13. Jace
THIRTEEN
JACE
“Confidential board meeting, Kane Strategic Holdings, tomorrow at eleven.” Tucker turned his monitor around, a floor plan already pulled up beside a guest list half-redacted with question marks. “Buried in a scheduling system I wasn’t supposed to find. No public record, no press release, nothing.”
“That’s the meeting where Kane genuinely runs things.
” Emma leaned over Jace’s shoulder, close enough that he caught the smell of her shampoo under the coffee she’d been living on for two days straight, and brushed her mouth against his jaw without breaking her focus on the screen.
“The gala circuit is theater. This is the real boardroom.”
“We need eyes inside.” Jace kept his arm around her waist, an anchor neither of them commented on anymore, and dropped a second kiss to the crown of her head for good measure, because he could and because he’d stopped needing a reason weeks ago. “Cover story?”
“Wealthy engaged couple attending a charity luncheon three floors down.” Tucker pulled up the building directory. “The Kane Foundation is hosting a benefit lunch same building, same day. Nobody questions an engaged couple wandering a few floors off course looking for the restroom.”
“I’ll get you into the elevator bank. Getting past the board floor’s security is your problem.
” Tucker didn’t look thrilled about handing over that exact problem.
“Once you’re in range, I can compromise their presentation system remotely and pull audio.
Documents are a different problem. No camera in that room means no way to get eyes on paper without somebody standing over it. ”
“That’s fine. I’ll get the documents,” Emma said.
“You say that like it’s simple.”
“It is simple. I walk in, I photograph what matters, I walk out. The hard part is timing, and timing’s my specialty.” She tapped the floor plan, eyes already tracing a route out that didn’t exist on the paper yet. “Walk me through the security rotation on that floor.”
“Heavier than any financial meeting needs. Two guards per hallway, cameras on a closed loop I can spoof for about ninety seconds before the system flags the gap.” Tucker’s jaw tightened. “Ninety seconds isn’t a lot of runway.”
“Ninety seconds is plenty, if nobody wastes any of it.”
Gerri breezed into the house without knocking, a garment bag over one arm and an agenda already forming behind her eyes. “I’m coming too.”
“Absolutely not.” Jace kept his eyes on the floor plan.
“Again, I wasn’t asking. I was informing.
” She hung the garment bag on the nearest chair, already savoring an argument nobody had actually agreed to have.
“Two of Kane’s trustees sit on my hospital board.
I’ll host an impromptu luncheon on the seventh floor and keep them so thoroughly distracted they won’t think about board business until Thursday. Consider it a professional courtesy.”
“That’s reckless.”
“That’s Tuesday.” Gerri straightened his collar with two brisk, uninvited tugs. “Wear the navy suit. It photographs better in case anyone takes pictures of your arrest.”
“Nobody’s getting arrested.”
“That’s the spirit.” She was gone before he could argue further, the door swinging shut behind a woman who’d apparently decided this conversation was over the moment she’d started it.
Roman, from the couch, kept his attention on the tactical vest he was inspecting. “I already hate this plan, and I haven’t heard the parking garage part yet.”
“There’s no parking garage part.”
“There’s always a parking garage part. Billionaires only ever build one kind of building.” Roman set the vest down, dead serious. “I want it on record that I called it before we even walked in.”
“Noted, Roman.”
“Thank you. I like being on the record early. It’s more satisfying when I’m right.”
The tower announced its money before the elevator doors finished opening, marble underfoot and glass overhead, the lobby so aggressively tasteful, it amounted to a threat.
“Security’s different,” Jace said, low, mouth close to Emma’s ear as they crossed toward the elevator bank, his hand settled at the small of her back with the easy possessiveness of a man escorting his fiancée through a building full of strangers he didn’t trust. “Look at the desk. Four guards for a lobby that size. That’s not corporate security. It’s a private army wearing suits.”
“I noticed the budget discrepancy the second we walked in.” Emma’s voice stayed pitched for charm, a smile fixed for anyone watching, though her eyes tracked every camera angle with the same precision she gave a fraudulent ledger.
“Whoever’s paying for this security isn’t running an investment firm.
They’re running a fortress that happens to have a coffee bar. ”
The elevator carried them up in silence, Jace’s reflection in the brushed steel doors giving nothing away, though his free hand found hers and held on the entire ride, thumb tracing slow circles over her knuckles simply because he liked touching her and had stopped pretending otherwise.
He tugged her half a step closer and pressed his mouth to her temple, taking his time, as if they had all the time in the world instead of ninety seconds and a building full of armed strangers.
“You’re doing the thing,” Emma said, quiet.
“Which thing?”
“The reassuring-touch thing. It’s very charming. It’s also not subtle.”
“I’m not trying to be subtle about it.” The doors opened on the seventh floor, luncheon chatter drifting from an open ballroom to their left, and Jace steered her past it toward the service corridor Tucker had mapped the night before.
“I’m trying to be obvious enough that anyone watching believes we’re exactly who we’re pretending to be. ”
“That’s a very convenient excuse to hold my hand in public.”
“I don’t need an excuse. I only prefer having one available.”
Emma’s phone buzzed once, a text from Gerri glowing on the lock screen. Trustees Whitmore and Alderidge safely captured for luncheon. The salmon here is criminally overcooked and I intend to file a formal complaint the moment this entire conspiracy is resolved. Go, darlings.
“She’s got two of them.” Emma pocketed the phone, moving again. “That’s fewer eyes upstairs.”
They found the stairwell exactly where the floor plan promised, and four flights up, Jace eased the door open onto a hallway carpeted in the particular silence that costs real money to maintain.
At the far end, a well-dressed man and woman stepped from an elevator. Emma’s whole body went taut beside him.
“That’s Corbin,” she breathed, barely audible. “He sits on the Wilder Hope investment committee. And that’s Farraday next to him—her name’s on two of the shell companies Tucker traced.” Corbin opened a door, and both vanished behind it.
“Familiar faces.”
“Very familiar. None of them belong in the same room as Victor Kane.”
Emma peeled off toward the restricted conference suite while Jace held the corridor, Tucker’s voice a thin, steady thread in his ear confirming the presentation system was compromised and recording.
“Audio’s live,” Tucker murmured. “Keep her covered if you can, but don’t push it.”
Through the cracked door, Kane’s voice carried out into the hall, warm and controlled, a man addressing people he considered beneath him but useful.
“Phase Three moves forward regardless of the accountant’s interference.
The remaining acquisitions close on schedule.
If anyone at this table has doubts about our timeline, raise them now, because doubt after today isn’t tolerated. ”
Silence answered him. Nobody at that table needed telling twice.
“Good.” A rustle of paper, chairs shifting.
“The Riverside failure cost us three weeks and considerable goodwill with our investors. That doesn’t happen again.
Every property still on our list closes on schedule, and anyone who thinks a forensic accountant and her private security detail represent a real obstacle is welcome to find employment elsewhere. ”
A voice she didn’t recognize, older, cautious. “And if she keeps digging through the paper trail?”
“Then we stop worrying about the paper trail and start worrying about her directly.” Kane’s tone didn’t change at all, which landed far worse than if it had. “She’s clever. She’s not careful. Careful people don’t walk into warehouses at midnight for strangers. We use that.”
Jace’s jaw locked so hard, it ached. Every instinct he owned wanted to be in that room instead of this hallway, wanted his hands around the throat producing that sentence, and he held his position anyway because burning the whole operation down over one man’s careless mouth wasn’t a plan; it was a tantrum, and Emma needed him disciplined more than she needed him furious.
Down the hall, through the gap in the door, he caught one glimpse of Emma’s shadow moving along the far wall of the conference suite where she’d slipped in behind the caterers, phone raised, capturing document after document fast and silent, seventeen years of preparation compressed into ninety seconds.
Kane’s threat had reached her too—Tucker’s live feed ran to both their earpieces—and if her hands shook at all hearing it, they didn’t slow down.
Emma’s voice crackled in low over the comms, barely a whisper. “Got the acquisition list. Getting the co-conspirator names now.”
“Copy. Move fast.”
“Almost there. Two more pages.”
Footsteps sounded from the far stairwell, slow and even, headed their direction.
The board meeting broke early, chairs scraping back inside the conference room, and Jace had to decide how badly this was about to go. A woman in a sharp gray suit stepped into the hallway and stopped dead at the sight of him.
“I know you.” Her eyes narrowed, recognition sharpening fast. “The engagement announcement. Maddox Tactical. You were at the Kane Foundation gala.”