LITMIR.BIZ

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by the message he’d received this morning, he was opting for the latter.

      “What? Now? I’ll be right there.” Elise had pulled her cell phone from the coat she’d tossed over the sofa beside her. The distress in her tone was enough to divert Quinn’s attention. Her eyes darted to him, then just as quickly looked away. More trouble? “Excuse me.”

      “Ma’am.” An oversize SWAT cop, carrying one of the electronics-scanning devices Quinn himself had invented, stepped aside to let Elise exit the door into the privacy of her office. The big man, who answered to the name Trip, settled in behind the desk to run a check on the phone and computer for any hint that someone had downloaded entry codes to the building and offices.

      One by one, the rest of Michael’s team filtered in. Quinn traded a nod of recognition with the SWAT team’s second in command, Rafe Delgado, whom he had met when he’d offered him the use of a secure safe house for his wife, the witness who’d finally identified the man who’d murdered Quinn’s wife. Rafe introduced himself to David Damiani and took the security chief aside to discuss possible incursion scenarios into the building.

      A short, muscular cop with curly black hair came through the doorway next and reported in. “Murdock and I have got nothing, Captain. This place is locked down tighter than a tomb. This room and the roof are all that we have left to search. You want us to head on up?”

      “Have Murdock check the cameras in here for any signs of tampering. You go on up, Taylor. Stay warm.”

      “Yes, sir.”

      Officer Taylor turned his Benelli shotgun and disappeared from the doorway, only to be replaced a moment later by an unexpected colleague. Quinn’s eyes narrowed as he found himself studying the last member of Michael Cutler’s elite team. He didn’t know if the long ponytail, as straight and shiny as a palomino’s tail, or the Remington sniper’s rifle strapped over her right shoulder surprised him more.

      “Captain?” she spoke.

      “Front and back, Murdock. If we can’t find an unauthorized access point to this room, then we damn well better find where the perp covered his tracks.” Michael Cutler pointed to the two cameras at either end of the room, and after her moss-colored eyes took note of every person here, including him, Officer Murdock’s long legs carried her to the security camera mounted over the bar/kitchenette at the back of the office.

      “Yes, sir.”

      Quinn watched her climb on top of the counter in her ungainly boots and shimmy around a counter to stand eye to eye with the camera. He couldn’t be sure if it was her monkeylike athleticism and disregard for the obstacles in her path or the hint of firm hips and buns in her snug black pants that fascinated him.

      Annoyed with his scientist’s penchant for observing and explaining conundrums like the well-armed woman, Quinn cursed under his breath and summoned the focused business mogul inside him instead. The momentary diversion of the lady SWAT cop was a distraction he could ill afford today. There was only one female in his life who mattered, and she was the reason Quinn had called Michael Cutler and his team, as well as the leaders of his own staff, into GSS today.

      Quinn buttoned his jacket and strode over to stand beside Captain Cutler at his desk. “Did you read it?”

      The words Michael read were already branded into Quinn’s memory. But the others in the room—his staff, Michael’s team—needed to hear this.

      “Do I have your attention now? Your daughter will pay the price if you don’t make things right by midnight on New Year’s Eve. Instructions will be texted to you.” Michael carefully slipped the letter into a plastic evidence bag for examination in the KCPD crime lab. “And you received the text?”

      “Not yet. I wanted to have a plan in place before he contacted me again.”

      “Any idea who your enemies are?”

      “Any idea who they aren’t?” Louis Nolan pushed himself up off the couch to join the conversation. “I’m sorry, Quinn, but we’ll be here all day if we start compiling a list of people you’ve ticked off—employees you’ve fired—”

      “Only with just cause.”

      “—business rivals, greedy cutthroats after a chunk of your money, maybe even a brokenhearted lover or two?”

      Quinn shook his head. “There’s been no one since Val.”

      Louis patted Quinn on the back and raised one eyebrow in a skeptical, paternal look. “Not for lack of trying. On the part of the ladies, I mean. A widowed billionaire makes for a fine catch.”

      “This reeks of inside information—someone with building schematics, someone with knowledge of my schedule, someone with access codes to this building as well as the plant in South Africa. The fact that I have enemies doesn’t bother me as much as not knowing who this particular one is.” And he hated to admit that the possible list of suspects Louis referred to was as long as it was.

      Quinn had fended off takeover bids, negotiated with foreign governments and endured scathing reviews of his products in the press. He wasn’t a warmonger, nor did the upgrades to weapons and protective technology he owned dozens of patents for turn the police patrolling the streets of Kansas City and other towns around the world into a military state. Everything he invented, every product his company produced, from home security systems to bulletproof flak vests, was designed to keep people safe. He protected people. The same way he’d learned to protect himself. And his mother. The way he’d protected his wife, Valeska, from the violence of her past—only to have her die at the hands of an obsessed serial killer in the backyard of the home they’d once shared together. A home he’d since razed to the ground and replaced with a fortress more secure than the government buildings his company sometimes equipped.

      Nothing, no one, would ever harm his remaining family again.

      That was why he wasn’t above calling in favors from KCPD and summoning his most trusted associates to the office on Christmas Eve. “This building is supposedly more secure than the Cattleman’s Bank. So how did someone get into my office and put this here without anyone seeing the perp, or capturing the intrusion on one of my cameras?”

      Trip Jones, the big guy with the electronics scanner, rose and circled the desk, with David Damiani, the GSS security chief, right behind him. “I can’t see anything that’s been tampered with on this end, Captain. There’s no indication on the key cards that anyone other than Mr. Gallagher has entered this office in the last twenty-four hours. If there’s no record of a break-in to leave the present, then the perp found another way in and covered his tracks.”

      Officer Murdock climbed down from the file cabinet where she’d been inspecting the other camera. “There’s no indication that either of these cameras has been compromised.”

      Trip nodded. “Then the tampering must have occurred at the monitor end of things. Digital recordings can be altered as easily as a videotape.”

      David Damiani’s team had already determined as much. “That means you’re accusing one of my people of delivering that threat.”

      “No one’s accusing anyone of anything.” Michael Cutler coolly defused the growing tension between the two security forces. “Yet. Let’s just get all the intel we can first. Arm ourselves as best we can so we know what we’re up against.”

      “Sounds like a smart strategy,” Quinn agreed. He nodded to David. “Check it out.”

      “Quinn.” David Damiani was right to protest. GSS wasn’t a billion-dollar corporation because it gave away its secrets to outsiders. “There’s classified equipment in my offices.”

      Michael Cutler refused to back down. “You’re obstructing a police investigation?”

      “He’s obstructing nothing,” Quinn countermanded. When the threat involved his three-year-old daughter, nothing else mattered. “David, go with him. Give Trip full access. Maybe between the two of you, you can spot something

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