Deadly Little Secrets Page 0,7
who asked and enjoyed The Experience, no matter if it was a bust or if the guy was an ass, or ax murderer. She believed you learned something or got something even if there was absolutely nothing to it beyond one date. Ana, on the other hand, believed there should be at least one damn good reason to go, and preferably seven damn good reasons, including a background check that turned up single status.
Not that she didn’t like men; she did. She just didn’t trust them after her run-in with a married man in Italy. Getting your heart broken by someone eligible was one thing. Being lied to and led on, when you were a data geek who should know better, was another.
Resigned, Ana moved to a bench at the side of the building. “Sounds fun. So, tell me about him.”
“Seriously?” Jen sounded suspicious.
“You don’t want me to run him, I won’t. Seriously.” It was a little lie, and unless he was an ax murderer, Jen wouldn’t have to know what Ana had done.
“Okay,” Jen said and plunged into a description of the guy and what he was like and how well they’d gotten along. Peppered throughout her monologue were the guy’s name—Jack D’Onofrio—and his business—magazine distribution—so Ana would easily be able to do a quick background check on the guy.
“So, what was the dating service like? Tell me about it.”
Jen skated over the question, continuing to detail Jack D’Onofrio’s sterling qualities.
That bore checking out. Avoidance was Jen’s modus operandi of choice when something bothered her, and she had yet to learn that it would put Ana’s radar up quicker than anything.
“So, if you enjoy your date with this Millionaire Jack, what happens then?”
“No telling,” Jen said cheerfully. “Like any guy, if we hit it off, we hit it off. This service, they’ve got a lot of rules and stuff. They want to set me up with someone else too, so that the guys kinda compete, you know?”
Ah, there’s the rub, Ana decided. Jen didn’t like to do more than one at a time.
“Anyway,” Jen rattled on, “the other guy wasn’t my thing so I’m not keen.” Jen said it offhandedly, as if it were as simple as saying “no thanks,” but again Ana sensed there had been a whole lot more to it. “But Jack—” Jen was quickly back on track with tales of her new beau.
Knowing it might take a while for the litany to run down, Ana headed into the building and back to her desk. “And then Jack said…”
Ana finally got off the phone by agreeing to meet for lunch on Saturday to hear all about the dinner. She swiveled to her personal laptop, booting it up and setting a series of searches to run on Mr. D’Onofrio. The primary search didn’t take long. Nothing but his magazine businesses popped, which surprised her, but she decided that maybe, for once, Jen might have pulled a decent card from the deck.
“And now for my own aces and kings,” she muttered, beginning background checks on the two men she would be meeting on Monday. Nothing like a little legwork to pass the afternoon.
“Well, well, well,” she muttered several hours later as she began the run on Gates Bromley. The initial run on Davros Gianikopolis had been extensive. The man had holdings all over the world, from Singapore to Bangalore to a plant in Bisonsville, Kansas. Wading through the listing of the business holdings bought and sold in the last year alone had taken an hour and a half. She’d saved and logged the rest of the search for reading later.
As the pings and bings notified her that her first search was done, she opened files and began to read. “Look what we have here, a rap sheet. Hmmm,” she mused, vaguely disappointed that it was short. She really wanted a reason to dislike Mr. Velvet Voice.
The sheet was fairly mild for someone in security work. Bromley’s title might be special assistant, but she’d read between the lines when she got to the real data. He’d been rapped on the knuckles for assault, a frequent charge when keeping the hoi polloi from a public figure like “Mr. G,” as the media had dubbed Bromley’s boss. Bromley had beat all the charges or had them dismissed, but there were quite a few. A second search finished with a beep, and she opened that file on top of the other.
“Yeah, yeah, where’s the good stuff?” she groused, scanning the pages rapidly