Rich (Benson Security 5)

“Men. You’re always so difficult.”

“You’d better believe it,” he said as he stood with her wrapped around him. “Come on. This time, you can scrub my back.” And he headed for the bathroom.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Rachel might have avoided the topic of the video during her night with Harvard, but the following morning, there was no getting away from it. Especially as her colleagues at Benson Security seemed so adamant about discussing it.

It was barely seven a.m., and the conference room was full. Everyone who was able had turned up for the meeting—and they’d brought breakfast along with them. There were donuts and Danish pastries, coffees and teas. And then there was Ryan, with a full English breakfast in front of him.

Rachel let out a sigh of disgust as she eyed the mountain of food in front of Ryan. “Do you have to turn every surface in front of you into a pig trough? You’re heading for a heart attack.” Not that she cared. She just felt the need to point it out.

“At least I have a heart.” He grinned and held up his hand to Joe for a high five.

Joe just groaned. “Dude, that was lame.”

“Yeah? Well, it’s early.”

“Aye,” Callum snapped. “It is. Too damn early. Some of us have been up most of the night. How about we get to the point of this meeting?”

“Isobel isn’t sleeping too well during this stage of her pregnancy,” Noah informed everyone. “So Callum isn’t sleeping either.”

“Did I ask you to update everybody on my life?” Callum barked.

Lake shook his head at his partner, his lip twitching in what approximated a smile for him. “Did Elle get something off the video?”

Well, that answered that question. Apparently, everyone was up to speed with the latest piece of her past that had slapped her in the face.

“No.” Elle shook her head and yawned. “Harry’s running every imaging analysis tool we can get our hands on. The pixel ratio isn’t as good as we’d like, but then the video was shot on a ten-year-old phone. Cameras have improved a lot since then. After we run a comparative diagnostic, we’ll take the video frame by frame and enhance the quality to isolate any details that may have been hidden. But that’ll take time.”

“What about the metadata?” Harvard asked.

“It was stripped.” Elle looked annoyed. “But Harry thinks it was done recently by a newer app, so there might be a shadow of it left underneath.”

“What’s metadata?” Rachel asked. Must they speak in techie? And if they had to, couldn’t they at least be polite enough to translate for the normal people?

“It’s information about a file that’s stored in a way that you can’t see it unless you go looking for it.” Harvard smiled at her. “Ten years ago, before people were fully aware of what extra data was saved with their files, and before guidelines and restrictions were put into place, there was a whole lot of sensitive info stored in the metadata. If the team can access it, they might get some personal info that you wouldn’t get from a phone today.”

Elle nodded. “Exactly. The video editing might offer up some clues too. If that’s recent, then there might be some metadata transfer from the process that the blackmailer missed. It depends on how computer savvy they are.”

Rachel waved a hand. ?

??Blah, blah, blah, computer talk, more blah. Do we have something or not?”

Harvard rubbed the spot between her shoulders, making everyone freeze in place and stare at them.

“She gets cranky in the mornings,” he said with amusement.

“I hope you know what you’re doing.” Ryan shook his head at Harvard. “Rachel’s been known to eat her prey.”

Callum glared at them. “Can we focus? What you’re saying is, you don’t have anything off the video yet, but you and Harry are working on it. Where is Harry?”

“Here.” A hand appeared above the end of the table.

Rachel peeked underneath, and sure enough, Harry was sitting tailor style on the floor, surrounded by at least half a dozen laptops.

She straightened again and looked at Callum, whose head was red.

“Why the hell are you on the floor?” he shouted.