Page 44 of Indecent Proposal

Paul glanced back at his computer screen. “But these files are all way too orderly and precise, and there’s too few of them. It’s like turning in a math quiz with only the answers to the questions, and none of the equations written out.”

“Yeah, my teacher would get pissed at me when I’d do that,” I said.

“Because your teacher needed to see your thought process,” Paul replied. “To make sure you understoodhowto get to the right answer. Companies do the same thing. I need receipts, I need email chains, I need drafts one and two and three. Instead, here, we’re only getting the finished product. The final reports.”

I frowned. “Sounds like someone went in and cleaned things up for everyone.”

“Exactly.” The entire tech team nodded.

“So you’re guessing some important files were deleted?” I asked, trying to make sense of everything, since all this IT mumbo jumbo was more Seth’s thing, than mine.

“Oh, definitely.”

“Any way I can retrieve them?”

“I doubt it. Unless you can bring us the computer itself and we can see what we can do…”

Yeah, no way that was happening. Shit.

“Thanks, guys,” I said, trying not to feel defeated, since I’d ended up with zilch information. “I appreciate the work.”

I headed up to my office. Okay, so there was something fishy going on at Hardman and all the evidence had been erased. But why go after Richard if they could just delete everything from their files and bam, nothing could be pinned on them? They could let him go to the press or whoever—he’d just look crazy.

Unless. . .

Richard had called Claire in desperation. He’d known his life was in danger, and he had told her to get something from his desk. Could it be that he had a copy of the incriminating files somewhere? That was what he’d had hidden?

But if so—

My phone buzzed with an incoming call and I quickly answered. “Vaughn speaking.”

“We finally got you some info on Ace,” one of our research team told me, referring to the sniper who’d shot at Claire.

Fucking finally. “What do you have for me?”

“Not much, unfortunately, but I can tell you that Ace isn’t a man. She’s a woman. From what I did find, she took government contracts at first like a lot of ex-military, but she started going into corporate and her previous work seems to be of the rat catching kind.”

Rat-catching. That is, finding and executing people who wanted to blow the whistle—rat out, in other words—powerful companies and their shady practices.

So, Ace was a woman. That would be helpful to know. There weren’t a lot of women snipers. The military could still be pretty damn misogynistic and so it was hard for women to get into higher levels of power or elite training, like the kind that sniping required. It was very much a man’s game. Ace would’ve had to be ten times as ruthless and tough as the men around her. I had to respect that, even if it was going to cause problems for me in the near future.

“Anything else you got on her?” I asked.

“That’s it. We’re trying to find out who she was in the military—a woman sniper, that narrows it down considerably—but you know how sealed these records get.”

“Tell me about it.” I huffed out a sigh. “All right, thanks for the info.”

I disconnected the call. All right. This Ace person was going to cause me a headache, but I had to figure out where the hell Richard had—

My phone buzzed again, but this time with an incoming email. I opened it up. It was from Susan, the woman I’d met up with to question about Richard. Shit. Had Ace gotten to her?

Hello,

Yes, I’d be available to talk if you’d like. I heard about Richard through Facebook—I’m so sorry that happened. I don’t know what information I could give you, but I’m happy to help. I’ll be back in the U.S. on Monday, if that works?

My blood ran cold as I read the message. That was an email. From Susan. Telling me she was out of the country.Telling me she hadn’t yet spoken to me.

Then who the fuck had I met up with at the café?

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