Page 85 of After All The Wreckage

When we finally broke apart, her lids fluttered open, and I was caught in eyes that were heated and sad and yet somehow hopeful. She retreated to the passenger seat, and I dragged my hand over my face, unsure if I should apologize or drag her back across the console and keep going.

“A complete swish. Every time, you sink it in without ever touching the rim.” A smile broke over her face, and the brilliance of it along with the tease lightened the heaviness in my chest and drew a half smile from me in return.

“Now who’s caught up in cheesy basketball analogies?”

She laughed softly but opened the car door and slipped out. “Come on. You can be my backup as long as you do exactly what I say without an argument.”

I joined her, meeting her gaze and saying in a gruff voice, “I’ll do my best, but I don’t know if you noticed, I kind of like being in control.”

Her eyes dropped to my lips and back up. “It takes a lot of trust for me to let someone else drive.”

I arched a brow, tossed my keys up in the air, and caught them. “And yet you’ve let me all week.”

She snorted but didn’t respond as we made our way out of the garage.

I raised my umbrella over our heads and did my best to keep up with her fast stride. We were almost to the entrance of the Argento Skies building by the time the sexy flirting disappeared and my skin started to crawl. I darted a look out from underthe umbrella, taking in the street, but couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. Just the normal hustle of people darting from doorway to doorway in the downpour.

Inside, I shook off the umbrella, leaving it in a stand at the entrance, and followed Rory’s confident stride toward the bank of elevators. She never paused. Never looked at the guy at the reception desk, just acted like she’d been there a million times doing exactly this.

In the elevator, she glanced up at the corner briefly, and I realized she was looking for cameras. Or maybe she already knew where they were from all the hacking she’d done. The door dinged open on the fourth floor, and she strode out, hanging a left and going around the corner to where the hallway branched off. She stopped at a corner suite with glass doors that read Argento Skies, Inc. with the logo Monte had recognized. Behind the doors, the suite was dark in the middle of the day on a Wednesday, but maybe they were closed for Thanksgiving.

Rory took a wallet-like item from her inside jacket pocket, flipped it open, and pulled out two small metal tools. She stuck them into the lock and jiggled.

My breath caught. I looked both ways down the hall and leaned in to whisper, “What are you doing?”

She winked at me. “Nothing like a little B and E before lunch to brighten your day.”

Before I could even think of an adequate response, she’d pushed open the door and slipped inside. I followed, full of that same mix of pride and worry I felt every time I’d seen her in action.

She directed a penlight at an alarm box on the wall, and when she turned around, confusion was written on her face, weirdly shadowed by the glare of the light.

“They don’t have the system connected to a service.” She moved past me, heading to the large empty desk where areceptionist would normally sit. She lifted the phone’s handset. “No dial tone.”

She moved farther into the suite with me trailing her, but she stopped me with a hand. “No. Stay here. Keep an eye out. If anyone shows up, just text me. I’ll feel the buzz in my pocket.”

“Rory…”

She put her hand up. “No arguing, remember. Just stay here.”

I watched, doubts swirling through me as she marched off. She peeked over low, cloth-walled cubicles, ducked her head into offices, and finally disappeared inside a doorway at the end of the hall. My gut turned nastily.

Something was wrong. Goose bumps broke out over my skin.

Outside the plate glass windows, lightning flickered. I counted to three and the thunder cracked through the air loud enough to cause the glass to vibrate.

From the direction she’d gone, a printer was barely audible over the sound of the storm.

Laughter drew my eyes to the hall. I tucked myself up against a wall, looking around the corner as a man and a woman meandered past without even glancing into the Argento Skies office. It was lunchtime. Maybe that was why the Argento Skies offices were closed. Maybe everyone was just at lunch, but the silence and smell of disuse belied that thought.

A touch on my back had me jumping and whirling around. Rory’s face shifted from surprise to laughter. “Nervous much?”

“You may be used to this cloak-and-dagger stuff, but I’m not. What did you find?” I nodded to the paper in her hand.

“There’s only one office with anything in it,” she said, tilting her head toward the room she’d disappeared into. “Everything else is completely empty. Either they were here and left, or they never intended to be here at all.”

“What does that mean?”

“I don’t know yet.”