“I’m not going to lie to you. You’re in serious trouble. What you did is illegal. You stole and copied confidential documents and sold them to a competitor. If you cooperate with me, it’ll help a lot.”
“Are you going to call the police?”
“We’ll see what happens on Tuesday. Don’t tip him off. And don’t think of leaving or screwing this up. You will be watched.”
I uploaded the photographs onto my computer. “Does he call you at work?”
“Sometimes when I don’t pick up my cell.”
“Then that’s how you’ll connect with him.” I placed her phone in my briefcase. “I’ll be keeping this for evidence.”
“I’ll cooperate any way I can. I really loved Mr. Linder, and I like you too. I hated betraying you and your family. It was just that I needed the money so badly.”
“If you cooperate, I can help make a case for you with Mr. Linder. Let’s just see what happens on Tuesday.”
An hour later, I pulled into my parking garage, exhausted to the bone.Ms. Pierce is the snitch.I must’ve repeated it a hundred times since I’d found out. I couldn’t believe it. What was up with this Cory Bracker guy?
On the ride to my condo, I’d telephoned Ivan and told him everything that had happened. He’d told me he’d found out DTG was owned by Cory Bracker, and he had several photos of Ms. Pierce and him together. He suspected she was the leak, but he wanted to wait until money was exchanged to be sure. As it was, it looked like they were only dating. I told him to drop the photographs by the following day. I wanted to get a good look at this asshole who was vying to take me down. The night we’d beaten the shit out of each other, I hadn’t seen him all that well. It’d been dark and I was more focused on smashing his face than looking at it. Who knew… maybe I’d crossed paths with him before.
I called Cierra and told her I was home. She came over in fifteen minutes. I poured a couple of shots of vodka for me, a glass of red wine for her, and we sat on the couch.
“I can’t believe Chandra’s the turncoat. I never figured it was her, but if she’s telling the truth about her dire home situation, I feel sorry for her. I guess I can sort of see why she did it.”
She sat cross-legged on the couch, her hair tousled around her, her tight T-shirt clinging to her perfect tits. She’d just come back from a three-hour shift at the shelter, and she felt sorry for Ms. Pierce. My chest tightened.This woman is amazing, and she’s all mine.I placed my hands on her shoulders and tugged her toward me, then leaned over and kissed her deep and wet. “I love you so much,” I whispered against her lips.
“Wow. What prompted that? I want to know so I do it more often.” She giggled and kissed me softly.
“Just being you. Anyway, I’m going to see how Ms. Pierce does on Tuesday. I’ve also asked Ivan to check out her story about her home life. I’ll talk to my grandfather tomorrow to see what he wants to do. I’m sure we’ll call the police.”
“Definitely. I don’t want you facing off with Cory. I wonder if he was trying to prime me to be a snitch. I knew something wasn’t right with him, I just couldn’t put my finger on it. Anyway, he didn’t have a chance with me.”
“No?”
She shook her head. “No way. I was hopelessly falling for my boss when we met.”
“Seducing your boss. You’re a naughty girl.” I started tickling her and she fell back on the couch, laughing her head off. I hovered over her, smothering her with kisses and bites. I wanted to cover her body with love bites, marking her as mine.
I pushed her shirt over her head and unsnapped her bra. Her luscious tits popped out and I bent my head to feast on them. I’d go slow; we had time. And when she trembled with desire, begging me to fuck her, I’d make love to her.
Ms. Pierce waskissing my ass big-time, telling me she was ready to do anything I wanted her to do to catch Cory Bracker. When I’d told my grandfather about it the day before, he’d been adamant about handling the situation internally. He said the publicity wouldn’t be good for Velocity, and the stockholders and board of directors would blame me if revenues slipped and they lost money. No police involvement was the way my grandfather handled things, so I wasn’t surprised that he didn’t want me to call the cops.
Cierra and I talked at length about it, and in the end, I agreed with her and called the cops, then listened quietly as my grandfather read me the riot act. I understood where he was coming from, but the way he’d handled the kidnapping had left me wondering for years if Ryan would’ve been found had the police been involved. Also, if my grandfather trusted me to run Velocity, then he had to trust the decisions I made, even if they weren’t in line with what he would do. It was that simple.
My intercom buzzed and Ms. Pierce announced that Ivan was waiting to see me. He carried a large manila envelope in his hand as he walked in. Slumping down in the chair, he slid the envelope over to me and began munching on jelly beans in a bowl on my desk.
“What’s this?” I asked as I unsealed the package.
“Pictures.” He popped an orange jelly bean in his mouth.
I looked at the numerous pictures of Cory Bracker. In some of them, Ms. Pierce had her arm looped through his, in others, he was leaning against a blue Toyota Matrix in front of Cierra’s building. Muscles tightened and I rubbed the back of my neck.
“When did you take these pictures of the bastard in front of this building?” I slid the photos back to Ivan.
“Last week,” he said as he picked through the bowl.
The fucker’s still stalking Cierra. I’m going to beat his ass.“How often did you catch him there?”
“A lot. Sometimes three and four times a day. One of your employees lives there.” He glanced down at a notebook. “Cierra Duncan. If you ask me, the suspect’s obsessed with her. You should warn her.”
