LITMIR.BIZ

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night had been everything he’d wanted. He and Wren had shared a physical connection that could only be described as electric. Together, their bodies just…worked.

      After a steamy shower together, they’d tumbled back into bed and slept soundly until he’d reached for her in the middle of the night. In the darkness everything was new; he’d learned her body all over again. Mapped it with his hands and his tongue. Explored every inch of her until sleep had claimed them once more.

      His muscles ached as he stretched, his hand gravitating toward her as if that instinct had already been ground into his subconscious. But his palm connected with a flat surface. Blinking, he pushed up to a sitting position and surveyed the room.

      No Wren.

      “You have to wake up to reality at some point,” he said to himself.

      They hadn’t exactly made any promises to one another last night—it had been raw and unbridled. Spontaneous. Without expectation.

      In other words, the total opposite to how he did everything in his life.

      He rolled out of bed and padded into the kitchen. The rush of early morning traffic greeted him from the open window, highlighting the quietness of his apartment. Still no Wren. Disappointment curled low in his gut. He’d been hoping to wake up with her and perhaps extend their night of passion into the morning. Before he had the chance to decide how to handle her stealthy exit, his work ringtone cut through the silence and he grabbed the phone from the coffee table.

      “Rhys?” Quinn’s excited voice made him cringe. “I’m glad you’re already up.”

      He looked at the screen. It wasn’t even seven thirty, and Quinn was notoriously not a morning person. “How much coffee have you had?”

      “Not much,” she said in a way that told him she was well and truly caffeinated. “When do you think you’ll be in?”

      His gaze swept over the empty apartment. It wasn’t as if he had anything to hang around for given that Wren had vanished. “I’ll be leaving in a few minutes. Why?”

      “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I was doing some digging on Sean Ainslie and his employees. I found some interesting stuff.”

      If this were any other job he would have told Quinn to run with the information and only come to him when she got stuck—managing the tech side of security for Cobalt & Dane kept him too busy to be involved in every single assignment. But he wanted to keep an eye on the situation in case things became dangerous. It wasn’t too long ago that a seemingly ordinary information security job had resulted in Quinn being cornered alone by a person connected to their client.

      He didn’t want anything to happen that might put Quinn—or Wren—in the crosshairs.

      “Keep digging,” he said, heading back into his bedroom. “I’ll find you when I get in and you can bring me up to speed.”

      By the time Rhys made it into the office, Quinn was almost bouncing off the walls. She sat at one of the senior security consultant’s desks and was talking a hundred miles a minute.

      “You’ll have to cut her off, Rhys,” Owen said, laughter crinkling his eyes. “If she consumes any more sugar and caffeine she’ll launch into outer space.”

      “I haven’t had that much,” Quinn protested, her smile bright and slightly too wide.

      “Her eyeballs are vibrating.”

      Rhys shook his head. “You have to take better care of yourself. Coffee is no substitute for sleep.”

      Owen snorted. “Have you seen what she drinks? You can’t call that coffee. It’s basically a liquefied energy bar.”

      “Come on.” Rhys tilted his head toward the boardroom. “Let’s go through what you found.”

      “I invited Owen to sit in,” Quinn said as the three of them headed to the empty room. “He’s got capacity at the moment, so he can accompany me on the site visits rather than taking up more of your time.”

      They all took a seat at the large boardroom-style table. The room was often set up as a “war room” for big assignments and strategy planning.

      “Are you sure you’ve got capacity, Owen?” Rhys leaned back in his chair and kept his tone even. “I don’t want to take you away from any other assignments that Logan has you working on.”

      The senior consultants all reported straight up to Logan Dane, so there was no way Rhys could tell Owen not to assist Quinn with the case, especially if he’d been directed to lend a hand by the big boss.

      But that didn’t mean he would let go of the assignment completely, either. Not while Wren could be at risk.

      “I’m more than happy to help out,” Owen replied with an easygoing shrug. “Quinn told me there are some tech security elements, which is out of my realm, but I understand there could be some physical security elements, as well. She mentioned a possible break-in attempt.”

      The technology and information security stuff fell squarely in Rhys’s territory thanks to the years he’d spent helping banks protect their information. But Owen was a former police officer and had come from a background that made security a key component of his life. A personal obsession, one might say. Between Quinn and Rhys’s tech smarts and Owen’s robust experience, they made the perfect team.

      Whatever was going on at Ainslie Ave, they would figure it out quickly and quietly.

      “There was a failed attempt to access a locked storage room, but the owner of the gallery couldn’t find any signs of a break-in to the gallery itself,” Rhys said.

      Owen nodded. “So we’re looking at the possibility of an inside job.”

      “It is possible.” Quinn flipped open her laptop. “But the gallery owner himself is behaving strangely. He’s got this expensive security system for the one storage room and an alarm system for the building. Yet he has no security cameras inside the gallery. It’s possible someone who’s not a staff member got inside without setting off any alarms, but we have zero proof because there’s no footage.”

      “So what did you find last night?” Rhys asked, eager to move the conversation along. He drummed his fingers against the top of the desk.

      “I was digging around to see if the client has had a falling-out with anyone, or has any shady connections that might point to who’s behind the break-in attempt. Sean Ainslie comes from a very wealthy family. Old money. His father was also a judge, and he retired a few years ago, so I wondered if he might have enemies.”

      “Okay,” Rhys said. “And?”

      “That’s not what I found.” She held up her hand when he huffed with impatience. “The website has profiles for all the interns that he currently has working for them: Lola, Wren and Aimee.”

      “So what?”

      “Well, the old profiles of the past employees are still saved in the back end of the gallery’s website. I compiled all the head shots.” Quinn turned her laptop around so Owen and Rhys could see the screen. “Do you detect a common theme?”

      Fifteen young female faces stared back at him. Wren’s fair skin and blue eyes immediately captured his attention. In the photo, she was laughing. Her eyes shone like they had last night when he’d taken her to bed.

      Memories flooded him, his body instantly recalling the feeling of her hands on his chest. Cupping his face. His ass as he thrust into her.

      “Boss?” Quinn waved a hand in front of him. “I said, ‘Do you detect a common theme?’”

      “They’re all young women.” He shrugged. “What’s your point?”

      “Attractive young women,” Owen added. “Are you thinking that he might have become involved with his interns?”

      Quinn

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