“These are mine,” I said inanely.
She nodded, confirming that they were from the grocery bag I’d left behind after almost being knifed in a dark alley. “I’ll replace what I ate last night.”
Quinn looked at both of us with the kind of expression that indicated he wasn’t thrilled not to understand what was going on. He led the way to a smallish room with a big window and a round table and took the seat facing the door. “Please have a seat, both of you.”
I glared at Dallas. Her expression was unreadable, and she didn’t flinch.
Quinn looked back and forth between us for a few long seconds until Dallas finally broke the silence.
“I followed him yesterday after work,” she said on an exhale, like she’d been dreading saying the words. “It’s a game I play. I didn’t mean to scare him.” She turned to face me directly. “I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just something I do to stay sharp.”
“To stay—ˮ I stared at her. “You stalk people to stay sharp?” I turned to glare at Quinn, even as I was rising from my seat. “This is how you get clients? Send a stalker so people freak out and go looking for security?” I shook my head in disgust. “For fuck’s sake.”
“Mr. Curran,” Quinn began, but Dallas shot him some sort of look and, oddly, he sat back. She stood to face me, her unreadable expression finally breaking to something a little bit less severe.
“It’s not a tactic, Mr. Curran,” she said. “It’s a game I call Tracker Jack. I follow random people, ideally without being spotted, and they show me their world. I happened to be in the same L car as you and chose you because of your coat. I followed you to the food store, and you obviously saw me there. I didn’t realize that the redhat, who was also on the train, was following us until he attacked.”
“The redhat,” I echoed, thinking, and trying not to freak out. “You mean the non-descript white guy who came at me with a knife? He was on the train?” She nodded, and I studied her for a moment, my heart pounding with the memory of his face and the damn knife. God, I hated being afraid.
“My question,” she continued, fixing me with dark brown eyes, “is how you knew you were being followed.”
“What, you think you’re a ghost?” I shot back defensively. I fought past the pounding heart to take deep breaths. I’d rather be angry than afraid, because fear came with a side of helplessness, and I refused to be helpless.
The woman didn’t even twitch. “I know I am.”
Quinn watched us over the top of steepled fingers with a look of placid interest, and I glared at him. “If she’s so good, how did the guy get the drop on us both?”
“She,” the woman said pointedly, drawing my eyes back to hers, “made a mistake. Your acting skills are very good.” She said it grudgingly, as if it cost her something to admit that I’d seen her. “It took me too long to realize you’d seen me in the market,” she continued. “It’s obvious now that you were looking for a tail, but I had no way of knowing that.”
I scoffed. “You think you’re so good that the only way for me to have seen you was if I was already looking for someone else?”
“Yes,” she said simply.
“Ridiculous,” I muttered.
“The question stands, Mr. Curran. You are here for a reason. Why did you believe you were being followed?”
The woman—Dallas, I amended mentally—was one of those suit-wearing, good-posture, sensible-shoes, hair-tied-back, professional women who’d probably had to be better than every man in every class she ever took. Women like that made me tired, and except for the sensible shoes, they reminded me of my mother. There was never any freedom to just be around them—everything had to have a purpose or a goal, and they were always ready to judge you if you didn’t. It probably made her really good at her job, but it also sucked the fun right out of every room.
I sighed and finally sat down. Dallas hesitated just a moment, but another look must have passed between her and Quinn, because he gave a slight nod and then she sat across from me.
“I’m in talks with a couple of major corporations about some tech I’m developing,” I said reluctantly. “Two weeks ago, someone broke into an office I sometimes use for meetings. They corrupted a bunch of operating system files trying to get into a computer.”
“How did you determine it was a targeted attack?” Dallas asked.
My expression was bland, but my voice was don’t be an idiot. “When your office is the only one in the whole building that’s trashed, it’s pretty clear who the target is.” Her own expression didn’t change at my snark, and I continued. “I mostly work from home since I sold my last company. Three days ago, someone broke into my car when it was parked outside my house and went through it like they were looking for something specific.”
“The car break-in could be unrelated,” Dallas said. Her voice was low-pitched and calm, but I wasn’t in the mood for calm.
“I’d left this coat in the car, and they didn’t steal it,” I said holding up my Canada Goose bomber. “Do you know how much these damn things cost? The extra credit card I leave in the car for gas was still there too. They were looking for something specific.”
I didn’t miss the blink of judgment in Dallas’s glance toward Quinn, and it annoyed the hell out of me. Annoyed was good though, because it beat the crap out of fear every time.
“Do you have any idea who it might be and what they’re looking for?” Quinn asked in his deep rumble.
“Hard drives, obviously.”
“Why hard drives, and why are you sure?” Dallas asked.
Annoyance was making me an asshole, and yet I couldn’t seem to back it off with her. “Because I’m about to sell the rights to groundbreaking tech to the highest bidder, and no one keeps programs like that online.”
“So, either someone wants to steal the program to sell themselves, or someone doesn’t want you to sell it in the first place. Is that right?” she persisted, apparently unfazed by the asshole sitting in front of her.
“No one else can sell it because it’s not finished yet. I’m offering exclusive rights to a program no one else has and everyone needs.” My patience had frayed. I wasn’t this guy. I never let anger and fear win, because then I lost. I made a conscious effort to calm down, and when I had my heartbeat back under control, I pulled a smile out of my back pocket and put it on. It felt false, but if I wore it long enough, the edges would blend in and they wouldn’t spot the fake.
“So, possibly, someone is trying to prevent you from finishing the program?” Quinn asked, ignoring the mask I’d just pulled on. “That is significantly more serious. What is this product that no one has and everyone needs?”
“It’s proprietary,” I said bluntly.
The curiosity on Quinn’s face shut down into politeness, and after a long, intense moment, he stood up. “Right, well, Mr. Curran, you have Darius Masoud’s information if you’d like to have him look at security for your home. Otherwise, I don’t see that we can help you.”
“That’s it?” I stared at Quinn in disbelief. “Sterling said this is the best security company in the city. What about the guy who attacked me?” I looked over at Dallas, frowned, and amended, “Us.”