Page 23 of The Sweet Life

Pointing at the photo on the screen, Renata, appearing to be in complete and utter shock, interrupted Jake. “Wow, you look… happy.” She frowned. “And hot.” Then she moved her hand up and down in front of Sage. “Why, when you have a body like that, do you hide it under boxy blazers and—?”

Jake stabbed the keyboard, replacing the photo of her at the beach with the one she’d received of Max on her phone. “You can’t always go by a photo. They can be Photoshopped.”

“Excuse me. Are you saying you think my body has been Photoshopped?”

“No, and I can share why I know that it hasn’t been, if you’d like me to.” He lifted his gaze to hers. “No?”

Ignoring Brenda and Renata’s curious glances, she gave him a death glare. His lips twitched before he continued. “See here.” He pointed to an area just above Max’s head. “Also here, and here.” He ran his finger along the man’s forearm and then pointed at a spot between the catnapper’s waist and Max’s tail. “But sometimes you get lucky.” He tapped the screen on what looked like a window to the left of the man.

“What am I looking at?” she asked.

He enlarged the window. “The car parked alongside the curb.”

“Chad drives a silver Jag.”

Jake nodded. “And lucky for us, the owner of the blue Volvo keeps it clean and shiny because right here”—he pointed at the car door—“is the reflection of a silver Jag.”

“Oh my gosh, you’re right.”

“Yeah, but that’s not how I know it’s Chad.”

“It’s not?” Sage, Brenda, and Renata asked at the same time. She hoped she didn’t sound as breathless as they did.

“No. Chad did an okay job concealing his identity in the photo, although he forgot to remove his MIT class ring, but—”

“I totally missed that.” She stabbed her finger at the screen. “We got you now, loser.”

Jake’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “We do. But the silverJag and the MIT ring probably won’t be enough to convince your bosses, so we went a few steps further.”

Jake had asked her if anyone at the firm had an issue with Max. Sage didn’t think it was relevant, but she’d told him about her earlier meeting with Robert. Now she was glad that she had, because Jake knew what they were up against. Thinking back to what he said, she frowned. “Who’swe?”

“A friend who owes me a favor.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “That sounds sketchy.”

“Sometimes you have to walk a fine line between legal and illegal to catch a thief,” he said, a hint of challenge in his voice, as if he expected her to share his past with Brenda and Renata. It hurt a little that he believed she’d embarrass him like that.

She crossed her arms. “I trust you.”

He held her gaze as though waiting for the punch line. When it didn’t come, he nodded. “Thanks.”

Something about the way he looked at her reminded her of the morning they’d woken up together in the waterbed, and she quickly looked away. She was not thinking about that now. “So, what evidence do you have that will convince the founding partners?”

“Because an app was used to manipulate the photo, my guy was able to get a location from the text. It was sent from Winthrop’s address.” Leaning back in the chair, Jake crossed his arms behind his head. “And the only person Bill and Roland remembered seeing near your office around the time Max disappeared was Robert Forbes’s personal assistant.”

“Wait, you’re insinuating that Emilia is in on this?”

“Nope. I’m insinuating that your boss is.” He raised a hand when Sage and Brenda opened their mouths to protest. “Hearme out. Emilia doesn’t have the background to disable the security cameras and isn’t involved with anyone who does, including the security team at the firm. But your boss could have the cameras taken offline anytime with no questions asked, and the person who did it isn’t about to tell us, if they value their job.”

Renata flipped through her notebook, waving it at them. “Look.” She tapped on the statement under one of their coworkers’ names. “She said she saw Mr. Forbes’s personal assistant carrying a large box off the elevator. The timeline fits. It was just before Brenda and I came back from lunch and you got out of your client meeting, Sage.”

“I can’t believe Robert would do something like this,” Sage said, lowering herself onto Max’s lounge chair as the implications hit her, which might have been why she’d thought sitting on Max’s chair was a good idea. It wasn’t. It was a lot farther down than she’d anticipated. “I can’t go to him with this, Jake. He’ll fire me.”

“Personally, I don’t know why you’d want to work for someone who’d do this, but if you’re worried about losing your job, you can sue him for wrongful dismissal. Or you can threaten to go to the press if he threatens to fire you.” He got up from the chair. “But you don’t have to confront him. I’ll go get Max now.”

“Jake, Chad’s not just going to hand him over. He wouldn’t go to this trouble for no reason,” she said while struggling to get up and off the lounge chair, wishing she’d worn pants instead of a skirt.

Jake helped her up before she embarrassed herself. Only she kind of did that when she placed a hand on his very muscular chest for balance, was enveloped in his heady masculine scent,and silently muttered, “Why do you have to smell so good?” Except the way the three of them were looking at her suggested that she must have said it out loud instead of in her head.

---