He spent a few minutes reading the latest report from SolCan, refreshing his memory on all the details, and wondered what was so important that Ed had to see him at ten o’clock at night. But Logan had promised he would do everything he could for Hana, and he knew Harper had distracted him from that goal a little. Ed might be an awful person, but Logan had given his word.
When he was done reading the file, he returned to see Harper had changed into yoga pants and a long-sleeve T-shirt.
“I’m going to bake something while you’re gone,” Harper said.
“I can’t wait to come home and eat it and then eat you all over again,” Logan said. Harper laughed as he spun her around and kissed her. The doorbell’s ring interrupted them.
“Be good, I’ll be back soon,” Logan said. Opening the door, he clapped Gabe on the shoulder.
“Thanks for coming.”
“No problem, I heard what happened earlier. Harper, I heard you kicked ass. Good job.” Gabe held his hand up for a high five and Harper returned it.
“I’m a little shook up,” she said.
“Understandable. I got this Logan,” Gabe said.
“All right. Don’t eat all the cookies,” Logan said.
“We won’t.” Harper flashed him the brightest grin and his heart swelled.
Anything and everything he could do to make things good for her, he would. Logan gave them a wave and waited until he heard the click of the deadbolt. Outside he got on his motorcycle and left to see a man who, though he hated him, held the keys to his future.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT – XANDER
Xander rubbed his face, and placed the bitter bad coffee he made on the old kitchen table in the conference room. Damn, he missed Harper and her coffee-making skills. He missed how each morning she emailed him his itinerary for the day and they would have a back and forth about how much was too much to cram into the hours. He missed how she reassured the staff, always making them feel valued and treasured and—he just missed her.
Not seeing her was torture. He hardly slept, hardly ate, and couldn’t get her face, her scent, her laugh out of his mind.
There weren’t many people on this earth he could let down all his carefully curated guards. But he could with Harper. She was that rare someone who he could show his complete self to. And now that he didn’t have her, he had retreated. Xander clicked the video forward a few seconds, leaned in and watched, adjusting his headphones.
He had been at this for hours, checking the security feeds from the time when Axis Management had been hired to find Mulberry Stevens. Someone had leaked their location, and someone had told Theo, who’d told Dorian.
And then Dorian had unleashed his technology, and it had cost Xander one of the best men he knew. He paused the video, watching Jordan laugh at something Harper said. Xander’s heart clenched. If only he had acted sooner.
The day after the attack on Team Stealth, he’d had all the doors rewired, struck the reception area downstairs, and installed biometric locks on all the entrances. No one came into the building unless they worked here or were invited, and even then guests were met at the front door and escorted to the offices.
Deliveries were met downstairs in the parking garage. But the measures had been too little, too late, and Xander had lived with that every day.
He played the video, watching as Jordan left the office and Harper take a phone call. She made notes on her iPad as she talked. Harper knew not to say anything pertinent out loud.
She clicked off, grabbed her purse, said something to her assistant Claudia and left. Xander traced her image on the screen, shaking his head. He could mull over what was gone, but this wasn’t getting him anywhere.
This wasn’t the first time he had gone through his video feeds, trying to figure out who had leaked that Axis Management was hired to rescue Mulberry Stevens to the press. In the days after the incident, he had sat through hundreds of hours of video, going through the same motions as he did now, looking for anything or anyone out of place, trying to make sense of what happened and how.
But now he was going back further, the week before the attack, searching for something new, something he had missed, looking for anything that stood out.
Theo Densen had acquired his information somehow.
After another hour of watching, Xander rubbed his eyes, stood up, and stretched. He paced the conference room. His phone trilled, and he snatched it, waiting for the other person to speak first.
“Guess I bet on the wrong horse, eh?” Dorian Martin said.
Xander’s hand fisted, and he ground his teeth.
“Should have taken our offer when we made it, Dorian.”
“So you just take it? My whole world, my great grandfather’s legacy, all destroyed by you?”
