Chapter 33

Dalton

Knowing that Devolin would be sleeping, I pulled up Rex’s contact.

“’Lo?”

“It’s Dalton. All good?”

“For now,” he said.

“Does she know about anything?”

“No. She didn’t even realize that she had a tail on her throughout the day.” He yawned into the phone. “The fucker called a few times, sent texts. I managed to hide the envelope that was slid under her apartment door when we got back from her friend’s place, though. Sick fuck.”

That meant he’d looked inside the envelope. I’d already seen the texts, thanks to Brycen, who’d hacked into Devolin’s phone and worked his magic. Now, instead of Devolin receiving her old boss’s calls and texts, Brycen, Rex, and myself were receiving them.

“He’s got cameras in here too, D,” he continued. “I’ve got pictures to prove it. Just so you know, I’m having Stan install a security system in here.”

“Get him to install his best,” I ordered. “I’ll cover it. Now tell me, what was in the envelope?”

“Your ugly ass for one,” he growled, “and then some.”

A smile crept onto my face, despite the burning rage festering in my gut. “Have you done anything about the cameras yet?”

“Fuck, yeah I did. Took me some maneuvering, but I convinced your girl to take a bath to unwind. She was looking wired. I found and dismounted the two in her bedroom while she was in the tub. Did the one in the bathroom’s air return before that, just so you know. I searched the rest of her place after she went to bed. Found two high-tech ones with zooms pointed right at her computers in her office, one in her kitchen, two more in the living room,” he listed. “She doesn’t know about them. I shoved them in a trash bag, smashed everything out on her balcony and dumped it into her kitchen garbage. I’ll take care of that when we leave for NSI later.”

“Fuck!” I took a calming breath. “You know things are going to escalate now that we’ve taken away his eye candy, right?”

Rex groaned. “A simple babysitting job this ain’t no more, bro.”

No, it wasn’t.

So, I had to ask, “Are you okay with this? I know—”

“Get your shit done, then get your ass back home to your woman,” the man grumped.

“Anything else?”

“Nope.”

“Later, then,” I said, then hung up. “Yo, Brycen?” I yelled, turning to the men still standing by the LongRanger.

“Yo!”

“ETA on our ride?”

“Ten minutes out.”

Right. That meant I had time to call my woman.

“Kip?”

My dick jumped in my black fatigue pants. “You have no idea what that sleepy, sultry voice of yours does to me, baby,” I told her.

“Mmm,” she purred. “Are you in?”

“Landed. Miguel is ten minutes out with our SUVs. Once they get here, the guys and I are going to go over the equipment and make sure that Miguel got everything we need. Might sneak in a few hours of shut-eye, then we head out.”

“I’m going to get Rex and we’ll go in right away.” She sounded much more awake now. “I can see if there’s an updated map from the satellites.”

“Babe,” my shoulders shook as I laughed internally, “our phones automatically update with the most recent shit. You made sure of that.”

“Right,” she paused. “I should probably check the coding to make sure that I didn’t miss something.”

“Dev?”

“Yeah,” she whispered.

“Everything will be alright,” I tried my best to reassure her. “We’ll deal with things as they come. If going into the office will make you feel better, then go ahead. If we run into something, we’ll all be connected to you. You’ll be able to feed us the real-time info as we need it, and let us know if something seems fishy.”

“Okay, Kip,” she said in that sleepy voice of hers. She seemed much more relaxed now.

“In the meantime, if you decide to head into the office early, Brycen’s sent you something. With the perks of in-flight Internet, he was dicking around on his computer, and it looks like he might have found an in on Ortiz,” I told her.

“What kind of an in?” The excitement in her voice was palpable.

“His email account,” I said. “Looks like your phishing scam idea paid off, sweetheart.”

“What do you mean?”

“Brycen decided to try a little something after I told him about your gut feeling that we were missing something. Once he hooked Ortiz, he whaled him,” I announced.

The woman burst out laughing. “Babe, you should stay away from hacker terminology,” she gasped between giggles. “You meant a whaling attack?”

“Yeah,” I chuckled. “Anyway, he sent you a bunch of the guy’s login credentials. I’m going to need you to go through those, see if you can access his emails, and keep us posted on what you find.”

“I’ll give you more than that,” she said, determination lacing her words. “Let’s just hope I have enough time.”

“Okay, sweetheart.” The crunch of tires over gravel had me turning to find two Range Rovers approaching. “Babe, I’ve got to go.”

“Be safe, Kip,” she said.

“You too, babe,” I said. Then threw in, “Love you,” for the second time in less than twelve hours, before hanging up without waiting to hear her answer, or her goodbye.

The first time I’d said it, I hadn’t meant to, but once the words were out, I belatedly realized that I’d meant them. Completely. This time, I consciously said the words, testing them on my tongue as they came out. Hanging up, the way I did though, was a pure pussy move. I wasn’t quite ready to deal with her refuting my feelings or to feel like I was pressuring her to say the words back to me either. I simply wanted her to know.