He was gone. The person closest to her in the world.
The sobs came harder, almost violently. Then Davis was kneeling in front of her on the floor, pulling her against him. She held on tight, weeping into his chest as he stroked her hair, until the sobs finally subsided.
He lifted the bottom of his T-shirt, offering it.
She managed a laugh, then did use it to mop up the remaining tears on her face. It was something she would have done as a teenager, with Eric’s shirt, when she’d been grieving the loss of her mom. Now here she was, all these years later, and it was Davis she was leaning on for support. Davis she wanted beside her.
He made her feel safe. Made her feel like she could be herself, without fearing she’d look too weak or seem unfit for her role as CEO. The ironic thing was that she probably should have feared it in front of him—an FBI agent—most of all.
She was falling for him.
The realization hit hard and sudden, even though it should have been obvious long ago. Maybe even the first day she’d met him, she should have known he was more than just a danger to her hormones, but a real risk to her heart.
She blinked at him now, kneeling in front of her, her hands still fisted in his T-shirt. His soft hazel eyes were so serious, so worried. He cared about her, too. He hadn’t admitted it, but she could see it all over his face.
But he was still an FBI agent. He was still a man investigating everyone in her company. The information he’d just shared made it more clear than ever that the person they were looking for was someone important in Petrov Armor. This was no swap-out in a truck, no one-time incident. This was someone who’d been undermining the company for a long, long time. It was someone she trusted. Someone her father had trusted.
“I shouldn’t be here,” Davis whispered.
His words made no sense and she shook her head. “You live here.”
He laughed, the tension and worry on his face fading a little. “With you, Leila. I shouldn’t be here with you.” His hand cupped her face, and she couldn’t stop herself from leaning into it. “But I can’t stay away.”
Instead of reminding him that she was the one who’d come to his place uninvited, she moved her hands from the front of his T-shirt to the center of his back. Just as he was taking the hint and leaning toward her, his phone buzzed, making both of them jump.
He scowled in the direction of his phone, and she could feel him debating silently before he finally swore and said, “I need to take this.”
He stood, stepped away from her and answered in a serious, all-business tone, “Davis Rogers.”
His gaze was still on hers, the look in his eyes still soft, almost a caress. Then, his gaze shifted away from her and his whole face hardened. “Hang on.” He moved the phone away from his ear and told her, “I’ll be back in a minute.”
She stood slowly as he disappeared around the corner, then used her own T-shirt to dab at the edges of her eyes. Glancing around Davis’s living room—which was a lot more colorful than she’d expected given his mostly dark blue and black wardrobe—she spotted a mirror over a console in the corner. Striding over to it, she looked into the mirror and grimaced.
Her eyes were red and puffy. Her nose, too. The rest of her skin was paler than usual, and Leila realized just how much the past few weeks without enough sleep had impacted her. She’d been avoiding a breakdown ever since hearing about her father’s death. She’d been afraid that once she started, she might never stop. But her outburst of tears on Davis’s chest had actually been freeing. It had lifted some of her ever-present tension, made her feel less like she was moving on autopilot.
Davis had helped her feel that way, too. Just having him around—despite the reason—had forced her to feel emotions, had pulled her partway out of the numbness she’d tried to bury herself in since her father’s death. She was a long way from being finished grieving, but it was a start. Hopefully, when the investigation into her company was over—no matter how it turned out—Davis would still be here.
He’d said he shouldn’t be here with her now, but he hadn’t asked her to leave. He’d been the one leaning in to kiss her when his phone call had interrupted. They shouldn’t date while he was undercover in her company. But maybe when it was all over...
Leila felt a smile burst on her face, huge and unexpected after how hard she’d just wept. Whatever was happening between her and Davis wasn’t a byproduct of her needing someone during her grief. If that were true, she would have turned to Eric, the man she’d thought she was still halfway in love with until he’d told her he wanted her back. Until his words of being together had made her think of Davis, not him.
This was real. From the things Davis had been saying to her a few moments ago, he felt it, too.
They could make it work. Once the investigation was over, they could make it work. It wouldn’t be easy, especially if she had to start over again professionally, after trials and interviews over the traitor inside Petrov Armor. But he was worth it.
She followed in the direction Davis had disappeared, listening for his voice to tell her where he was. Hopefully, he was finished with his phone call. Because she needed to tell him right now that she was willing to wait until the investigation was over, but no longer. That once they figured this all out—together—she wanted him.
“Yes, I know Leila is still officially a suspect.”
Davis’s words, spoken on a frustrated sigh, made Leila freeze and her smile instantly fade.
His voice quieted even more, to a whisper Leila had to strain to hear. “Yeah, I get that, Kane. But we both know it’s not her. It’s someone who wants her protected, even as they steal millions from her company right under her nose. Yeah, my bet’s on the uncle or the ex.” A pause, then, “Yes, Theresa’s still in the mix, too, but she’s at the bottom of my list now.”
Leila’s ears started to ring and she felt so off balance she actually reached out to the wall for support. Given what Davis had shared about the gun sales, she knew the person responsible was someone in a role of importance. She’d even known the people she loved were potential suspects.
But she’d thought Davis had believed her when she’d explained why her uncle and Eric would never, ever betray her father. She’d thought he’d trusted her judgment when it came to Theresa, too.
She backed slowly down the hall, using the wall for support, stepping lightly so he wouldn’t hear her. She needed to get out of here.
Davis had feelings for her. There was no way he was that good a liar. Yet, he would still use her to get what he needed for this investigation.
This was so much worse than the betrayal she’d felt from Eric. Davis had made her believe they were working together to stop the saboteur. All the while, he was hoping to yank another person she loved out of her life.
She pulled her hand from the wall, pressed it to her chest as she spun and walked a little faster, desperate for escape. The ringing in her ears slowed, and she could hear Davis’s voice, farther away now, whispering, “I’ve got to go.”
She turned the knob on the front door slowly, pulled the door open as quietly as possible, then bolted for her car. Putting the key in the ignition seemed to take forever, but then she was speeding away from his house as fast as she could.
It was time to make a clean break from all the people who were lying to her. It was time to stop relying on the FBI to get to the truth. If she was going to prove that the people she loved weren’t responsible, she was going to have to do it herself.
It was time to investigate on her own.
Chapter Fifteen
The FBI still considered her a suspect. Not just for selling the military defective body armor, but also for illegally selling guns to criminals. Presumably even of killing her own father.
The fact that Davis didn’t believe she was responsible didn’t matter. He believed it was someone she loved. Despite a
ll his promises to keep her informed, he was shutting her out.
On one hand, she understood. This was his job, and his top suspects were people close to her. But she’d given him access to everything, tried to help him find the person responsible, no matter who it was, no matter if it destroyed her career. Still, he didn’t trust her with the truth.
That meant she couldn’t trust him to keep her informed. She couldn’t trust him to handle this in a way that would spare all the employees at her company who weren’t guilty.
After she’d run from his house yesterday, he’d called her. She’d known if she ignored him, he would come over and check on her. So, she’d given herself a few minutes to calm down, for the ringing in her ears to fully subside, then she’d answered his call.
She’d been surprised how normal she’d sounded, how strangely calm she’d felt, as she told him that she’d needed to go home and process the news about her dad’s murder. He’d expressed all the right words, even offered to come and sit with her. He’d sounded so genuine that she’d clutched the phone until her hand hurt. But still, her voice had come out even and suitably sad to convince him she just needed time alone.
This morning, she’d waited in her car until he pulled into the office, then cornered him outside when she knew they wouldn’t have much time alone. She’d told him she wanted to focus on finding who was to blame for her father’s murder, then figure out whatever was going on with them afterward. She’d even managed to say it with a straight face.
He’d nodded, slid his fingers along the edge of her hand and promised, “We’re going to figure it out, Leila.”
It had taken everything she had not to scream. She’d considered tossing him off the property, denying him access, but that wouldn’t help anything. They still needed to find out who was destroying Petrov Armor, who was responsible for the deaths of all those soldiers. But she wasn’t about to feed Davis details about the people she loved and let him use the information to destroy them.
He could look at the company finances and security logs all he wanted. Eventually—hopefully—those things would lead him to the truth. That someone else was responsible, someone other than Uncle Joel or Eric. Even though she wasn’t Leila’s favorite person, someone other than Theresa, too.
Meanwhile, Leila had started her own investigation. The first thing she’d done was put an additional alert on the security system, to notify her if anyone tried to manually override anything. If someone was trying to take armor outside the building without going through proper procedures, Leila wanted to be sure she spotted it.
Now it was time to call in backup, the person she’d trusted with her deepest secrets since she was thirteen years old.
She hit an internal line on her phone and then asked, “Eric? Can you meet me at the loading dock? I want to discuss something with you.”
She knew Eric was still on Davis’s suspect list, but Eric had no motivation to wrong the company, to hurt her or her father. If he’d wanted to gain something—more money, a promotion—he could have done so easily without resorting to murder and sabotage.
She hung up before he could ask any questions, then slipped out through the front door. That morning, she’d set Davis up at a computer near where Theresa worked, giving him access to their gun database. She’d suggested he review it to see if he could figure out which gun identification numbers didn’t match up to legitimate sales. Davis had told her the Petrov Armor pistols from FBI case files had their ID numbers filed off. So, it wouldn’t be an easy match. But she’d suggested he look by date, see if he could come up with anything that seemed suspicious.
The truth was, she hoped he did find something, some evidence that would tie all of this to someone other than Joel, Eric or Theresa. The number of employees who’d been around long enough to be involved in the illegal sales for at least eleven years and had access to armor material wasn’t large. But it was certainly larger than just her uncle, her ex and Theresa.
Thinking of Theresa made her frown. She was the only one on Davis’s suspect list that Leila didn’t know as well. The woman wasn’t always friendly and could sometimes approach insubordinate. But she was paid well and seemed to love R and D. So why risk all of that?
No matter what, Leila knew it was a mystery that would take Davis some time. Which meant he’d be out of her way while she tried to investigate on her own. Or almost on her own.
When Eric rounded the corner of the back of their loading dock and caught sight of her, he grinned. She couldn’t help but smile back. Eric had changed a lot since she’d first met him, from gawky teenager with acne to a man who looked like the head of a sales department. But his grin was exactly the same as when they’d first met. Their relationship was so different now, but she’d never forget how he’d been there for her when she’d desperately needed support.
Her uncle had done the exact same thing for her all those years ago, even moved in for a few years after her mom died. He’d made her lunches and driven her to school. Helped her with her homework and convinced her she was still loved, even if her father couldn’t show it right then.
Neither of them would ever betray the company. Neither of them would ever deceive her. Most of all, neither of them would have killed her father, a man they both loved perhaps even more than they loved her.
When Eric reached her side, instead of stopping, he pulled her close, hugged her to him in a way that made her realize that unlike twelve years ago, he had no idea what she was thinking. He thought this was about the other day, about his suggestion that they give their relationship another try, maybe even leave the business and start something new together.
So much had happened since then. It was only now that she realized she hadn’t actually told him a final no.
When she looked up to correct him, he was staring at her, his big smile shifting slowly into something more intimate.
But she couldn’t. She pushed away slightly. “Eric, I have to tell you something.”
“I know things have been awkward between us for years, Leila, but I promise, it’s going to change now. We can go back to how things used to be.”
He dipped his head toward her and before he could reach her, Leila blurted, “Davis is an undercover FBI agent.”
* * *
DAVIS HAD BARELY seen Leila since Monday. Now, three days later, he was settled in at the desk outside her office where she’d moved him, claiming he was a distraction. Initially, he’d liked the thought that his very presence could distract her from her work. But it was becoming obvious something was wrong.
She was avoiding him. Even worse, she was spending more and more time with Eric. One of his prime suspects. Of course, he couldn’t tell her that. Especially since his other prime suspect was her uncle.
Joel Petrov didn’t spend a lot of time at the office. As far as Davis could tell, he did his job with as much expediency as possible, then headed out with a charming smile and a wave. Living on all the overtime he’d banked twenty years ago when his brother had needed someone to handle his work and raise his daughter. He had access to everything, but based on both the offhand questions he’d asked other employees and Joel’s access card records, he wasn’t in restricted areas at unusual times. He was gone enough that he certainly could have been meeting contacts who needed illegal weapons, but he probably wasn’t making those contacts through business channels.
Eric Ross was around a lot. To Davis’s surprise, his access level was as high as Joel’s and Theresa’s. As high as Neal’s had been before he died. Unlike Joel, he did have a lot of unusual activity on his access card, which Davis had somehow missed the first time he’d gone through the records. The legitimate sales calls he was often out on could have definitely also connected him to some less legitimate ones. Or they could have purely been cover for illegal meets. How simple would it be to claim he’d tried to make a sale that hadn’t panned out, when actually he was connect
ing with criminals willing to buy the weapons at highly marked-up prices?
Was that the reason he was hanging around Leila more than usual lately, because he worried Leila knew about a traitor in the company? Or was it simply because he’d sensed the growing connection between her and Davis and he was jealous?
Then, there was Theresa. Even though he couldn’t think of any reason she’d try to protect Leila from her contacts if she was the traitor, no one could have pulled off the armor switch with as much ease as the head of research and development.
Right now, he was paying Theresa a visit in her testing area at the back of the office. Other than Eric, Theresa’s was the only card with particularly unusual time stamps. While Davis knew he had to tread lightly when it came to questioning Eric or Joel, because of their connections to Leila, the same wasn’t true of Theresa.
When he opened the door to the area where Theresa always seemed to work, even when she wasn’t testing anything, Davis realized how perfect a setup it was. No one could pass by without her noticing. Plenty of privacy to change records or swap out the material on armor.
She looked up as he entered, a mix of disdain and distrust on her face when she saw it was him. He frowned at the clipboard in his hands, pretending to read something on it, then told her, “We’ve got some discrepancies in the records. Leila wanted me to track down the reason.”
Theresa sat a little straighter in her chair, frowned at him a little harder. But beneath the tough exterior...was that anxiety he saw?
“What kind of discrepancies?”
“Late night use of your access card,” Davis said, watching her closely for a reaction.
He got one. But it wasn’t quite what he expected. She looked taken aback.
“You mean weekend access? Everyone knows I sometimes work weekends,” she added defensively.
“No,” Davis replied, frowning. “I mean you returning to the office late at night, after you’d already left for the day.”
Secret Investigation (Tactical Crime Division Book 2) Page 14
