Dirty Ties
Page 36
That was when I noticed it, one button in particular, the only one lit up.
88. My floor.
My face caught fire, and my fists clenched. All that time, he had access to my condo? Not only did he know where I lived, he had a fucking key to get in.
My heart stopped, my breath strangling. If he knew my floor, did that mean he knew who I was?
I did the only thing I could. I ran after him.
10
Logan
If Benny would’ve wired x-ray vision in the helmet like I’d asked, I would’ve discovered Kaci Baskel’s identity in the alley. I would not have followed her, wouldn’t have resorted to night vision after her mouth was wrapped around my cock. Fuck!
Anger fueled my steps, and my fists burned to smash something. What the hell was I thinking? I’d been clumsy, careless, and now…
My teeth slammed together. I was so goddamned hard. My dick throbbed in its leather trap, aching to punish her deceitful mouth until she choked, to pound her ass until she couldn’t walk.
Losing control, dickhead. Pull your shit together.
“Speaker on.” My quiet command unmuted the cellular connection with Benny. So much easier than pressing the button beneath the helmet. “Need an update.”
“First off,” she growled through the speaker, “I wasn’t done configuring the settings on the master key before you ripped it out of the elevator.”
My fists clenched. Yeah, I knew my mistake as soon as I’d removed it and the single button for the eighty-eighth floor lit up. Benny had warned me about that, since the device replicated the nearest key card, but I hadn’t been thinking straight. Still wasn’t.
Tension tightened my face, pulling on my jaw. Dammit, I hadn’t wanted Miss Ducati to know I could sneak into her condo, not before I knew who she was and certainly not now that I knew she was Kaci Baskel. I also didn’t want to explore why I’d intended to trespass. “What else?”
“Trump security just found my hack on an encrypted channel.” She groaned. “Crap, cameras are back up.”
Shit. Benny dominated cryptography, but even the best hackers could be bested. She was just one person, working alone, so she relied on technologies already developed, hacking and cloning them. Like the facial and license plate recognition software. Casinos had been using that shit for years. She simply borrowed it. Same way she’d remotely borrowed the codes on the RFID key card in Kaci Baskel’s pocket.
Goddammit, it all made sense, the reason she wouldn’t show her face or give me her name, why she wouldn’t invite me up. Thankfully, I’d muted the connection in the elevator. Benny hadn’t been able to hear or see just how close I’d come to fucking Kaci.
I lengthened my strides, zipping up my jacket and pulling the flashlight from my pocket.
“Logan, you’re coming up on a—”
“I fucking know where the cameras are.” I aimed the flashlight, shining the beam at the eye of the lens mounted on the ceiling.
The high-powered light would blind the camera’s sensor as I passed. The helmet concealed my face, but my attire was recognizable. I didn’t need an outbreak of surveillance footage advertising Evader’s visit to Trump Tower. And now that I knew who lived here, I definitely didn’t need Evader associated with Trenchant.
My stomach hardened into a painful knot. She was no longer the mysterious Ducati woman I looked for after every race. She was one of them. A top executive. Daughter of murderers. Wife of the enemy.
Venom tunneled through my gut. My blood boiled, and my lungs labored for air. I’d never felt anything like this…this overwhelming surge of emotion, but it was undeniable, sinister, fucking cruel in its assault.
She’d let me stick my fingers in her cunt, my fucking dick in her mouth, and she belonged to another man. Sweat gathered beneath my jacket and slicked my hands. Not just any man.
Collin Anderson was the celebrated face of Trenchant, the son of a powerful family. Did that mean he was as evil as his parents? How could he not be strategically tied to their corruption?
I had no evidence of his guilt or his innocence, which angered me as much as the notion that she would slide into bed beside him tonight wet with arousal that had been stimulated by another man. By me.
“Seriously, Logan,” Benny grumbled. “What were you thinking?”
“Piss off,” I snapped, jerking the light at the next camera, my head dizzy, my jaw locked.
All I could see was a thick braid of blonde, bright eyes, and an ethereal face. A face that had threatened to bring me to my knees in the elevator. I hadn’t needed to look at the photo that flashed on my visor, didn’t need to read the name displayed by the facial recognition software.
The moment the night vision illuminated the arches of her cheekbones, the gentle slope of her nose, her heart-shaped lips, I knew. I knew every graceful line and curve etching her features and framing her huge, devastating eyes. Eyes that had blazed green through the infrared scope, but under a normal lens were vivid blue, as rich and complex as sapphires.