“And yet you’re still not answering me,” I reminded her, smiling a little at her bashful head shake.
“I know.”
“Did Jules set you up here?” I asked, even though it made no sense for her to do so. At least not without telling one of us.
“No. Jules doesn’t know I’m here. And, actually, I would really appreciate it if you don’t tell her. Or anyone else in the office for that matter. I know you guys all have your bro code and stuff, but I’m begging you here.”
Begging.
That was a strong enough of a word to put me on edge.
Before, it had just been a genuine curiosity, things that didn’t make a lot of sense.
But if she was begging me to keep a secret from her sister–when she was as close as could be with her family–then, yeah, something was up. Something big. Likely something bad.
“I won’t say anything. At least not until I need to,” I told her, not making promises I wasn’t sure I could keep.
If things were on the serious side, then, well, she was our girl just as sure as Jules was; we needed to protect her.
“I guess that is the best you’re gonna give me, huh?” she asked as the teapot flicked off.
She turned, pouring water, and adding honey to her tea, then faced me again with the hot cup between both hands.
“I can’t go back to my apartment,” she admitted, eyes on mine.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s not safe.”
‘Safe’ had a lot of connotations. She could be having the place fumigated for roaches, and the chemicals could hurt her. Or she could have an issue with a gas leak or a rabid dog across the hall.
But I knew.
I knew this was a different kind of not safe.
The kind that had you fleeing your life to hide in a place you knew had multiple security levels. From a state-of-the-art system to thermal protected walls and bullet resistant windows.
So if she was here instead of crashing at her parents’ house or with a friend, it certainly made one think she was into something serious.
“What did you get yourself into, Gemma?”
TWO
Gemma
Maybe it was naive of me to think I would get away with it.
Indefinitely.
I guess the reality was what gave me a false sense of confidence.
And the reality was I had gotten away with it for two weeks already.
It was easy to think that Quin and his team had somehow just gotten sloppy or let security lax. The reality was, for many years, they had placed their trust in me.
That trust meant I knew the codes. I had access to the computer systems. I knew exactly how to get in and out untraced, to make sure no one was scheduled to be staying in the rooms at any point.
Thanks to my sister, I knew that everything in the fridge and the cabinets was kept in fresh rotation, that the place would be cleaned of any trace of me by the cleaning staff that would come in once a week.
It was a damn near perfect plan.
Except, of course, there was no accounting for a tired team member who decided to crash in one of the rooms.
I hadn’t even factored in the possibility. In all the times I worked in the office, I had only maybe seen it happen once or twice. Usually only when there was a really serious case that everyone was working on, when no one was allowed to go home.
But there were no big cases at the moment. Miller was working one, and so was Gunner. Nia was always up to something.
There hadn’t been an all-hands-on-deck sort of situation since the last time Fenway got himself into international trouble.
It seemed like I could get away with it for as long as I needed to.
Without doing any harm.
That was always my mission in life.
What they didn’t know certainly wouldn’t hurt them. And it would help me.
It was a win/win if I ever saw one.
Except, of course, for Lincoln.
In all the time I spent temping at the office, I never really knew him to sleep in the rooms above. He usually had a girl at home. A horribly matched girl, though he always seemed so wholly unaware of that fact even when everyone else saw it perfectly.
But that was Lincoln. A bit of a hopeless romantic. When between steady girls he had no business trying to make something work with, he could be a bit of a bed-hopper.
Rarely was he sleeping alone.
I couldn’t have anticipated him.
Yet there he was.
I knew these guys well enough to know they would never let me just walk away from this without a solid explanation.
And, well, maybe it wouldn’t be too terrible for me not to be so alone in it.
While I knew I was safe at night when I was locked in the fortress these men called a workplace, it was a whole other story about twenty minutes after sunrise when I had to clear out all the obvious traces of my inhabitance and leave the security of the building.