Kane leaned back in his chair, letting it tilt so he was staring up at the ceiling as he stacked his hands behind his head. “Maybe he just means it’s easy to get a friend to buy a firearm for you legally and then lend it. Happens all the time.”
Even though he could see her only from his peripheral vision, the way her lips twisted in disbelief wasn’t hard to picture. “Come on. Why does the average person need body armor and a gun? If this was your friend and you knew he was a violent criminal who’d just bought body armor, would you lend him a gun?”
Kane shrugged. Melinda could see through people better than anyone he’d ever met. But she’d never spent time undercover. Kane had spent so much of his career pretending to be someone else that his own identity sometimes felt nebulous. Which wasn’t such a bad thing, as far as he was concerned.
It had taught him just how much people wanted to believe those they loved, even when all the evidence warned them they were making a big mistake. Lending a criminal a gun and lying to yourself that they were just afraid—maybe of a system you’d also convinced yourself had railroaded that person—didn’t seem like much of a stretch.
“Well, maybe this one is less convincing than some of the other cases where we’ve got big boxes of guns. But add all these cases up and there’s something here.”
“I don’t know,” Kane argued. “There’s a huge black market for guns. It doesn’t mean Petrov Armor is involved in the sales.”
Melinda sat up straighter, folding her hands in front of her on the table, in a move Kane recognized. She was ready to make an argument.
He hid his smile as he gave her all his attention.
“Selling guns off the books means a huge markup. Criminals will pay more because they need to go through back channels. But a year ago, Leila Petrov shut down that part of the business.”
Kane let his chair tip him forward again as he wished he’d realized the connection sooner. “So, now whoever was making those backdoor deals—if that was happening—could be sending out inferior armor at the same prices as the good armor, pocketing the money left over from using cheaper materials.”
“Yes,” Melinda agreed, finally smiling at him.
It was probably the first real smile she’d given him since they’d been working together at TCD, or even in all the years before when he’d cross paths briefly with her. The hair on the back of his neck stood up as he noticed how much it changed her face. Not that she wasn’t always pretty, but academic and too insightful had never been his type. But a smiling, proud Melinda was someone he needed to avoid even more.
“We need to find a way to get a look at Petrov Armor’s finances,” Melinda said.
“They’ve probably got double books,” Kane argued, putting his brief, ridiculous burst of attraction aside. “But maybe we need to try and set up a sale. Pretend to be a criminal and buy from them. An undercover op like this is a piece of cake. I’ve done a million of them.”
If he was trying to buy guns from someone at Petrov Armor, he wouldn’t be stuck in a tiny office with Melinda Larsen, pretending not to care that she could read anyone with a single glance. Pretending not to care if she did it to him.
“No,” Melinda insisted. “We’ve got to do more legwork first or we could blow the whole case and make whoever is doing this suspicious of Davis.”
Kane clamped his mouth shut over the argument he wanted to make. He was dying to get back in the field, put on a new persona like a new pair of clothes. Get away from Melinda’s scrutiny. But he knew she was right.
He’d have to wait to jump into the action and the danger he craved, the chance to go out in a hail of bullets like his old partner—Pembrook’s only daughter—had done. The chance to die doing something worthwhile. The way he should have done years ago, beside her.
* * *
DAVIS HAD BEEN undercover at Leila’s company for a day and a half. To Leila, it felt like he’d been there for a week.
She was overanxious, having to watch every word around him, resist sending him suspicious glances that her employees might notice. Most of them would likely just attribute it to her overprotectiveness of the company and everyone and everything inside it. But Uncle Neal or Eric would have probably known something was off. She was amazed they hadn’t realized it already.
Then again, she never lied to either of them.
She and Eric had once shared a bond she thought would never break. He’d been the friend who’d pulled her out of a deep depression three years after she lost her mom. The first boyfriend she’d ever had a year after that. Once their relationship had ended, they’d eventually returned to friendship. It would never be the same as when they were kids, but Leila couldn’t forget what he’d done for her or how much he’d meant to her family.
She and her uncle were close. They didn’t do much together outside of the office, but mostly that was because they were both so busy with work—and in her uncle’s case, with the women he seemed to attract with a single smile. It was a skill she’d never mastered with the opposite sex and, after the way Eric had broken things off with her, had never really wanted to.
The thought made her glance sideways at Davis as he walked alongside her out to her car. Eric was on her other side, making too-fast small talk about his latest sale that told her one thing he had noticed: her attraction to Davis.
Eric knew her too well. He’d probably spotted that she glanced at Davis a little too much. Eric wouldn’t know only part of that was attraction and the rest was worry because of why Davis was here. All he’d see was that Davis intrigued her.
Eric was jealous. Frustration nipped at her, and with it, a little bit of anger. He’d given up his right to be jealous a long time ago, when he’d broken her heart.
“Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.” Leila sighed as they reached her car in the lot. The front right tire was completely flat. “Damn construction. That was my spare tire.”
Davis leaned closer to the wheel, frowning. “I don’t suppose you have another? If you do, I can change this for you, no problem.”
“Yeah,” Leila said. “So could I, but I don’t have a second spare. I probably ran over another nail.”
She ignored the little voice in the back of her head suggesting one of her employees had done it. She knew quite a few of them weren’t happy she’d assumed the role of CEO when her father retired. But they had to be expecting it. Since the day she’d started at the company five years ago, she’d put in more hours than anyone besides her dad. This had started out as a family business, and the board of directors had seen the benefits of keeping it that way. No one could begrudge her that. Especially not with something this juvenile.
“I’ll drive you home,” Eric said, putting a hand on her arm.
“Not a problem. I can do it.” The curiosity on Davis’s face told her he hadn’t missed Eric’s jealousy either.
Before Leila could tell them she’d just call for a car, Davis added, “I am her assistant, after all. Might be a good time for us to talk about how I can help Petrov Armor.”
“It’s your job to support Leila on the job,” Eric said. “Not—”
“That’s a good idea,” Leila cut him off. “Thank you.” She told Eric a quick good-night, then pivoted to follow Davis to his vehicle.
She swore she could feel Eric’s unhappy gaze on her as she climbed into Davis’s black SUV, but she didn’t look back. Instead, she sank into the surprisingly comfortable bucket seat of what she assumed was his FBI vehicle and closed her eyes. The past two days had been stressful, the past three weeks some of the worst of her life.
No matter how hard she threw herself into work, how much she tried not to think about her dad, he was all around her. Not only had he built the business up from nothing, but he’d also been involved in every decision when they’d moved into their building. He’d picked the furniture and artwork in the lobby, designated the offi
ce right next to his for her. When he’d retired, they’d changed the label on his door from CEO to Founder, but he’d kept the office since he was there so often, consulting. She hadn’t been able to bring herself to go inside since his death.
Thinking about that terrible moment when she’d gotten the call, the back of Leila’s throat stung and she knew tears weren’t far behind. Swallowing the pain, she opened her eyes and blinked back the moisture. Realizing Davis had already left the parking lot and was navigating the streets of Old City, she forced her attention back to the one thing she could still control: her father’s legacy. “So, what have you found?”
Her heart pounded faster as she waited for his answer, both hoping for and dreading the news. True, she didn’t personally know every one of her nearly two hundred employees. But she did know the ones in key positions, roles that would give them the kind of access required to pull this off. And every one of those employees, she trusted. Maybe even more telling, her dad had trusted them. He’d had thirty-four years of experience either owning Petrov Armor or—once he’d taken it public—being the largest shareholder. For all but the last five, he’d run it. Even after he’d turned it over to her, he’d been there to guide her every step of the way.
“Your security is solid,” Davis responded, not taking his eyes off the road. “But tomorrow, I want to take a look at your security video for the days connected to the armor being built and shipped out. I want to look at your security card access logs, too. See who went in and out of sensitive areas who shouldn’t have been there or who was there at odd hours.”
“Sure.” Her mind rebelled at the idea of letting an outsider sift through their security footage, but better Davis find the truth than some big, public FBI investigation. Assuming she really could trust him to keep her in the loop and let her manage the betrayal without a huge media fallout.
She wasn’t naive enough to think the press wouldn’t eventually get the story. But better it came from Petrov Armor than in the form of an FBI statement.
“What about suspects? Who do you think did this? Is it possible it was a switch that happened after the armor left our facilities?” As she said it, the idea gained traction in her mind and gave her hope that she hadn’t massively misjudged someone crucial inside her company.
A switch along the delivery route still meant a Petrov Armor employee was probably involved. But it wouldn’t be someone she’d known well for years. It wouldn’t be the same level of betrayal to the company or to her father’s memory.
“I’ve been inside for a day and a half,” Davis answered, still not looking at her. “Right now, everyone is a suspect.”
“You want me to work with you, Davis? I need you to work with me, too. I can’t give you insight into anyone if I don’t know who you need to check out.”
His head moved just slightly toward her, his gaze sweeping over her face like he was looking for something. Then he focused on the road again, probably training drilled into him at the FBI. Never take your eyes off the task ahead.
“Tell me about Eric Ross.”
She choked on nothing, on air, on the ridiculousness of that statement. Eric, a traitor? “I’ve known him since I was thirteen. He was almost as close to my dad as I was. Trust me. He had nothing to do with this.”
“Are you sure you can be impartial? The man obviously has a crush on you.”
“He doesn’t...” She let out a heavy sigh. “That’s ridiculous. Look, I get it. I misjudged someone at the company. But it’s not Eric.”
She shifted in her seat so she could see him better and got distracted by the way he looked in dress pants and a blazer. The bulge at his hip under his seat belt caught her attention, and she realized what it was. “You’re wearing a gun.”
He gave her another one of those quick, searching gazes, then replied, “Always. Even if the FBI didn’t require it, I was an army ranger before I joined the Bureau. I like being prepared.”
A ranger. Leila let that image fill her mind—Davis in an army uniform, wearing that revered tan beret that identified him as a member of the elite Special Forces unit. It was easy to imagine him parachuting out of a plane, steering a small boat full of soldiers through a jungle river, or rappelling down the side of a mountain. Something about the quiet confidence in his gaze, the outright cockiness of his grin and the muscles that his blazer seemed barely able to contain.
Forcing the image out of her head, she joked, “So, if you’re always prepared, what’s in the back? An inflatable boat and a parachute?”
He gave her that quick look again, but this time there was laughter in his eyes and that sexy, amused tilt to his lips.
He’d probably already put her in a box in his mind: serious CEO determined to live up to her father’s example. Not a real, rounded person who went home to a too-quiet house, couldn’t sleep without background noise and liked to dance by herself in the living room.
Leila instantly regretted letting him see her ridiculous sense of humor. She shifted her left leg back to the floor, no longer facing him as she tried to focus. But it was hard not to think about that smile, those lips. It made her belly tighten with awareness, and she wondered if this was part of his arsenal.
How often did he use sex appeal undercover in order to get what he wanted?
And what exactly did he want? He’d implied that he suspected Eric, made the absurd suggestion that Eric had a crush on her. But surely he’d looked into her past before coming into her company. Did he know she and Eric had dated for four years? Did he know how badly Eric had broken her heart? Or how hard it had been to come into a company where Eric already worked, to try to treat him like any other colleague?
As Davis pulled up in front of her house and Leila realized she’d never given him the address, dread sank to the bottom of her stomach, replacing any twinges of lust.
Of course he knew all of those things. Probably a lot more, too. Even worse, he hadn’t told her a single real thing about his investigation.
She didn’t know if he’d done it on purpose. Or if he planned to let her in only when he needed her.
But one thing was certain: she couldn’t trust Davis either.
Chapter Five
“You do realize I could blow your cover whenever I want, right?”
Leila Petrov stared at him with narrowed eyes. Her lips pursed tight, and the muscles in her forearms and biceps twitched as she crossed them over her chest. She’d pivoted in her seat again, this time snapping off her seat belt. But she’d made no move to get out of his vehicle and disappear into her house.
As furious as she looked, Davis knew none of his own worry showed. He’d spent too many years running or parachuting into enemy territory with only as much gear as he could carry and no backup that could reach him and his team for days. He was well practiced in faking confidence in moments of doubt. If his fellow soldiers couldn’t see through it, neither would the young CEO heir of Petrov Armor.
“Well?” she demanded when he was silent too long.
A smile threatened and Davis fought to hide it. She was nothing like he’d expected when he’d first opened her file. Whether or not she’d gotten her role as CEO because she was the founder’s daughter, she knew the company inside out. She wasn’t afraid to call him on things, no matter the FBI’s involvement. He definitely hadn’t expected her dry sense of humor.
A laugh bubbled up thinking about her comment about the inflatable boat he probably kept in his SUV. If she only knew how often an inflatable boat had come in handy in his previous job.
“Are you laughing at me?” Leila demanded. “Because if those vests are truly ours, I plan to figure out who was behind it. I’m going to do it with or without your—”
“I’m not laughing at you,” Davis cut her off. He leaned closer, saw her chest rise and fall faster in response. “Why would you want to blow my cover?”
“You’re not hol
ding up your end of the deal. I don’t appreciate you trying to manipulate me with flirtation, with...this.” She gestured in front of her, indicating their nearness.
This time, Davis knew his surprise showed. He leaned away from her, trying to regroup.
Leila pivoted even more in her seat, getting into his personal space the same way she had in that interview room. Going on the offensive when most people would do the opposite. “Is this your thing when you go undercover? Try to seduce your contacts?”
“I’m not...” Davis blew out a breath that ended on a laugh. “This is my first time undercover.”
He wasn’t at all comfortable with it. Sneaking into enemy territory as a ranger or doing dangerous raids as an FBI agent was far more his speed than pretending to be someone he wasn’t. Manipulating people into giving him information or access felt foreign and vaguely wrong, even if those people had criminal intentions.
“You’ve never gone undercover before? Oh.” She sat back fast, facing the windshield and giving him a chance to study her profile.
She looked nothing like Jessica Carpenter. Leila’s file said she was Russian and Pakistani, while Jessica was African American. Leila had a delicate, almost dainty profile, while Jessica had the bearing of a soldier. But there was something similar underneath the surface, something about the balance between a serious exterior and a softer, goofier side they both tried to hide.
Secret Investigation (Tactical Crime Division Book 2) Page 5
