Page 34 of Indecent Secrets

The attached photos were pretty damning. They were records of Leigh’s involvement with various organizations and businesses. As if that wasn’t bad enough, there was a report from my team about how her website that she’d sent to me was actually a fake. None of the people they’d spoken to who were listed as business owners she’d helped as a consultant were actually Silicon Valley executives. By tracing the phone numbers, my team had found that they were actually all activists.

They must have agreed to fake it for Leigh in case anyone followed up. And the worst part was? If I was really Jack Lawton, it would’ve fucking worked.

I was only able to do this because I was in security and had access to a team that was used to keeping people alive. I had help from people who had worked for the CIA, the NSA, and sometimes the armed forces. We were the best of the best.

But if I was really Jack Lawton, calling some numbers from a professional looking website? Why would I be in any position to doubt this woman? And Leigh was good. She was very good.

But my gut was right.

That was why she’d been coaxing me towards environmental practices. I wasn’t sure exactly what her game was, but it was definitely something, and I had to find out what it was. This report showed that she fucking hated Lawton and everything the company did. She wasn’t here to make a quick buck or to get a rich husband. Whatever her goal was, it was going to be a lot more than that.

Maybe I should invite her to dinner tonight. Then take her to the hotel afterwards. I wanted to find out exactly what was going on, and clear out all the lies.

After all, if Leigh had spent all these years trying to take down Lawton and the company… and had put all this effort into hiding her identity and getting close to me with this charade… who was to say she wouldn’t stop at murder?

Chapter 14

Leigh

* * *

I had to find out what Jack was really up to. If he even was Jack. And while I was alone in his office, I had my best chance.

His desk yielded nothing. However, I noticed that he had another laptop on his desk right now, a different one than what I’d broken into last night. I used the USB drive on it to hack it and found it to be startingly impersonal. There were company records and emails with the other executives, but none of the personal emails or files I’d noticed on the laptop in his hotel room.

Interesting. So he had two laptops, one with the juicy stuff on it and he took with him. That was a level of forethought and frankly paranoia that I hadn’t thought Jack would exhibit.

But if he was really someone else…

Frustrated, I decided my only solution was to try and do some more digging on the person who was most definitely Jack Lawton. There wasn’t a photo on his department page at the university where he worked, or in any of his philosophy books that he’d published, but he had to exist somewhere.

I pulled up my own laptop and began searching into the university.

The university had its official website, but a website didn’t just show the faculty and information about the syllabus. There was also an area where they would post things about the accomplishments of the college, and links to social media pages. I followed those and began to search.

Somewhere in there, there had to be a photo. Something. Anything.

It took me long enough that I was seriously fucking tempted to go for a drive to this damn university myself and just camp out at Jack’s office in the department until I could find him (or find that he wasn’t there).

But then, finally, I found it: on the college’s Facebook page, a picture of all the faculty from a graduation a few years back. Everyone was lined up, and people were all listed by name in order, although not everyone was tagged. I went through all the tagged people, eliminating everyone, and then checked the university website to check the others, too, in case they had a picture of themselves on their page.

Finally, I was down to just five people. Three were women so unless there was something about Jack that none of us knew, I could eliminate those. Of the two men left, one of them had to be Jack.

But neither of them looked like the Jack I knew.

If I had a picture of Jack I could possibly try a reverse image search on Google, but that was out the window. That would make it harder for me to figure out who he really was, but I already had the smoking gun. The two men in the photo were both good looking, but one was blond, and the other was shorter than Jack and had a broader face with a squarer jaw.

Yeah. I wouldn’t be drooling all over either of these men, personally, even though they were good looking. They didn’t have the charisma, that edge of danger, that I’d sensed in Jack.

But maybe it was that very element of danger that I should’ve paid attention to. He’d tricked me already once, with how he was in bed. I should’ve taken that as a warning and instead I’d let myself think with my heart—

Not my heart. That would imply I liked Jack more than as a sex buddy and I didn’t, I definitely didn’t. It was just—my libido. I was thinking with my libido.

As I stared down at the photo, however, I couldn’t help but feel… disappointed. Upset. And to my shame it wasn’t about my goal. It was over the fact that I… I liked this guy. This was the best sex I’d had and the first time I’d been with someone who saw me for who I really was.

Jack didn’t look at me or talk to me like I was just a pair of great legs. I wasn’t just a sex object to him. He liked my intelligence. We sparred and every time I held my own with him, he looked at me like he was proud of me. And I wanted him to be proud of me, I wanted to impress him, because I wanted to stand out from everyone else.

I wanted to be special to him.

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