Page 29 of Ravaged With You

Her brows rose. “Excuse me?”

“The shampoo, Jo. Just do me this one fucking favor and use a different shampoo.”

Her eyes flickered with a thousand questions, but she didn’t voice them, and for that he was grateful. Instead, all she said was, “Sure.”

Then she disappeared into the room, and he dropped his head to his hands, grateful for that one, small, stupid victory.

Damien wasn’t at Stark Security when they arrived, a fact that surprised Red. His brother had told him that after Damien had played the bad ass action hero role in New York, he’d decided to take a more active role in Stark Security. After all, it was a venture that he felt strongly about, having founded the organization in the wake of his daughter’s kidnapping.

“He’s here pretty often these days,” the agency’s chief, Ryan Hunter, told Red when he said as much. “But he still has a universe to run. I think he’s in Boston for the day. Possibly Amsterdam.” He shrugged. “He’s a hard man to keep up with. Come on, let’s get settled in one of the conference rooms. It’s good to see you both again,” he added, nodding to Jo, “but I’m terribly sorry about the circumstances.”

A tall, lean man with chestnut hair and vivid blue eyes, Ryan crossed the room with long, purposeful strides, barely even pausing as he answered questions tossed at him from various agents and support personnel at the stations that dotted the room.

Their destination was a large, glass-enclosed conference room on the west side of the building. One side opened out over the agency’s interior, the other over the courtyard of The Domino, a relatively new business park in Santa Monica that had been completed as a co-venture between Damien and his brother Jackson Steele.

Red walked to the far wall, looking out over the people gathered at the coffee cart, sitting on benches, enjoying a bit of the morning outdoors as they took a break from their work. He envied them, but he pushed the emotion aside. For all he knew, each and every one of them was broken, their scars as deeply hidden as his.

“Can they see in?” Jo asked. “I mean, don’t you guys do all sorts of secret stuff in here?”

“We do, though I don’t imagine anyone would find a meeting around a conference table to be that revealing.”

“Lip reading,” Red said. “You should have me or Renly give it a test run sometime. I bet we’d leave that courtyard with dozens of your secrets.”

“A good point,” Ryan said, knowing full well that both Red and Renly were proficient at lip-reading and ASL, having learned when their mother lost her hearing. “But the truth is that the glass is one-way only. And when we do have sensitive meetings in here, we black it out entirely to be absolutely certain. Not to mention that the view can be distracting.”

As if in demonstration, he pushed a button on a control panel located at the head of the huge table. Immediately, the glass shifted from clear to opaque.

“Neat trick,” Jo said.

“We aim to please.” Ryan gestured. “Go ahead and grab a seat. Renly and the others will join us in a moment.”

As if on cue, the door opened and Renly entered with Mario, who Red remembered as the agency’s resident tech genius right behind him. “Did you and Damien fill everyone in?” Red asked his brother.

“Yup,” Renly said.

“We took a quick look last night,” Mario said. “You were right to be wary of multiple surveillance devices. So now we’re setting up to do a more thorough sweep for any audio or visual bugs or hacks, so we can log and map them all, hopefully do a backtrace. Plus we’ll install a full upgrade on your system. As for the bugs, for now, we’d like to keep anything we find in place, with the exception of the camera in the fermentation room.”

“Why take that one?” Jo asked.

“Because Red knows it’s there,” Renly said. “We take that because you’re smart and figured it out. But we leave the others so our bad guys think they’re clever.”

“I can live with that,” Red said.

“How do you want us to handle it if we find surveillance in your homes?”

Beside him, Jo leaned forward. “Do you really think that will happen?”

“Won’t know until we know,” Mario said.

She leaned back, biting her lower lip. Red reached over and took her hand. Their eyes met—just one quick glance—but the awkwardness was gone, thank God, and they seemed to be back where they should be.

“So you just need us for surveillance and security?” Ryan asked.

“For now,” Red confirmed. He glanced at Jo. “Right now, we only have one lead as to who might have done this. We’re going to follow it up today.”

“Happy to go with you, bro,” Renly said, but Red shook his head.

“The hell you will. I don’t even know why you’re here. I thought you and Abby were taking the week off to get her moved into your place and clear your plates before the wedding.”