Yeah, that’s not the only thing about the job that’s driving you crazy.
He needed to focus. Until he was able to get out of his own head and do his damn job, he wouldn’t be good for shit. He logged into the video conferencing software. Lowell Dwyer’s melon-shaped head took up the entire screen.
“Collins,” Daniel said, letting everyone know he was there.
“Hey, Daniel.” It was Thaddeus Mitchum. “My ex-sister-in-law said you’ve got to go to a restaurant called County Line. She said they have the best barbecue in Texas.”
“Bold claim for such a big state,” Daniel replied.
“Bring some back with you when you wrap up this job,” Thad tacked on.
Dwyer cleared his throat. “Now that Collins is here, that’s everyone. Why don’t we start with you, Daniel. What do you have for us on the Austin job?”
He fed them a short overview about the various Trendsetters employees he’d been looking into and how being put on the special project for the Leyland Group was both a help and a hindrance.
“The plus side is that several of those we had on the initial subject list are also on this special project team, so it gives me an opportunity to get a better read on them. There are a couple who have stuck out to me by virtue of their personalities. One guy, Jake Gorge, keeps talking about his fantasy football team and how he’s hoping to win the big prize at the end of the season. I’ve heard a bit of gossip that he may have a gambling problem.”
“One big enough that he needs to launder money to fund it?” his supervisor asked.
Daniel shrugged. “I haven’t gone deep enough to ferret that out, but I’ve flagged him.” He adjusted his monitor so that he could be more centered in the screen shot. “Of course, the drawback to being put on this new team is that I won’t be able to make a case to join the Cybersecurity Department.”
“That was a long shot anyway. You’ve got other mechanisms in place. Utilize those to infiltrate their system, even if it takes a little longer than you’d like. Remember, Collins, you don’t take down an operation of this size overnight. You millennials need to learn patience.”
If his supervisor caught wind of what Daniel had been doing, he would be singing a different tune. The litany of things he should be working on could fill this entire room. He had a list of potential targets to investigate. Gigabytes of files his FinCEN colleagues had managed to access awaited his review. That’s what he should have been doing instead of seeing how far he could get his tongue down Samiah’s throat.
He’d gotten it pretty damn far.
Fuck. Stay focused!
As the others gave a rundown of their current investigations, Daniel used the time to gain some control over his thoughts. He needed to get his head back in the game and stop allowing himself to get derailed from his overall goal.
“I’m sure everyone has noticed that Stewart isn’t here.” Dwyer’s deep voice corralled his attention away from his musing. “He’s gone under. He got one of the suspects in the Kolinsky case to flip. The cooperator gave him key information on how the oligarch was able to gain access to those millions of credit reports. It may be the thing that cracks this case wide open.”
Daniel’s muscles froze as a deep chill spread from his core throughout his entire body. While he was here in Austin doing his best imitation of the nerdy love interest in a rom-com, Bryce Stewart was kicking ass and taking names on his undercover investigation. Why not just hand the Vegas job over to him right now?
There was more at stake than simply one-upping his office adversary. This job was his opportunity to prove that he’d chosen the right career path. If he closed his eyes, he could hear Joelle’s voice in his head, telling him that he was wasting his skills working in the public sector. Those words had affected him more than he was willing to admit. His need to show her—to show himself—that he’d made the right choice when he joined FinCEN was as important to him as getting the best of Bryce.
And just like that, Daniel knew what he had to do.
When he arrived at Trendsetters the next day, he was refocused and ready to tackle the tasks Lowell Dwyer had entrusted him to complete. His original game plan had been to devote 40 percent of his time to doing Trendsetters’ work and the other 60 percent to ferreting out whoever was behind this money-laundering scheme.
Somewhere along the way, he’d lost sight of his goal. The allure of playing around in all these cool coding languages, falling into the routine of a normal tech-world job, had distracted him from his plan.
That all stopped today.
For the next three hours, Daniel switched between the five windows opened on his monitor, all the while surreptitiously scanning the iPad that lay flat on his desk, partially obscured by several folders and printouts. On the iPad was one of the databases he’d managed to infiltrate. It showed him the login data for every Trendsetters employee, which allowed him to track how long they were accessing the system both at work and remotely.
With this information he could record the IP addresses and have the guys back at FinCEN run them. If anyone sought entry into their work files from a remote address while abroad, it would give him an idea of who was possibly allowing someone else to get into their system. It wouldn’t be the smoking gun they were looking for, but it was a valuable data point.
Daniel was so focused on work that he didn’t hear Samiah’s approach. She tapped him on the shoulder, causing him to jerk to attention.
His body’s reaction to her touch was instantaneous, his skin growing hot and tight. He looked up and was catapulted back to last night and the exquisite feel of palming her curvy ass.
Holy. Fuck.
Daniel cleared the lust from his throat before answering, “Hey.” He removed his headphones and let them hang around his neck.
“Are you actually doing the impossible?” Samiah asked. He frowned, not following. “Working without coffee,” she clarified with a laugh. “You didn’t get any this morning.”
