Page 100 of Fresh Canvas
The pencil between my lips again was in danger of getting wholly chewed in half.
Maybe if the whole team were to?—
The department meeting!My spine went ramrod straight. Kendra had scheduled another one this afternoon to discuss a potential partnership with a museum in New Mexico. The boardroom was plenty far away from the curation offices. It was the perfect cover.
A dark chuckle tickled my throat. I couldn’t wait to invade Val’s privacy once again.
“How did Nancy Drewdothis?” I cursed my shaking fingers as I glanced over my shoulder for the millionth time. Red lipstick or not, I was officially really bad at this. The familiar, tantalizing scent of Val’s office—hisscent—filled my senses.
Knock it off.
There was no time to miss him right now.
Typing furiously in the darkened room, I strained to hear any footsteps over the loud keyboard.
Before I had left the boardroom, I had scrawled a post-it note with “Stall anyone who leaves” and shoved it into Kate’s hands under the table. Her poker face hadn’t budged at all. No questions asked. If I ever, under any circumstance, found myself in a real crime, I knew who to call. When this case was over, margaritas were on me.
Turns out, Val’s computerhadn’tlogged him out, just like I had predicted. I pumped my fist in the air before my hands flew back to the keyboard.
After taking its ever-loving time, the database finally loaded.
I withdrew the crumpled condition report from the waistband of my skirt, double checking the date. I held my breath as columns and digits began to splay themselves on the screen.
Crap.
Val hadn’t been lying. Well, not about this, at least. The logs wereinsanity. Nonsensical names, employee IDs, dates, and abbreviations of who-knows-what were laughably scattered throughout each column. Time pressed in, stifling me with claustrophobia.
“Screw it.” I widened the search criteria to a week. There was no way I would have a chance to access these documents again, so margins for error didn’t exist. Pressing print, I urged the completion bar to hurry up and send the pages to the copy room.
Val’s office phone began to ring, scaring me about a foot off the ground.
I rapidly closed the software, shut Val’s door, and scurried back to the boardroom with my heart racing.
After slinking back into the meeting, not one staff member was any the wiser, except Kate, of course.
Sherlock, who?
A smirk twisted my mouth as vendetta pounded in my chest.
But a nagging sensation began to taunt me from the recesses of my brain. I frowned. Closing my eyes, I couldn’t shake the feeling I had overlooked something.
Something important.
A bead of cold sweat rolled down my spine as my eyes flew open. Four doors down, the copy room printer was expelling seventeen pages of very incriminating breadcrumbs.
I strained to prevent myself from banging my head against the table.
After the meeting, I launched out of the boardroom, but Kendra stopped me and drew me into a lengthy meeting to check on the soirée. I was then passed to Blythe, who needed to update Kate and me on the marketing team’s social media campaign. Details barely skimmed my brain before floating away. Minutes ticked well into an hour before I finally burst into the copy room.
“Oof.”
I collided with an all-too familiar chest, riddled with an all-too familiar scent.
Val reached out to steady me, the heat from his palm branding my shoulder. The minimal contact sent a pang of longing through me.
Suddenly, it seemed like a grand idea to abandon the investigation and push him against the copy machine with my lips.
My expression must have blinked like a neon sign, screaming, “I Miss You, Take Me, I’m Yours.” Or, “Everyone Has A Hobby. I Don’t Care If Yours Is Thievery.”
