Chapter Thirteen
Knox had a ton to do. Between the time he’d taken off Saturday night and his inability to concentrate on Sunday, he was way the fuck behind, but he still couldn’t stop staring at his screen.
It had taken half of last night and most of the morning, but finally he’d found the thread, and now the man Darya had apparently worked for was staring back at him. The picture was black and white and grainy as hell, but she was right behind the guy. Dressed to the nines, she had her head down as though trying to blend into the background.
Like that could ever happen. He’d left her place over twenty-four hours ago and he was still juiced. Not just by the things they’d done, but by the mother of all miracles that had happened when he’d gotten home. Hell, he still couldn’t believe it. The taste of her had still been on his tongue and his dick so hard it hurt to walk. He’d refused to get off with her again—no more condoms and a need to walk out with some kind of upper hand had driven him to leave shortly after she’d come against his mouth. But he’d been naked and flat on his bed in all of five minutes of walking in his front door, stroking one off with the previous night’s details as clear as if they were happening all over again in real life.
He’d come. Hard.
And then he’d fallen asleep.
For four fucking hours.
That shit never happened by his own hand. Ever. Especially after he’d just had eight solid hours the night before. He’d woken with dried spunk on his belly, her scent all over him and his dick ready and raring to go again.
Yeah, he had his work cut out for him keeping his distance. Hell, he wasn’t even sure a repeat was a good idea, no matter how well he’d slept after.
The door handle clicked behind him and he flipped the display on his screen to his email. That was another problem he needed to fix and fast. No one ever snuck up on him. Especially not here with cameras mounted at every conceivable angle. And yet, Beckett strode in behind him with a box of donuts and a monster cup of joe.
Beckett slid the box onto the desk beside him and dragged one of the chairs from his working table up beside Knox. “What’s new in the land of cyber goodness?”
Well, at least that much was a safe topic. God knew he was going to get his ass handed to him before Beckett ambled back to his own office. “Got the goods on Darya. At least at a high level. What she said about being born and educated in Yekaterinburg checks out. So does the move to St. Petersburg after.”
He pulled up the picture of Darya’s boss and angled his primary screen toward Beckett. “Went to work for this guy. Yefim Mishin.”
“Doing what?”
“Personal assistant. A pretty coveted job from what I can tell.”
“And what’s Yefim do?”
“An accountant on paper, but some of the articles paint him as more of a financial guru. Right hand to an oligarch.”
Beckett’s easygoing demeanor went stone-cold in a snap. “You think she’s running because she stole from the guy? The way I understand it, oligarchs are barely a step up from the mob.”
Knox shook his head, his focus drawn back to the picture of Darya as sure as if she’d reached out and guided his face by her own hand. “If she’s got money, she’s not using it. Not even a dime. Her stuff is quality, but all secondhand or very old.”
The image of her in her desk chair, her body drawn in on itself and her voice barely more than a whisper as she’d shared her first weeks in the US, boomeranged back to him. She’d felt every word. Relived every memory. No way the emotion that had been behind her story had anything to do with nefarious deeds. “Not thinking she’s not the type to steal.”
“Well, at least you’ve dropped the idea of her being some dastardly killer.”
“Yeah, I found out about that, too.” He pulled up the best of the old social media pics he’d found of the real Jeannie Simpson and put it side by side with the ones officially linked to Darya’s passport and driver’s license. “Darya shared the details on JJ. She hired Darya shortly after she landed here. They made a connection. When JJ was diagnosed with brain cancer she took it on herself to set Darya up to carry on with her identity before she kicked it. The woman was smart. Did just enough altering of Darya’s facial features to match her own. Smart move to throw off facial recognition.”
“Damn. That’s one hell of a fairy godmother.”
“Tell me about it.”
Beckett leaned in, popped open the box he’d brought in and snagged a donut. “So, when did this treasure trove of information come out? When you dropped her off last night, or the morning after?”
And here comes the ass-handing.
In one last dodge to avoid the whole scene entirely, he flipped open his email and scanned the list of senders without really clocking a word. “She’s coming in this morning at ten. I need you to handle getting her prints and retina scans. Show her around and introduce her to the rest of the crew while you’re at it. I already talked to Katy. She’s gonna get her hooked into handling some app support tickets.”
“Why me? Darya’s your employee.”
Goddamn Beckett. He never could just come out and say what he wanted to know. Had to prod and dig until a person finally confessed just to be free of the bastard.
Knox dragged his billfold out of his back pocket, peeled out the stack of hundreds he’d grabbed on the way in and plunked them down on the counter. “One large. You win.”
Even monitoring him out of the corner of Knox’s eye, Beckett’s sly grin was too big to miss. “Oh, yeah. That’s what I’m talking about. In less than two weeks, too.” He smacked his hands together, effectively dusting the crumbs from his annihilated donut off his fingers and celebrating in one fell swoop. He snatched the cash, folded the wad with a whole lot of I-told-you-so attitude and stuffed it in his back pocket. “So? How was it?”
Knox dropped all pretense of work and slumped back in his chair. “Really? We gonna comb each other’s hair and giggle, too? Maybe we can take a little extra time and spring for a mani/pedi.” Whatever the fuck that was. All he knew was that the moms, Viv, Gabe and Nat had a standing appointment for the damned things every two weeks.
“Ah, come on, man. She’s hot. The way you practically threaded Seth on a spit, I figure you had some crazy aggression to work off.”
Yeah he had. And Darya had not only taken every scrap of it, but had turned around and goaded him for more. He refocused on his screen and hit reply to an email he hadn’t even read for the sole purpose of having something to do. “Just do me a favor. Show her around. Get her set up. Make sure she gets one of our computers and secured VPN access so I can keep closer ties on what she’s up to.”
Beckett chuckled, reclined against his seat back and hooked one steel-toed boot heel on the rung of his chair. “She rung your bell. Hard.”
Goddamn it. Knox anchored his elbows on the desk and dug the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. “Brother, just do me a solid and handle this. I need distance with this one.” He looked up and met Beckett’s too shrewd stare. “Give her an office if you want, but encourage her to work remote.”
“You don’t like people to work remote. You’re the kingpin of micromanagers and don’t trust anything you can’t see with your own security cams. Hell, you’d hover over every one of our employees if you could figure out how to pull it off and still get work done.”
“Yeah, well, I’m not gonna hover over her. I already muddied the lines. I don’t need to make it worse and I need you to help me the fuck out.”
Beckett studied him a minute, one elbow planted on top of Knox’s desk and his finger doing that push/pull thoughtful tell along his lower lip. Knox was just about to stand and bail when Beckett dropped his arm, nudged the box of donuts closer to Knox and stood. “Have a donut, brother. You look like you could use the sugar rush.”
With that he ambled toward the exit.
“Are you gonna cover this?” Knox called over one shoulder.
Beckett waved him off without so much as a glance. “Don’t sweat it, brother. I’ve got your back.”