Page 6 of Find Me
He could feel the heat radiating from her body as he stood just a few steps away, her determination palpable in the air. It was getting harder for him to resist the urge to reach out and touch her—to trace the delicate curve of her jaw or tuck a stray lock of hair behind her ear. The way she furrowed her brow when faced with a challenge tightened his groin in ways foreign to him.
“Got it,” Penny announced triumphantly. “I’m in.”
“Nice work,” Hawke praised, forcing himself to focus. “What did you find?”
“Julia definitely spends a lot of time at this bar downtown. At least, according to these photos,” she said, scrolling through the data on her screen. “She’s there nearly every night.” She tapped the enter button and small squares popped up on her screen showing time stamps over the last month. “Nine o’clock, which is about a half an hour from now.”
“Where did you get these stills?” he asked.
“Used face recognition on the cameras situated around the city.”
“Damn, Red, you’re good.” Hawke leaned in, their shoulders touching, caught in the magnetic pull to her.
“You’re right, I am,” Penny said with a laugh.
* * *
“All right,”Hawke said, after they gathered all the intel they could on the bar. “We should set up surveillance equipment in Julia’s apartment and grab something from her place so we can see if her fingerprints are on the bugs.”
Penny nodded. “It’s a good way to confirm she’s the one behind this. I know a place where we can get everything we need—hidden cameras, audio devices, you name it.” She glanced at him sidelong, a smile tugging at her lips. “You sure you’re ready for this, Foster?” She regretted throwing the playfulness out there the moment the words left her lips.
“Always ready, Larson,” he replied with a wink, and she felt a familiar warmth flood through her at the sight of his grin.
She moved to her bookshelf, and behind one of the books was a fingerprint scanner. The moment it read her print the wall whisked open and a small room was revealed, full of surveillance equipment.
“Let’s see…” Penny mused, her fingertips tracing over the shelves lined with an array of discreet gadgets. “We’ll need a couple of these,” she said, plucking two small, black cameras from the display. “These are perfect for hiding in plain sight, and the image quality is top-notch. And for audio”—she grabbed a handful of tiny listening devices—“we can put these in various spots around her apartment.”
As she handed him the equipment, she noticed the marvel in Hawke’s expression. Their hands brushed against one another, and she couldn’t help the way her senses narrowed on the feel of him.
Whatever spell he was conjuring was working, but too bad for him, logic reminded her that feelings this intense made women weak.
She refused to go down that road. She’d made peace with staying single and focusing on her business.
“Good choices,” he said, doing a piss-poor job of controlling the huskiness of his voice. “We’ll need to be in and out quickly, without leaving a trace.”
“There is nowe,” Penny said with a laugh. She turned, and his eyes locked on hers with a fierce intensity that made her stomach clench. “You’re the retired SEAL. I’m the hacker. I don’t do dangerous things.”
At that, he lifted an eyebrow. “You don’t do dangerous things?”
“Nope,” she said, fighting against the blush creeping along her cheeks that told her he wondered if she considered hima dangerous thing.
Damn. He was hot and dangerous, and everything that made her hot as hell.
“Penny,” he said, breaking the silence.
She met his gaze again.Be cool.“Yeah?” she asked, glancing his way again.
He took a step closer before he stopped himself. “If you don’t put the surveillance equipment in yourself, who does?”
“I outsource.”
His jaw muscle twitched. Once. Twice. “To who?”
“Someone I trust.” Which was Elise, but no way in hell would Penny rat out Elise to Archer’s friend. Archer was protective and she doubted he’d approve.
He watched her closely, his expression revealing nothing. “Do you have a lot of people you trust?”
“No,” she said simply, breaking the eye contact. “We need to catch her at her house before she leaves to make sure it’s safe to go in.”
