Page 123 of Shadow

When they were showered and dressed forty-five minutes later, Ripley sat at the small breakfast table and pulled out his computers and other tech.

“What are we going to do?”

“Peter and Gage are tracking down Fiona right now. Lance is digging into Gregory and Hank—the other guy who came to the hotel last night’s location. And I am going to pull up my insurance policy against Brian Doran. Honestly, I should have made good on my threat to use it as soon as I knew he was involved. We didn’t even need to come to London. But hindsight is twenty-twenty, right?”

Olivia stood behind his chair and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. “What should I do?”

He put a hand over hers and looked up at her. “Order us breakfast and keep me company. Peter may have questions about Fiona.”

“What are they going to do with her when they find her?”

“Nothing at first. Just hold her. Once I have Brian where I want him, she’ll be handed over to the FBI for questioning and probably be arrested.”

It was the right thing. Olivia understood that, but it was hard to contemplate one of her employees going to prison for trying to hurt her.

“Have we learned what the vandalism on my house was about?”

Ripley didn’t look up from his keyboard, just shook his head. “That’s the one piece to this puzzle that I can’t put together. But it turns out Peter’s tech guy hadn’t gotten around to turning on the new cameras at your house, so nothing got erased like we initially thought.”

“Weird. Could it have been a coincidence?”

Ripley paused and pulled her around to sit in his lap. “I tend to not believe in coincidences, but it could be. We’ll find out when we pick up Fiona.”

Olivia glanced at the clock on Ripley’s phone screen. “It’s like four in the morning in D.C. When are they going to do that?”

Ripley chuckled. “They have to find her first, so they’re working on that. Go order us breakfast. You need to eat, baby.”

She leaned in and kissed him, and he hummed in satisfaction before she climbed off his lap and went to call for room service. When she came back, she sat in a chair next to him and watched him work. He was focused, and intent on finishing the job. Even though she had no idea what he was doing, she found it sexy watching him do his thing.

When room service arrived, she fixed them both a plate and settled in next to him again. His plate remained untouched as he worked diligently on two laptops side-by-side. She thought about asking him to explain to her what he was doing but figured it would just sound like techno babble, so she stayed quiet and observed.

His phone rang about an hour later, and he stood to answer it.

“Good morning, Gage. Any luck finding her?”

He shoved his free hand into his pocket and paced to the window as he listened to Gage talk.

“But if she’s in contact with Brian or one of the others, do you think she would fall for it?” Silence followed, and Olivia wished she could hear the other end of the conversation.

“OK. I’ll ask her.”

He tucked the phone in his pocket and looked at Olivia. Concern and annoyance were in his eyes.

“What is it?”

“So far, they can’t find Fiona. Gage is wondering if in a few hours you could call her and ask her to come in for an exit interview.”

“I’m not sure she’ll take my call, but sure. What if I tell her I’ve got her last paycheck or something like that?”

Ripley smiled. “Smart girl. That will work.”

“Now, will you please eat your breakfast, Daddy?”

He chuckled and sat at the table again, pulling his plate in front of him. “There’s not much else I can do right now. Carrie is going to make a phone call to Brian’s office asking for a quote in a little while. Hopefully, that will be enough to get him off my back. While we wait, you can tell me about last night before I got back.”

Olivia perked up. “I forgot to tell you. Tyson told me some things about you.”

Ripley scowled. “What things?”

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