His eyes bugged. “Would they actually do that?”
Samiah burst out laughing. “Don’t get too excited. They don’t treat usthatwell here. But you should expect a nice dinner, at the very least. And maybe some premium Trendsetters’ swag.”
“That works for me.”
“Oh, shoot!” Samiah snapped her fingers. “I meant to talk to Justin before he left. We need to discuss my security access.”
“What about it?”
“A new team was just formed to help Huston-Tillotson University—a small historically black university here in Austin—with networking issues. It’s similar to a project I worked on last year, so they’re restoring some of the security clearances I previously had. It’ll give me access to all the databases I’ll need for research purposes.”
“Oh.” He nodded. “That’s…um…cool. You, uh, want to grab lunch?”
“Sure.” Samiah regarded him with a slight frown. He seemed…off. “Just give me a few minutes to check email.”
She returned to her desk to find an email from Barrington waiting in her inbox, thanking the entire team for their hard work on the Leyland Group project. As a token of the entire Trendsetters family’s appreciation, the team was invited to dinner at the Driskill Grill in the famed Driskill Hotel. On top of that, they were all being treated to a day of adventure at Schlitterbahn Waterpark in New Braunfels.
After weeks of working so closely with them, Samiah wasn’t sure she wanted to spend time at an amusement park with her teammates, but whatever. It was a nice gesture.
Her cell phone vibrated again and Samiah remembered the text she’d missed while in the middle of the presentation. She took out the phone and saw a text from London with a link to a gossip site.
She groaned as a still shot of her pointing a menacing finger at Craig Walter’s face anchored a headline that caused her eyes to bulge.
“Oh. My. God.”
There were two knocks on her door before it opened.
“Hey, are you ready?” Daniel asked, poking his head in her office.
Samiah held up her phone, a grin spreading across her face. “Craig is being sought by the police. He’s been scamming seniors out of their social security checks.”
“What?” Daniel sprinted to her desk, taking the phone from her. “Takes a specialkind of asshole to stealmoney from elderly folks.”
“The same kind of asshole who dates multiple women at the same time and makes a living out of lying,” Samiah said. She ejected her access card from her computer, slipped it in her purse, and locked up her desk. “But the authorities are on his tail now, so Craig’s cheating and scamming days are numbered. Let’s go to lunch. Today calls for celebratory tres leches from that cute cantina on Brazos.”
Daniel swept his hand out. “After you.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Daniel burrowed his chin deeper into his jacket collar, bracing himself against the brisk wind blowing in from the northwest. The atypically strong, early-season cold front that crawled across the area overnight was the talk at the gas station, Laundromat, and coffee shop he’d visited this morning. Still-green leaves and thick acorns that had been ripped away from nearby bur oaks tumbled along the cracked asphalt.
Daniel shoved his hands in his pockets as he walked around the front fender of the bright green Kia Soul Quentin had just led him to.
“What do you think of this one?” Quentin asked.
“Umm…I don’t know. It seems a bit…loud.”
“You’ve never met my Ava.” Quentin laughed. “This car is the embodiment of her. Now that Corolla.” He pointed to a tan hatchback three spots down. “That’s more my Emma’s speed. I’m just not sure about buying one an SUV while the other only gets a small sedan. I can already hear the arguments.”
He hunched his shoulders. “I don’t know what to tell you, man. This is uncharted territory for me.”
Daniel had asked Quentin to come over to the apartment so that he could get his thoughts on a few irregularities he’d come across while looking into the background of a Trendsetters employee who’d left the company under suspicious circumstances last year. When Quentin asked if he could wait until he was done shopping for presents for his twin daughters for their upcoming fifteenth birthdays, Daniel had offered to meet up with him.
When he arrived at this used car dealership in Kyle, just south of Austin, Daniel thought he’d punched the wrong address into his phone’s GPS. But Quentin had greeted him and told him this wouldn’t take long.
That was two hours ago. He was certain they’d looked at every single car on this lot.
“Do your girls know how lucky they are?” Daniel asked as he peered into the Kia’s passenger-side window. “I had to buy my own first car, which is why I rode the bus or subway until I was almost twenty.”
