Of course, if one ofherold bosses had asked her to share an apartment with his or her forty-year-old sibling, thathell nowould have shot out of her mouth quicker than a bullet. But she wasn’t here to analyze the psychology behind military relationships; she was here to enjoy herself.
She finished off her drink in a single swallow, grabbed Daniel by the wrist, and dragged him back to the dance floor.
Maybe, later on, she would enjoyhim.
Chapter Nineteen
Amélange of bright pinks and blazing oranges streaked across the mirrored windows of the high-rise next door as the setting sun continued its leisurely plummet below the horizon. The nightly ballad of file drawers sliding shut, desk lamps clicking off, and computer monitors drifting into sleep mode played throughout the office as, one by one, his coworkers wrapped up their workday. By his count they were down to less than ten people in the entire office. He could work with that number.
Daniel maintained the appearance of being swamped at his desk, all while discreetly monitoring the stairs that led to Trendsetters’ second floor.
“Are you trying to make the rest of us look like slackers?”
He jerked around. “Hey, John!” Daniel tried to cover his surprised flinch by reaching for his water bottle. “Didn’t realize you were still here.”
“I have to pick the oldest kid up from football practice. Makes more sense to hang around the office instead of driving up to Round Rock then driving back down.”
“Ah, yes. I’ve heard stories about how seriously Texans take their high school football.”
“Almost as seriously as we take our barbecue,” John said. “My fourteen-year-old freshman made the junior varsity team. My wife doesn’t like it, though, which is why I’m tasked with all football practice duties.”
“Ouch.” Daniel searched for his best good-natured laugh.
John peered at his Apple Watch. “I need to get going. Hey, I’m sorry about this new twist with the Leyland project. That’s how these things go sometimes. It’ll make for late nights for all of us.”
“Whatever the customer wants.” Daniel hunched his shoulders in awhat are you gonna doshrug. “That deadline is looming. I figured I’d stay late tonight and make as much headway as possible.”
“Man, am I happy Justin put you on this team.” John clamped him on the shoulder. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Take it easy.”
“You too. And good luck to your son’s team this year.”
“Not my son,” John said with a proud smile. “It’s my daughter. She’s the placekicker.” He pointed at Daniel. “Don’t stay here all night.”
Playing the part of the dedicated night owl willing to sacrifice his evening for the sake of the job might score him a few brownie points, but this wasn’t about impressing Trendsetters’ upper management. There was only one reason he remained in this near-empty office. It was time he make a true attempt to enter the security division’s inner sanctum.
Today marked eight weeks since he’d started at Trendsetters. Call him cocky, but he’d figured by now he would be back in Virginia getting briefed on his next assignment. The fact that he hadn’t gotten past the damn door of the Security Department was in-fucking-conceivable.
There were only two people in Trendsetters’ Cybersecurity division tonight, but they hadn’t left the room unmanned for a second. Earlier in the evening, Daniel had downloaded malware to his desktop in an attempt to draw them out. He’d waited until one of them went to the restroom, then quickly deployed the malware and put a call in to security.
He had no way of knowing that, at the time, the remaining guy happened to be helping a Trendsetter employee who was working remotely. Daniel’s malware problem wasn’t considered a big enough issue to elevate it, so he’d had to wait for the employee who’d gone to the restroom. It was a completely wasted effort. Worse, it eliminated that option from his toolkit. If he employed the malware again security would most likely flag him for being careless.
Realistically, he knew his chances at breaching security tonight were nil, but Daniel still wasn’t ready to go home. Quentin was there. He’d done his best to avoid his “roommate” since running into him at the Latin dance club on Saturday. He knew the censure he’d get—the censure he deserved—and he wasn’t in the mood for it.
Earlier, before he’d decided to take a run at breaching the Security Department, he’d asked Samiah to dinner, even though he knew her Monday nights were earmarked for binge-watching the few television shows she allowed herself to watch. But she wasn’t watchingGrey’s Anatomytonight. She was having dinner with her parents who’d driven in from Houston. When she told him about her plans, he’d immediately started to mentally thumb through his closet, trying to figure out what he was going to wear. And then he realized that she hadn’t invited him to join her.
For a large swath of his afternoon, Daniel hadn’t been able to focus on anything other than what it meant that Samiah didn’t want her family to know about him. Apparently, she didn’t want her friends to know about him either. Not that he wanted to intrude on her girls’ night out Friday rituals—he would decline if she ever asked him to tag along—but she had yet to suggest he stop by to meet Taylor and London. Was he mistaken in thinking that a woman would want to introduce her new boyfriend to her friends?
Unless she didn’t consider him to be her boyfriend.
They hadn’t discussed official labels or anything like that. And just because Joelle had paraded him around like a live-action G.I. Joe doll to her friends didn’t mean Samiah would do the same. Maybe he was reading too much into this.
No matter what, the fact that he wasn’t meeting her parents, or her sister and brother-in-law, or even her friends, was a stark reminder of where things actually were between them. Fuck, it was a reminder that there shouldn’t even be anything between them at all. What excuse could he give if anyone back at FinCEN discovered what he’d been up to with Samiah? It was in only the rarest circumstances that any kind of romantic involvement with a subject was allowed—those cases where an agent’s cover had the possibility of being blown.
Samiah’s tangential affiliation with Hughes Hospitality didn’t come close to justifying what he was doing. Allowing himself to get in too deep with her could lead to detrimental consequences.
“You’re already in too deep,” he said with a groan.
He needed to break this case open and get the hell out of Austin. It was the only way he could see himself giving up the drug that was Samiah Brooks.
