Chapter 4 #3
“Scout’s honor. What are you looking for?”
She pulled up Dani’s email first. “She was trying to coerce me into doing a job, so that means she already had it well planned. Which means she’d put a team together.”
“Can’t you just phone those people?”
She shook her head. Saying she and Dani ran in different circles would be an understatement.
“I don’t know her friends anymore.”
“What about Peyton?”
“I haven’t talked to her since the Alban heist. I don’t have her number now, but maybe I can reach out to her another way.”
Milo rested his elbows on his knees, and his hands hung between them. God, he was so close. The muscles in his thighs pressed against the material of his jeans. Her throat constricted.
Focus.
“You and Dani were joined at the hip growing up. How is it you don’t know her friends other than Peyton?”
Sadness gripped her tongue as her childhood washed over her.
She rubbed the pad of her thumb over her middle fingertip as she stared at the screen.
She and Dani had always been best friends.
As children raised by a thief, they’d always known they were different, that their home was different.
Kids at school talked about their parents’ careers and spent their evenings playing sports with the neighborhood kids.
Not Dani and her. When their uncle wasn’t grooming them for a job, they were helping Aunt Mae around the house.
Even in school they’d been ostracized. No one wanted their kids playing with the nieces of a criminal.
Dani, Milo, Brock, and Peyton had become her family.
After Serena had gotten out, she’d told Dani to keep her jobs and colleagues away from her.
All it took was for Serena to be seen with one wanted criminal to detonate the life she’d built.
However, doing so had put a small wedge between her and Dani.
Peyton was the only friend of her sister’s that she knew well.
She scrolled through Dani’s inbox, but nothing from the last few days jumped out at her. A couple of orders and—ooh, her favorite designer boot store. She resisted the urge to click on the shipping notification that could be her Christmas present and went to Dani’s Sent folder.
She didn’t spare Milo a glance. “Because, like I already told you, I’m not in that lifestyle anymore. We hang out and watch our favorite shows, shop, eat, but she knows I don’t want anything to do with her . . . associates.”
Milo grunted. “That’s why she tried to . . . what did you say? Coerce you into working this job?”
Her skin burned, but she wouldn’t take her gaze off the email that had caught her eye to sear him with her stare. She double-clicked on the subject line of the email addressed to Peyton and three others.
“I’m not going to talk about that right now. Look at this,” she said, gesturing to the single paragraph in the body of the email.
I’ve got the blueprints. Mark November 29 in your calendars. We’ll go over the details and any questions Thursday night.
She straightened and turned to Milo. “The email was sent two days ago. Their meeting would have been last night,” she said. Milo leaned closer to read the email.
Milo took the computer and put it in Sleep mode. “Whoever took her could have been someone inside her team. A mole, maybe. We need to take her computer and get back to my place. I’ll have Rhett trace the IP addresses of the people CC’d on the email.”
Hope surged through her, giving her a third wave of adrenaline.
She stood and made a beeline for Dani’s bedroom.
“I need to grab a few things,” she called.
There was no time to stop at her apartment for clean clothes.
She’d have to make do with some of Dani’s.
She scooped up her Gucci weekend bag—Dani would kill her—and helped herself to her sister’s clothes and makeup. Thank god they were similar in size.
“C’mon, S.”
She snagged Dani’s cardigan from the end of the bed, since her own was doused in blood, and made her way back to the main living area.
“Sorry, I need clothes.”
Milo grunted and tucked her sister’s laptop under his arm. “Let’s go.” He stopped at the front door and lowered his eye to the peephole while Serena kicked off her high heels and fit her feet into Dani’s running shoes.
“Don’t you think whoever has Dani would be with her and not sneaking around her apartment building?” She released the dead bolt and turned the door handle, bringing her much too close to the rigid wall of Milo’s chest.
“I’m not taking any chances. Let me check the hall,” he said, nudging her to the side. The door creaked as he pulled it open, but his eyes locked on hers.
He winked at her. Her breath blew through her lips and her loins clenched beneath her abdomen.
No, don’t do this. Don’t get tangled in his web . . .
Bam!
The front door banged open, and Milo stumbled back. A booted foot retracted, and then a gun moved through the now open door. Panic rooted Serena’s feet to the spot.
“Serena, get down!” Milo dove for the attacker and a shot went off.