Total pages in book: 63
Estimated words: 58752 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 235(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 58752 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 294(@200wpm)___ 235(@250wpm)___ 196(@300wpm)
More hours passed until the lines started to blur. I rubbed my eyes as I pulled another binder from the stacks.
Gavin pressed his hand on the top cover.
I twisted around to look up at him. “I’m using that.”
“Not for the next ten minutes.” I was about to argue when he added, “Going through three years of paperwork on an empty stomach isn’t going to end well.”
I reached to snatch the binder, but he slid it to his other hand and grinned at my murderous glare. Then my stomach chose the worst time to growl, and his smile widened.
He shoved a sandwich into my hands, snagged a bottle of water, and guided me toward a quiet area next to the loading docks.
“You’re withholding my paperwork.” I took a bite since arguing would take longer than eating.
“Finish the sandwich, and you’ll get back to the binder soon.”
When I was halfway done, I paused to ask, “If you’d already figured out the pattern was all shortages, why didn’t you answer for me?”
“You had it under control.” There was a serious gleam beneath the lingering humor in his dark eyes. “I was just backup.”
“Most men would’ve assumed they needed to speak for me.”
“They’d be wrong.” He shrugged. “You knew more about the records than anyone standing around that table. If someone refused to listen to you, I would’ve spoken up. Until then, you didn’t need me cutting you off.”
His answer was more perfect than I wanted to admit. Yet again.
When I finished eating, his thumb swiped along my lip, brushing away a crumb from the corner. My gaze slid down to his mouth, and he grinned.
“You keep looking at me like that, and this break is going to take longer than ten minutes,” he warned.
“I wasn’t staring.”
“Mm-hmm.”
His hum called out my lie, and his smile widened. So I leaned forward and kissed him to wipe the smugness off his face. I’d only meant it to be a quick touch of my lips against his, but then he cupped the back of my neck and drew me closer. The kiss quickly turned hot enough to make me forget the warehouse beyond the loading area, but he stopped before I did something ridiculous like climb onto his lap.
Pulling back, he pressed the water back into my hand. “Finish.”
“Kissing does not make you less bossy,” I grumbled.
“I was hoping it would make you more cooperative.”
I ignored his grin this time and didn’t mention that he’d been right about me needing to eat. I was more focused when we returned to the table covered in paperwork.
With a clearer head, I arranged the altered reports chronologically. The discrepancies began small and increased gradually over time. Most of them belonged to jobs I supervised. And looking at them in this order, I realized the largest differences appeared in the months after I began pushing for a two-person approval system.
“Someone picked my jobs because they thought I’d be easy to blame.”
The warmth bled from his dark eyes. “They miscalculated.”
Before I could open the next box of older reconciliation reports, the warehouse alarms blared, and warning lights flashed above our heads. Someone yelled at the far end of the warehouse. “Smoke!”
Jumping to my feet, I knocked the binder on the floor as I ran to the doorway to see what was happening. Employees were running away from the records room. One of them shouted, “Someone might still be in there!”
Instinct took over before caution had time to catch up, and I ran toward danger instead of away from it.
8
GHOST
Dark smoke rolled from the corridor leading to the records room. Tamsin barely made it two strides before I caught her around the waist and hauled her back against me, locking one arm across her stomach as she twisted hard enough to drive her soft ass into my thighs.
“Let me go,” she snapped, fighting my hold as she pointed toward the smoke. “You heard him. Someone could still be in there.”
“Who?” I turned her in my arms until she faced me, keeping both hands firm around her waist when she tried to look past my shoulder. “Name and last position, Tamsin.”
“Kendra. She works in accounting.” She caught the front of my shirt and leaned around me, her words coming fast without losing clarity. “Her desk is in the office attached to the records room, and that corridor keeps going toward the east controlled-storage section. The exterior emergency shutoff is outside on the south wall.”
I keyed my comm while keeping one arm locked around her. Brothers were already moving toward the rear of the building, and I redirected two of them to the side corridor Tamsin described while another team cleared the remaining employees through the loading doors. Two more headed for the south wall and the shutoff, while the men nearest controlled storage began pushing everyone away from that entire section.