I told him about what I suspected. “I know I don’t have a lot of experience breaking and entering, but you don’t look in the toilet tank or in the vents if you’re just searching for something to steal.”
“No,” he said. “You don’t.”
“If they were looking for the flash drive?—”
“They wouldn’t stop looking for it just because they didn’t find it in her apartment,” he finished for me and swore under his breath. “Ididlook for anything relating to the break-in, and there was nothing I could find. I don’t generally believe in coincidences, but this was starting to look like one. I should have looked deeper.”
I shook my head. “I doubt there’s anything to find. Not if they were careful. And maybe since they didn’t find it, they backed off.”
“That is possible,” Aiden said. “If they didn’t find what they were looking for, they probably don’t want to draw more attention to themselves with a spree of crimes. The question is how they knew about the flash drive in the first place, if that’s what they were after.”
“So you think she’s safe?”
His mouth firmed into a line. “I want to say she is. The fact that there haven’t been any other attempts to find it, or any chatter about her, points in that direction, but I’ll look.”
“Thanks.”
He glanced over his shoulder to where the Nestled truck was being unloaded. “There are ways to keep things offline. The DuPonts dealt with it not too long ago, and I helped them. I’ve got a bunch of stuff to go through tomorrow, and I’m planning to go over to the warehouse for it. Use the big computers. But…” He typed on his phone, faster than a human should be able to.
“The ones you have here aren’t enough?”
He laughed. “When it comes to computers, I’m not sure there’s ever really enough. But to answer your question, no. There haven’t been any false attempts to take the elevator, or to take over my cameras.”
I let out a slow breath. “So you think she’s safe?”
“I’m still uneasy about the story she’s working on,” Aiden admitted. “But I’m not lying when I say there haven’t been any clear signs she has their attention, and I have looked. So yes, she’s safe enough. For now.”
My chest eased a bit. “Okay.”
He put his phone away and clapped me on the shoulder. “I’ll put up a wider network of crawlers tonight and go through it tomorrow. Let’s go make sure she has the perfect nest. It will make you feel better.”
It would. But the only thing I knew would completely erase this anxiety was once Trinity finished this story once and for all.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
_____________
TRINITY
Theo curled around me, pinning me to my bed even though I was already fully dressed. “You have lunch with them an awful lot.”
I snorted a laugh. “First, they’re my best friends. Second, we all now have these pesky things calledpackswhich usually occupy our evenings.”
“Still.” His teeth grazed my ear. “You could stay here with me instead.”
“I will be here with youtonightafter I have lunch and go to the office for a bit so people don’t think I’ve died.”
He sighed over dramatically. “Fine. Be that way.” Then he laughed. “I’m teasing about lunch.”
“I know.”
Sitting us both up, he reached for the nightstand. “Let me lock you in before you go.”
The littleclickof the tiny locks made me shiver. His touch was tender, but not hesitant. That could be said about most of them. They created space for the softness I needed without sacrificing their dominance. I’d never felt safer than when I was with them.
“I love you,” I said, sucking in a gasp, shocked that I had the bravery to say it.
Theo looked up, startled, but with eyes filled with awe. His scent strengthened around me, the purest almond. Fuck, he smelled like a cookie and now I was actually considering skipping lunch. “I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that, but it’s true.”
