“Thank you again,” she said as I passed her coffee to her. “I know this is a strange request, asking you to hunt someone down for me, and I appreciate your help. Are you sure I can’t pay you?”
“I’m sure,” I said. “The challenge of it will be payment enough.”
It was my turn to get flustered as I stared into her wide brown eyes. Up close, there were lighter hints of amber and topaz hiding amongst the deeper tones. Her eyebrows were thick, a shade or two darker than her hair, arching in the middle like one of the beauties out of a Renaissance painting.
Whatever you do, do not look at her mouth, I told myself.
I used the excuse of sipping my coffee to tear my gaze away before I gave in to that temptation. Looking at Aly’s mouth was dangerous because it would remind me of what that mouth had so recently done to me, and my dick was already hard enough as it was.
I set my coffee on a coaster and opened my laptop. The screen came to life, displaying the emblem of the company I worked for. I’d scrubbed this machine down earlier, removing any trace of Aly from it just in case I had to get up and pee, and she got curious and started clicking around.
“Why do you need to find this person?” I asked. “Tyler was kind of vague.”
“That’s my fault. I didn’t want to go into details with him,” she said.
I glanced over to see her watching my screen intently. I waited a beat, but she didn’t elaborate. Really, Aly? You won’t even tell the guy helping you find what you’re after? Fine. If she refused to be upfront about it, I’d have to wheedle it out of her some other way.
“Okay then,” I said. “Do you at least have a starting point? A name or an address?”
She took a deep breath and pulled out her phone. “Please don’t judge me for what I am about to show you.”
I watched her unlock the screen, noting her passcode – because of course I did – and waited as she pulled up her social media app, found my profile, and then showed it to me.
I looked from it to her and back again. “You want me to find this guy for you?”
She nodded.
“You’re not some rabid fangirl trying to find out where he lives, right? Because stalking is a crime, Aly.” My tone was dead-ass serious, and it took every ounce of willpower to keep the rabid glee from my expression.
Her cheeks heated again, but it looked like it was from temper instead of lust. “I know it’s a crime. It’s someone else who has the boundary issues,” she muttered.
Don’t laugh, don’t laugh, don’t laugh.
“Oh?” I said.
“It’s a long and insane-sounding story, and I don’t want to get into it with a near-stranger.”
Ouch.
She lifted her gaze to mine and had the good manners to appear apologetic. “No offense.”
“None taken,” I told her. “I’m just a little worried this ends with me getting charged as an unwitting accomplice in someone’s murder.”
She snorted. “It’s my murder you should be more concerned about.”
Was she serious? She still thought I might hurt her? Fuck, I hadn’t done enough to reassure her after all. Maybe I needed to change tonight’s plan around and give her the power again. She seemed to like having it last night.
“Are you joking?” I asked because that’s what a non-involved, concerned person would do. “You think this guy is going to kill you?”
She blew out a breath. “No. I mean, I hope not.” She dropped her head into her hands. “Fuck, I’m making this sound so much worse than it is.” She lifted back up and looked at me imploringly, and I decided I would give her anything she asked for at that moment. My help. My undying loyalty. The password to my investment account and all the money inside it.
“If I thought I was truly in danger, I would have gone to the cops,” she said. “This guy has just been messing with me a little, in a mostly harmless way, and I’d like to get back at him.”
I continued to play the role of a concerned bystander. “I don’t know. This seems like something the authorities should handle.”
She shook her head. “No. I want to do this my way. Will you help me or not?” She placed her hand over mine, my right one, I noted, and squeezed again. “I totally understand if you’re too freaked out, though.”
Ow, ow, ow.
I kept my face stoic as I answered her. “I’ll help. But please go to the police if things escalate or you feel unsafe.”
She grinned up at me, squeezed once more, even harder this time, clearly watching me for any sign of pain, and then let go. “I will. Thank you.”
She seemed almost disappointed that I didn’t flinch as I nodded and turned back to my laptop. Did she want it to be me?
Did she think I’d make it so easy for her?
I made a show of pulling up my social media profile on a browser and locked it to the left side of my screen. Next, I opened a coding program, locked it to the right, copied and pasted my user name into a line of code, and hit enter. Numbers and letters started flying over the right side of the screen while the program got to work.
It looked impressive as hell, like something out of a spy movie, but in reality, it did fuck-all. I wasn’t really going to sit there and track myself down, nor had I replaced my fall guy with someone closer. If Aly was serious about looking for payback, that might mean breaking into someone’s house, and I would never send her to a stranger's address if that were the case.
I’d have to find some way to run down the clock, tell her that her hacker was very good – I mean, he was, not to blow my skirt up or anything – and he’d done too much work covering his tracks for me to find him without risking getting caught and hacked myself.
“That’s it?” Aly asked. “You just put it in there, and the program does it all for you?”
“I wish it were that easy, but no,” I said. “This is just to figure out what IP address he used to create his account.”
From there, I went into detail about how much work it would realistically take to track someone down. Her face fell as I talked. Good. Hopefully, she was second-guessing her harebrained idea.
“So you’re not going to have an answer for me by the time I have to leave,” she checked her watch, “in twenty minutes?”
“Nope. Sorry,” I said. “What’s it like being a trauma nurse?” I tacked on. Because I couldn’t help myself. This was the first time I’d spoken to Aly, and despite how often I watched her, I was still ravenous for information. There was only so much knowledge you could gain through a camera. I had memorized her expressions and learned how to read her moods, but I didn’t know what made her tick, didn’t know how she truly felt about all the things I’d seen her go through.
“Oh,” she said, looking slightly taken aback by the sudden topic shift. “It’s…I don’t exactly know how to describe it. Good isn’t the right word. Rewarding might be better.”
I glanced down at her lips, unable to help myself. Less than a day ago, they had parted around my cock. Less than a day ago, I had come inside that sweet mouth.
I jerked my gaze up and refocused on her words before I did something stupid.
“It’s incredibly challenging at times,” she said. “The lows are really low, but the highs are equally high. Nothing compares to the thrill of saving someone’s life.”
I nodded. “I bet. What made you want to get into it?”
She met my eyes before shifting to watch the letters flashing over my screen. “My mom, but I don’t want to talk about it. Sorry.”