Dane

He'd been so distracted by the time they got in the building, he'd gone straight to his office and closed the door. If he didn't, he'd end up grabbing her in the hall or something and this entire plan would be for nothing.

​​

How was he going to keep his hands off her all day? It was impossible with her walking around so pretty and flushed. The way she'd grabbed him in the car, he'd almost told the driver to turn around and to hell with anyone else finding out.

But all it took was one memory of his ruthless father, one imagined moment when someone nudged his dad and whispered her name in his ear…

That strengthened his resolve. So, by mid-morning he'd managed to get a few phone calls done and catch up with most of his emails. Staff meeting was the next day. He'd do some random checks that afternoon, maybe head home a little early. Hmmmm…He could text Lila and encourage her to find a reason to leave early too. Then maybe they could—No!

Dane pulled his hands up to his face and swore. He couldn't spend every moment thinking about her and how to get her alone. They'd already made plans for her to come through the laundry again tonight. He had to hold onto that, and focus until then.

Unless…he could call a lunch meeting that Chris wouldn't be able to attend because—

As if the thought had made him appear, Dane's phone began to buzz with a call from Chris.

"Yeah?" Dane answered, still scanning through his emails without reading anything, his mind still on the possibility of a lunch there in his office—with the door locked.

"Chloe's got a lawyer and he says they're filing papers today," Chris snapped at the other end. "But more important, we have a code Red: Becky Hanson was listed as a missing person this morning by her lawyer. They were supposed to meet yesterday evening and she didn't show. Her parents tried to call her this morning when he hadn't been able to get in touch. No one knows where she is."

Dane swore. Ignoring the receptionist problem, he jumped straight to Becky. "Do our teams have any intelligence?"

"Not yet. But we already had a wise-ass newsreader at seven this morning joke that maybe you put a hit out on her."

Fuck. Dane raked a hand through his hair. "How many hours since someone saw her?"

"I'm working on it, and Zip's on the Police scanners in case there's a callout. We don't know yet, but the latest I've been able to confirm so far is Friday night. She was snapped in a bar with friends, but she ran from the photographer."

Shit. Friday night? That was almost three days ago. Dane prayed it hadn't been that long.

"Come into the office. If nothing shows up by lunchtime, we'll call in a team."

"For what?"

"We need a team looking—and making sure it isn't a set up. I wouldn't put it past her dad to make it look like she was in danger when she was actually in Hawaii with friends or something. Get our PI on it now."

"Already done," Chris said. "I'll be there in twenty."

"See you then."

Dane hung up the phone and swore again. Then again. Louder. He'd known the positive press couldn't last. He'd known they wouldn't forget the whisper of his past. His anger.

He'd known his father wasn't done yet.

"Dammit, Becky," he said, opening the database panel in his office wall to reveal the bank of monitors, access to law enforcement search engines, and their intelligence databanks. "Where are you? And who put you there?"

He shook his head, but got to work.

*****

Lila

When Tish knocked on Lila's office door and told her she was needed in Dane's office, her heart had started to race. She'd been barely able to focus on anything all morning. Hoping Dane was alone and this meant that he'd struggled to stay away too, she'd made sure no one was watching while she straightened her hair, then picked up her laptop and phone and headed down the hall to his office.

She knocked lightly and Dane's voice rose on the other side to tell her to come in. She had a smile on her face when she peered around the door, but it fell as soon as her eyes landed on Chris, seated at the table and talking on the phone, another man seated across from him and tapping on laptop, and Dane standing at the window, his hair sticking in fifty directions like he'd been clawing through it with both hands. She frowned. His eyes sharpened on her, then cut away to Chris and she nodded before heading over to the table.

"Good morning," she said as if she were greeting all of them. Chris returned her hello. The other man looked up and gave a brief smile, but then went straight back to his work.

"Lila, this is John. He's a contractor. He works with us on…technology," Chris said carefully, eyeing John.

John snorted. "I'm a hacker," he said with a wave, though he didn't look at her. "Good morning. And excellent work on the Jordan case, Miss Farris. I watched that one closely. You did great work."

Lila blinked. The Jordan case was the last big job she'd had before coming to Daniels' Security. "It's nice to meet you, John. And thank you."

He tipped his head, but still watched the screen in front of him. She looked a question at Chris and he looked at Dane.

It was Dane who cleared his throat and started to speak. "We're fighting a couple fires," he said tonelessly.

"Already?" she asked.

Dane frowned. "Well, technically, the Chloe issue isn't new—we've just had affirmation that she's filing papers today. We'll win, but it's still going to suck.

The bigger issue is Becky Hanson. She's missing. And so far, we can't confirm her whereabouts after midnight Friday."

"What?!" Lila caught herself as she was about to ask about his father. He must have realized, because his glare could have cut diamonds. But she swallowed the words with a glance at Chris, who was staring at her, curious. "I'm…I'm sorry, I got busy this morning. Dropped the ball. I would have found out—"

"It's fine," Dane ground out, "you know now. The problem is whether we even address it publicly. We don't want to draw ourselves into the picture if others don't—"

"I'm sure they already have," she said, and cursed.

"There was a newsreader joking about it this morning," Chris added from the table.

Lila cursed again.