he was definitely targeted.”
“Which means everybody in the company is now in danger—as well as a potential suspect.”
“And yet,” she said, “it still doesn’t make any sense.”
“It will,” he said, his voice grim. “We just don’t know all the details yet.”
“So, what do you want me to do?”
“Stay safe. Stay there with Kai and Tyson.”
Joy took a deep breath. “Fine, I’ll be careful,” she said. “I feel safe here.”
“How can you feel safe,” he said, “when you know that your place was bugged?”
“But that’s past tense,” she said, “it isn’t now. Besides, Kai and Tyson are here. Past meaning that I don’t want to think about it.”
“Not wanting to think about it doesn’t change anything,” he snapped.
“Makes no sense right now.” She took several slow deep breaths, the tension in his voice catching her attention. “What do you want me to do?” she asked.
“I want you to stay alive. That’s what I want you to do.”
“And you? You could have a murderer in that building right now.”
“We’re counting on it,” he snapped, and he hung up. She slowly put down her phone to see the other two staring at her. “I presume you heard the news?”
They both nodded. “Yes,” Kai said. “The cops will be there any second, if they’re not already. Johan and Galen are searching the building, and the members of the board of directors are being contacted.”
“Right. A whole investigation kicks into gear now, I suppose.”
Kai paced around the room. “The real question is, who would want him dead?”
“Well, if he’s the slimy asshole I believe him to be,” Joy said, “the real question is, who wouldn’t want him dead?”
“A huge suspect pool, great. That won’t help,” Tyson said.
“I believe over 240 people work for the umbrella company, so that’s not an enormous pool but big enough.” She stopped, stared, her mind obviously working overtime. “Honestly, even though I kinda like the woman for her tenacity, I’d have to put Phyllis at the top of the list.”
“You don’t believe her when she says she doesn’t care anymore?”
“I don’t know,” Joy said. “It would be hard for me to continue working there.”
“Got it,” Tyson said, “but you’re different from everybody else, and people have all kinds of reasons for doing what they do.”
“I get that,” she said, “but still, I’d be checking into her whereabouts.”
“That’s for the police to do,” he said. “Again we were officially kicked out of that investigation as well. So we’ll do an unofficial investigation. I’m waiting for Johan and Galen to complete a full search on the building.”
“Will that do any good?”
“Yes,” he said. “It will.”
She shook her head. “But why? The cops are there now. They’ll take over, and this person can either hide or disappear in the chaos.”
“Which is exactly what the murderer would do, but the guys have got the security cameras back up.”
She stopped staring, and a slow smile filled her face. “Well now, that makes sense,” she said. “What they need to do is find a central location and stand in place, until they see who is moving through the building.”
“They’re already on it.”
She nodded. “Of course Johan didn’t tell me any of that.”
“Of course not,” Kai said. “But then you two seemed to be at odds.”
“I don’t know what we’re at,” she said, frowning, because she wished she was at the building with him. There was just something very comforting and solid about him. It’s not like any of this chaos in her life would happen if he was here full-time. And yet she had no way to know if that were even true and less reason to believe it. It was foolish to even think such a thing, but that was how she felt. It had likely come from that quiet sense of power he exuded. That competency and that sense of having everything under control. It felt like nothing in her life had been under control since she had moved here. She’d been totally okay for the adventure of planning to relocate, expecting everything to go her way, but, when she’d had such trouble finding a decent job, panic had set in, and she had ended up at Westgroup. It wasn’t what she wanted to do; it wasn’t what she expected, and, now that she was here, it seemed like it would be even harder to find another position. She sagged into place.
Kai walked over, gave her a quick hug, and said, “They’ll be okay, you know?”
“There’s a killer in the building,” Joy said. “I