Page 64 of Forged in Deception

And the woman would not let that happen. Not after everything they’d done.

No one would kill their hope.

Not this time.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

ASHER

“Here, you do it,” Karlin ordered. Her fingers shook as she tossed Bajwa’s office keys to Asher.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said mildly, unlocking the door and ushering her inside the inner office confidently, like they belonged there.

Her nervous energy was kind of adorable, but unfortunately, he didn’t have the time to tease her about it. They’d searched the Senera compound for two hours already and had found nothing but some somewhat troubling financial reports and a few lab documents with potentially manipulated data.

He’d told Karlin that this was all about building a case, and that was true. But the reality was that it would be a whole lot easier if they found something super solid instead of a bunch of standard-fare misdeeds.

Not that the afternoon had been a total loss so far.

He’d gotten to see the big lab where Karlin spent most of her days, and the brief tour had given him even more appreciation for her intellect than he already had.

Had they been back in high school right now, there’d be zero chance a girl like her would have ever given him the time of day. The fact that she seemed to be catching feelings for him despite their differences made him all warm and giddy inside.

Clearly Reilly, Cameron, and Ben had been on to something. Meeting a nice girl was a whole lot easier if you could impress her with your private security expertise. He should have really gone with that angle long before now.

“Let’s dig,” Karlin announced, reaching over to yank open one of Bajwa’s desk drawers. “If there is such a thing as a smoking gun in this case, I think it’ll be here.”

Asher nodded and started riffling through a stack of papers, trying his best to shift the pile back into the correct order as he went. “I think you might be right. But like I said, Bajwa’s past doesn’t necessarily mean he’s our big bad. We need to stay open to other possibilities.”

“You mean all the ones we haven’t found anywhere in this building so far?”

He tightened his jaw. “Yep. Keep looking.”

They lapsed into a comfortable silence as they continued to search through Bajwa’s belongings and paperwork. They couldn’t get into his computer, but fortunately, the man seemed stuck in the eighties. Stacks of printed reports, old emails, and tidy folders full of various invoices filled several filing cabinets and covered every surface.

“Does your office look like this?” Asher asked as he skimmed yet another insanely boring document.

Karlin snorted. “I’m more of a minimalist. I truly don’t understand how he can work in here.”

“You’d die if you saw my brother Cam’s office, trust me,” he joked. “At least Bajwa seems to have something resembling a system. Also, note the lack of scattered garbage.”

Karlin made a face. “I’d like his system better if I had any idea what it consisted–”

She raised a sheet of paper to her face, her eyes roving over the words.

“What?”

He dropped his own stack and sauntered up to read over her shoulder.

“No way,” he said, realizing what she held. “May I?”

She handed over the document, her blue eyes lighting up as she smiled. “Emails from what seems to be a very close friend of Bajwa, with a very official FDA, government-issued email address.”

“Hinting at very illegal strings being pulled with his fellow regulators,” Asher finished. “Okay. Maybe not a smoking gun–I can imagine how Senera lawyers are gonna spin this–but it’s good. Really good.”

“Find more. I’ll fire up the copier,” Karlin ordered, striding through the door and back to the anteroom where Bajwa’s secretary, Mayim, usually sat. Her office was immaculate down to the last detail, but hopefully, she wouldn’t be paying too much attention to the copier’s paper supply or its print history.

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