“I guess we should get started too.”
She nodded. “I’m sorry you’re stuck here a bit longer. I know how badly you were hoping to get back to your life in D.C.”
“I can think of worse things.”
He was joking, but she didn’t smile. Instead she touched the panel embedded in the glass in front of her at the table and opened the first of countless data files.
“Shall we get started?” she asked when he merely watched for a long moment. Her face was utterly indifferent, impossible to read. “The sooner we get through all of this, the sooner we can both get on with our lives.”
“Yeah,” Aric agreed, telling himself the sting he felt was merely wounded male pride and nothing deeper. “I guess you’re right. Let’s get it over with.”
CHAPTER 10
“How many more image files left in that folder you’re working on, Kaya?”
She looked at the unopened count on her tablet display and groaned. “Twenty-four hundred and sixty-two.”
“Great,” Aric said. “That means we’re halfway finished.”
She swung a hopeful glance at him. “We are?”
“With the first batch,” he said, a flash of dimples in his unfatigued face.
Kaya slumped in her chair and exhaled a long sigh.
They had been working in the war room for more than five hours with barely a break. At some point, she had resorted to strong coffee, just to keep her lids open and her eyes uncrossed as she and Aric scoured file after file of photos and video stills taken during Stephan Mercier and Anastasia Rousseau’s wedding and reception.
“Why couldn’t Mercier’s Opus contact have done us a favor and smiled right into any one of the scores of surveillance cameras rigged all over the estate?”
Aric chuckled. “Where’s the challenge in that? Can’t blame the guy for hiding out in the crowds and keeping his face averted every time he was in a camera’s vicinity. Opus members don’t tend to live long once the Order gets wind of who they are.”
Kaya pulled a frown. “Well, I find his caution annoying.”
Beside her at the conference table, Aric flipped through his open file of images, barely pausing more than a moment on any one of them. She watched, fascinated by how quickly his mind worked. His flawless memory may have been inherited from his mother, but Aric’s keen intellect and razor focus was all his own.
And damn if it wasn’t sexy as hell.
He slid his tablet toward her and pointed to a squatty, dark-haired man in the photo on the display. “That him?”
She shook her head. “I swear, if I have to spend another minute looking at pompous, entitled rich people drinking gallons of champagne and eating plates of thousand-dollar-an-ounce caviar, I’m going to scream.”
“You got something against rich people? Or just people having a good time?”
“I have nothing against people having a good time.”
“That’s a relief.” He chuckled and she made the mistake of looking up at him. He was staring at her now, studying her with an unhurried interest that made her stomach flip. “So, it’s only pompous, entitled rich people that make you want to scream?”
To mask her sudden awareness of him, she gave him an arch look. “If the shoe fits.”
“Excuse me?” He swiveled in his chair to face her full-on, his brows furrowed. “Did you just call merich?”
Laughing, she picked up her half-empty mug of cold coffee and held it close as she looked at him. “Well, aren’t you? Rich, I mean.”
“Hell, no. Not me. I’m just a grunt trying to find my own way doing something I believe in.” He leaned back in his seat, looking casual and far too attractive for her peace of mind. “If you mean my family, though, they’ve done all right. But the Chases worked hard for everything they have. Most of the men in my family made their livings in public service. My father was the first of our line to join the Order.”
“I didn’t know that.” Kaya shrugged. “I’ve heard some of the Order commanders call him ‘Harvard’ so I guess I just assumed...”
“The nickname came from Rafe’s father, Dante. It wasn’t meant to be a compliment, but it stuck.” A grin pulled his mouth into a charming tilt. “Now only my father’s closest friends call him that.”
