“Hubris?” Maddie ventures a guess. “Or maybe it was just too good an opportunity to pass up on.”
“But why now?” I wonder. “It would have been a natural progression years ago, or someone would have come earlier, seen the opportunity.”
“Maybe Harlow wasn’t ready to listen until now.” She shrugs. “Maybe he had a health scare, or a death hit close to home, and it forced him to reassess, or maybe it was a wrong person, wrong timing situation up until ten years ago.”
“That simple?” I raise an eyebrow, and Maddie shrugs again.
“Sometimes, the easiest answer is the right one.”
“Well, in that case, I think it’s a kid, not a lover.”
“What makes you so sure?”
“It just makes more sense. This screams new hands steering the wheel, someone who understands the need to minimize exposure by cutting back on violence and civilian casualties.” That last one really has me stumped, the sudden, almost conscious care for the wellbeing of innocents. “But Harlow, the power he’s built over decades of operations, the sheer weight of his name, it’s still fully intact.”
“So, no power struggles, which means he’s willingly handing over the reins, and no one’s contesting it,” Maddie surmises. “And it has to be someone who’ll still have access to the bank’s system after he dies, a legal heir.”
“Bingo.”
Maddie’s eyes blaze as she pulls her computer closer, the air around us bristling with excitement.
“Grab that dossier,” she orders. “It has all the info on the bank shareholders and board.” I shake my head with a low chuckle but do as I’m told. Maddie’s talented fingers are already working their magic on the keyboard. “Let’s start narrowing down our options. I’ll dig into the info I have from the bank’s mainframe, see if I can trace it back to one of the shareholders. In the meantime, you compile a list of names that could fit our profile.”
“I do love watching you work that computer, Techy.” Maddie shakes her head but smiles, never slowing down.
“Less schmoozing, more case cracking.”
We get to work. We’re bouncing ideas off each other so smoothly and flawlessly that it’s almost scary how effective and on point we are. Neither of us says it out loud, but I know we’re both thinking that when we forget not to like each other, we make a great team.
Sawyer
“Harder,” I bark my order, loving how Maddie’s eyes flare with heat and defiance right before she comes at me with her full weight.
“For fuck’s sake, Sawyer!” she yells in frustration when I don’t budge an inch. I mean, let’s face it, she’s a five-feet-six, one hundred and thirty-pound life-sized Barbie doll who spends her days sitting in front of her computer. I’m a six-foot-two tank who lifts weights on a daily basis.
“Yeah, I’m surethat’llward off anyone coming at you.” I part the ropes and gesture with my free hand. Maddie tries for a surprise shove as she passes by me, which just earns her a raised eyebrow.
“You’re impossible,” she huffs, jumping off the raised platform and going to retrieve her water bottle.
“No, I just don’t cut you any pampered princess slack.”
She lowers her bottle. “Screw you.” Then resumes gulping her water as if she just hiked ten miles through the desert.
“Oh, I’m wounded.” I place a hand over my heart, capping my own bottle and handing Maddie a towel. “Or is that just spitefully spoken wishful thinking?”
Maddie snorts, dabbing at her nape before stretching her hands and bending back, her breasts straining against the pale-yellow gym top ending at her midriff, dark gray joggers sitting low on her hips.
“Question. Why aren’t you just showing me some self-defense moves?” The words infiltrate my brain, but I’m not really listening, too engrossed in all those soft and inviting curves.
Sawyer?” Maddie snaps her fingers in my face, and I jolt out of staring.
It’s like a slippery slope with her. Five days ago, she hated my guts, and I just wanted to get this assignment over with. Fast forward a hundred and twenty hours, countless meals, and an almost symbiotic working relationship, and all I can think about is being close to her.
I want to be the guy she lets see that vulnerability that sometimes slips through the cracks in her unyielding confidence and brave façade.
But that vulnerability is precisely why I can never be that guy.
“Repeat your formal complaint, please.” I try for a dry tone, but that just seems to spur Maddie on. She never cuts me any slack, and this is a golden opportunity for her to tease the living daylights out of me.