Page 15 of Remote Access

When he turned back, it was to find Lane sitting up and regarding him with sleepy eyes. He looked warm and infinitely tempting with his slow blinks and flushed cheeks. He wore a tight T-shirt that showed off his muscular, gymnast’s arms. The guy was hot but all the more appealing rumpled in a bed. "Are you as hungry as I am?" he slurred.

There was no way to keep from chuckling then. He watched Lane roll gracefully out of bed, then stagger a couple of steps.

He cursed and looked down, then kicked Quincy's boots—the ones he'd apparently tripped over.

"Big ass cowboy feet," Lane muttered as he grabbed his backpack and padded into the bathroom.

His ass looked unbelievable in the low sleep pants he wore. High and pleasantly round, with an intriguing dip right above in his lower back. And his T-shirt had ridden up in back, showing off two of the sexiest dimples on either side of his spine. If he bent Lane over one of these beds, he was sure his thumbs would fit right into those indentions as he held on and…

The lust that streaked through Quincy made him mentally stagger back. Shit. He was going to have to work hard to keep his head in the game around this one. If this kid had managed to rip off that many people over that many years without being caught, then he had to be one slippery little motherfucker.

His story in the early morning hours had been something else. Everything he'd learned about Letsen since Lane had walked into that house went right along with what he'd believed. The man was a crook to his black, shriveled soul.

And Quincy wasn’t investigating the man only for stolen goods—not on this scale anyway. He’d suspected him of crooked dealings, but what had first brought him to Quincy’s attention had been the death of Quincy’s cousin. Gerald had been Letsen’s cellmate in prison and he’d ended up murdered.

As always, anger and regret made a nasty mix in his stomach.

When he’d started investigating the man, all kinds of warnings had gone off, especially when Chief Rawlins had pulled him off the case.

Lane came back, wearing another pair of skinny jeans and a light gray button-down shirt that gave his eyes a startling beauty—like the polished selenite Quincy had in his rock collection as a kid. Lane had also brushed his teeth again and a drop of water glistened on his lip before he licked it off.

Quincy had to bite back a groan.

The thief stopped and stared at Quincy as a grin slowly stretched his mouth. "Like what you see?"

Cursing under his breath, Quincy dug into the paper sack of food they'd picked up the night before and pulled out the box of protein bars. He opened it and tossed one to Lane, who grimaced but dug in. He opened his own and munched on the dry bar that tasted like nothing as he eyed the coffee pot. "Wish this place had invested in a pot that takes pods instead of these weird packets."

“As long as they’re recyclable ones,” Lane muttered under his breath as he started opening boxes. "So how do we want to do this?" He put his hand on one. "From the brief time I got to look at these papers last night, all I got is he has a fucked up filing system. He's using some kind of code—one I don't understand at all. We should be able to crack it at some point, but nothing is listed in here by dates. There are pages that have letters at the top. I didn't have time to get far before you interrupted me, but I did recognize the items on one sheet that has TAD at the top. I stole those things."

"TAD? Initials of your real name?”

His head popped up, pretty eyes narrowed. “I never said Lane isn't my real name."

Quincy just lifted an eyebrow at him, amused by the flush creeping up Lane’s neck.

"Okay, yeah, but no, I don't know what TAD stands for. Other spreadsheets have different letters at the top and some seem to have those same letters on individual lines. We could go ahead and start sorting everything into piles by those initials."

"Sounds like a plan." Quincy opened another box and set it on the top of the desk along the front wall under the television. "He may have some of this sorted already,” he said when he spotted a manila envelope. He frowned at the papers inside. "These are financial papers. I think."

Lane came over and stood close to look at the top sheet. "It's items like on the other sheets, but there is no letter at the top and what's this?" He pointed at the symbol in the buyer column. “Is that a goblet? Or a fancy egg holder with a flag?”

"What the hell?" Quincy shook the paper. "What kind of fucked up filing system is this?"

"The man is a criminal genius. He's managed to find a way to blackmail kids and get them on private planes to steal goods. He sells the collectibles for way more than they're worth to people who don't want a lot of folks knowing where their interests lie. Think about it. The electronic files have to be somewhere. How do you think he finds the items?"

“So, he didn’t have you looking for collectibles?” Quincy plopped a coffee packet into the machine.

Lane shook his head. “All I ever got were instructions on where to go, what to get, and where to send the items.”

"He has to use the Internet."

"Which means he is online. It sure wasn't at the house we were in. No Wi-Fi—nothing."

"No, he told me he doesn't trust networks, smart televisions, nor phones. He's careful."

"Not too careful," Lane murmured pointing to the boxes. "Idiot kept all this in his house. Problem is, it's not all of it and I hate that we had to leave some behind." He pulled out more manila envelopes. "I bet we can find something in these. Do you want to take this box on your bed and I'll go through this other one on mine? I’m going to makes stacks according to the initials."

"Works for me." Quincy hauled his box to the brown comforter, then grabbed his coffee. He sat against the headboard and tugged the box to his side and got to work.

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