edge of downtown LA. But the PI he’d hired to track her down was the best, and he said he’d seen her car here on Friday nights for the last month.
No silver Audis had graced the parking lot when Aidan had arrived tonight. But his curiosity had him walking inside for Booze and Burlesque Friday anyway. He’d dropped Kaylee’s name, and a fifty-dollar bill, but the bartender hadn’t heard of her. A quick survey of the patronage hadn’t panned out any better.
He needed to have a word with his intel guy.
Aidan pulled his phone out of his leather jacket and headed for the side door of the club. Ignoring the Emergency Exit Only warning stuck to the door in peeling red letters, he pushed through into the parking lot, wedging one of his riding gloves between the door and the jamb. He’d go back in and do a final sweep of the club before he called it a night.
“What’s up, Aidan?”
“That’s what I want to know. You’re sure this is where you saw the car? Because it’s not the kind of place a Whitfield would normally frequent.”
He remembered a young Kaylee, her dark, shiny hair twisted in a bun, her mother forever dragging her to ballet class or violin lessons. This place was definitely not her style. Too seedy for matriarch Sylvia, not fucking seedy enough for patriarch Charles. There’d been a time when he could have talked Max out of his country-club ways and into a night of debauched fun at a place like this—but that felt like a lifetime ago.
Aidan shook off the inconvenient memory and focused on the phone call.
“I told you predictive stuff wasn’t a hundred percent. But yeah, it was her car. She’s been showing up at that address on Friday nights like clockwork.”
Aidan raked his fingers through his shaggy hair, shoving it back from his forehead. “I’ll do one more lap, but if I can’t find her, we’re going to need a plan B.”
“Well, she’s pretty consistent with her time at the gym, but I’m leaning toward the coffee shop. Her regular haunt starts construction on Monday, and with a coffee habit like hers, I think she’ll find a new place for her caffeine fix. I’m running numbers on her most likely deviation now.”
Damn. This was getting too complicated.
That’s exactly why plan A was for him to “accidentally” run into Kaylee tonight, play the “old friends” card, and hope his ongoing feud with her brother wouldn’t deter her from accepting his offer to take her to dinner tomorrow. From there, installing the malware on her phone and downloading a copy of the app should be easy. According to his sources, she was one of five people that Max had trusted to test the prototype version of SecurePay, the digital cryptocurrency app that was poised to take Whitfield Industries to the next level.
Actually, plan A had been to buy the damn SecurePay app legally and have his guys pull it apart to find the string of code he needed to prove Max had violated the exclusivity clause in his contract with John Beckett. Unfortunately, thanks to a security breach, the launch of Whitfield Industries’ flagship tech had been scrapped at the last minute. So now if Aidan wanted to gain the rights to his father’s legacy, he’d have to improvise.
“Let me know what you come up with.”
“Will do.”
He hung up and glanced over at his bike, pulling a hand down his face.
Jesus, he hated this covert bullshit.
You have a problem with someone, you tell them to their fucking face.
Like you’re doing right now? his conscience asked.
Aidan frowned.
He had no choice. Right now was when the stars had aligned.
Charles Whitfield had been indicted for blackmailing a key member of the SecurePay team, Emma something-or-other, and Aidan was damn sure it wasn’t the first time. Because five years ago, the same day he’d died, Aidan’s dad had signed away all rights to the code that represented the pinnacle of his life’s work, a move so out of character that coercion was the only explanation that made any sense.
No way in hell was he going to let Max rule from on high, poised to make billions by commandeering tech that existed only because of John Beckett’s genius. Besides, he thought darkly, there was a certain poetic justice to using the only Whitfield who meant anything to Max—the shy, studious girl who’d stared at Aidan with hearts in her eyes, the intense, focused woman who currently served as her brother’s PR consigliere—to take him down.
Yes. Kaylee was the nuclear option—the quickest, most brutal way to ruin Whitfield Industries the way Whitfield Industries had ruined his father.
And Aidan wasn’t in the mood to wait.
“Damn it.”
Kaylee pulled her hand from her bag to find it covered in liquid foundation. Her jeans were coated in beige, her white T-shirt splotched with it. So much for a fast getaway. She’d been hoping to change and sneak out as quickly as possible. Fooling Aidan from a distance was one thing, but she didn’t want to tempt fate by running into him again.
She laughed at herself as she flipped the light switch in the tiny backstage bathroom with her elbow. As if Aidan would be looking for her at all. Unlike her, he’d spent the majority of their youth completely unaware of her status as a member of the opposite sex. She stuck her makeupy hands beneath the tap, washing the mess from her skin.
She remembered the first time she’d seen him. He’d stolen her breath, throwing her long-held beliefs that boys were gross and cooties were a fate worse than death right out the proverbial window. A golden boy with shaggy hair and a leather jacket. He’d been fifteen to her eleven, and she’d thought he was the coolest guy she’d ever met. So different than Max’s other friends. There was something rough about him, more dangerous than the country-club jerks she’d grown up with. But the best thing about Aidan was that he never ignored her. And sometimes, when Max was busy doing something for their parents, Aidan would talk to her, tell her stories full of adventure—races he’d won, fights he’d started, the trips he planned to take.
Her crush had only intensified with puberty, and by the time she was fourteen, she was counting down the days until Max and Aidan came home from university on break. By then, his boyish promise had been realized, and Aidan had grown into his cocky swagger. He didn’t just have the attitude anymore but a muscled body that could back it up. Kaylee had been mesmerized.
By that point, Max was a cool, distant stranger, but Aidan still made time to greet her, tell her a story, flirt a little. At least she’d thought it was flirting, until one fateful evening when she’d come home from studying at the library to find Max was having a get-together. Kaylee had witnessed firsthand what real flirting was like when she’d covertly watched Aidan and their neighbor Natasha wrapped in each other’s arms, indulging in the kind of kissing that Kaylee had only seen in movies. She’d fled from the passionate scene with a heavy heart, made heavier when she’d heard that Aidan had gone on to seduce the pretty blonde right out of her bikini. Or at least that was the story as Natasha had told it later that summer.
Her hero worship of her brother’s best friend had taken a big hit after that, and to punish Aidan for the transgression of not waiting for her, Kaylee had done her teenage best to treat him with polite disdain. Trouble was, he hadn’t even noticed.
And
