two checks were sent to a different account.”
“There was a banking error?”
Ronan is scrolling upwards, his eyes quickly reading through the information. “The last time you had problems with a check, it was last July?”
“Something like that.”
“It looks like the same thing. A payment was made, but it went into a different account, not the same account as your last two checks were deposited into. This one has a few different numbers.” Ronan opens Lynette’s center desk drawer and removes a small pad of paper. He copies the account numbers onto it. “How long did you say it took this Lynette woman to straighten things out?”
“A full pay period,” I say. “Two weeks.”
“She lied to you.” Ronan nods at the screen and keeps writing. “According to this, she wrote another check just two days after depositing the other one in the wrong account. If I’m reading this correctly, you actually got paid double.”
“What?” I lean so close, my shoulder bumps into his. The sudden, unexpected contact sends sparks shooting up and down my arm. I suck in a deep breath and try to ignore the reaction. “That can’t be right. I didn’t get paid double.”
“It’s all right here.” Ronan draws his finger down the computer screen. “It looks like she wrote out a paper check the day you came to the office and complained, followed by a check deposited directly into your bank account two weeks later.”
“I was only paid once. There was never a paper check.”
Ronan closes down my payroll file and starts clicking on others. He quickly scrolls through the information, occasionally stopping to write something down.
“You’re not the only one this happens to,” he finally says. “It looks like it’s happened to just about every other pilot on the payroll at least once and it’s the exact same thing. The original deposit goes into the wrong account and Lynette makes up for it by paying them twice.”
“Why would she do that?”
“Money.” Ronan closes down the payroll file and clicks on one labeled ‘Repairs’. “She’s embezzling from the company. Which goes a long way toward explaining why Northwest is in such a financial pickle. What I don’t get is how she’s managed to get away with it for so long. Someone should have noticed.”
He finds the repair file for the plane he and I spent the better part of a month in and opens it. Row after row of information appears. Not only does it show every repair my plane has had, it also shows how much each repair cost.
“Is there a printer in here?” Ronan asks.
I straighten and scan the room. My eyes finally land on a large black printer that’s balanced on the top of a short filing cabinet. “Yeah, it looks like a wireless one.”
“Perfect.” Ronan hits a button and the printer springs to life.
I hurry over to it and collect several pieces of paper that the machine quickly spews out at me. I skim through them. “Why do you want the repair history of our jet for the last three years?”
Ronan’s fingers fly over the touchpad. “I want to compare the records of how the cost of those repairs were calculated and compare them to what is in the plane’s maintenance book. If Lynette is playing fast and loose with the payroll, chances are pretty good that she’s taking money from other places as well.”
He leans closer to the screen. “What the hell?”
The printer springs to life again. I remove the papers from the printer’s tray. I can’t even begin to understand what’s written on them.
“What are these?” I ask.
Before Ronan can answer, I hear the sound of footsteps in the hallway and a faint but familiar nasal voice, the same one that belongs to Lynette, the very woman whose computer Ronan and I are stealing information from.
My eyes lock with Ronan’s.
“Lynette’s back from her lunch,” I hiss.
Cassie
Without a second’s worth of hesitation, Ronan taps computer keys, shutting down one file after another and erasing all proof that they’ve been opened.
“Hand me those papers,” he orders.
Heart lodged firmly in my throat, I hand the fairly thick stack to him. He rolls them up and stuffs the makeshift tube into the waistband of his pants.
“I’m going to be really pissed off if I get arrested because you hacked into that computer.” My belly quivers in nervous anticipation. “I won’t do well in prison.”
“You’re not going to prison.” Ronan finishes clearing the files from the screen and shuts the laptop’s cover. He slides the computer to one side of the desk. “You have my word on it.”
“That’s not nearly as reassuring as you might think,” I mutter.
Ronan rips the piece of paper he recorded the account number on out of the notebook and shoves it into his jeans pocket. “There, no proof that we’ve been up to anything.”
“Great, she won’t know that you were going through her computer, but we’re still in here.” I tug at my earlobe as my mind races, desperately searching for a reasonable way out of this situation. “Don’t you think she’ll find that suspicious?”
“I’ve got a plan.” Ronan’s teeth flash in a brief, self-deprecating grin. “A good one, but you’re going to hate it.”
My eyes narrow. “What is it?”
Lynette’s distinctive nasal voice floats through the closed office door. It sounds considerably closer than it did the last time we heard it.
“No time to explain.” Ronan surges out of Lynette’s desk chair and bounds across the room to me in one smooth, fluid motion. “You’re just going to have to play along and make it look good.”
His fingers wrap around my wrist. He tugs me forward as he moves backward until he’s once again seated in Lynette’s chair.
With one sharp tug, he pulls me down on top of him.
I land sitting sideways on his lap. My toes brush against the floor. My
hip presses against the printed papers he hid in his pants and my shoulder is propped against his chest. I whip my head around to glare at him.
“What the hell do you-”
Ronan spears his fingers into my hair, holding me steady as he bends his head and claims my mouth with his.
My lips yield to the hard demand. I practically purr as he runs the tip of his tongue along their seam, coaxing them to part so he can gain access. One touch of his lips against mine is all it takes for me to forget that I’m not good for this man.
Moaning deep in my throat, I lean closer until my breasts pillow against his chest. I wrap my arms around his neck, clinging to him like he’s a life raft in the middle of a storm-tossed ocean.
His large, warm hands find the bottom of my shirt and slide beneath it, sweeping up and down the smooth expanse of my back. His hips buck, pressing his hardness against my core and I gasp. A flood of molten heat floods my panties as my insides clench.
Lost in the kiss, I don’t hear the creak of the hinges as the office door swings open.
“What are you doing?” Lynette’s shrill shriek is the first indication I have that Ronan and I aren’t alone.
I rip my mouth free of his and try to leap off his lap, but his hold on me tightens, keeping my body firmly sprawled across his.
Grinning lazily, Ronan tips his head to one side and studies Lynette.
“Howdy,” he finally drawls. “I’m Ronan Smith. Northwest’s newest pilot. I was told to report to you and make sure all my financial stuff is in order so I can get paid. And this here is Cassie Mayers.” He uses his chin to point at me. “She’s having a little problem with her paychecks.”
Ronan
The blood pounding in my head and cock makes it damn near impossible to concentrate on the eagle-eyed, hawk-nosed woman standing in the open doorway. One glances tells me everything I need to know about her. She’s tough, she’s determined, and she isn’t the type of woman who’s going to yield. My dad calls women like her battle axes. He says they’re tenacious and powerful when they’re on your side of an argument, but hellish when they’re on the other side of a debate table.
