Free Tempt Me by Tamara Hogan Page B

puffy or bruised, but who knew what damage was hidden under all that wadded-up knit? “Did you ice it last night?”
    She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Dad.”
    His concern wasn’t the least bit fatherly, but now probably wasn’t the best time to bring that up.
    “Let’s get started.” As he entered the conference room, Lukas flicked off the lights with his elbow and sat down, gesturing to Rafe to take the seat at his left. He set the apple in front of Bailey, who’d taken the seat to his right. He rolled the orange across the table to Antonia, who ignored it.
    Jack snatched the orange before it hit the floor, and tossed it to Chico. “Let’s get everyone up to speed.” With a click, the wall-mounted flat-screen woke up, displaying what looked like a message board of some type. “Late last week, a poster named Coyote revealed Bailey’s association with Sebastiani Labs on a popular hacker bulletin board. Since that time, there’s been a noticeable uptick in malicious incursion attempts. The extra work has kept SL’s network staff a little busy this week.” Jack looked at Bailey. “Status on last night’s attack?”
    Bailey stretched her neck. “Countermeasures held.”
    She’d worked last night? Rafe shot Lukas an annoyed glance.
    “Last weekend sometime, Bailey’s condo was broken into and a computer was stolen.”
    As Chico asked questions about the break-in, Rafe skimmed the screen. “You’re The Queen Bee?” he asked Bailey.
    She shrugged. “I was.”
    “Cute. Who’s Coyote?”
    Lukas abruptly stood, glancing at the ceiling again. “Excuse me.” He left the room without saying anything else.
    “Code Red?” Chico asked Jack. Lukas had the ability to connect a perpetrator to a crime scene by an emotional taste or signature, and was on call to their police force 24/7.
    Jack’s mini lay silently at his place at the table. “Nothing here.”
    “Scarlett’s not feeling well,” Rafe offered. “He’s probably checking on her.”
    “Let’s keep going. He’ll catch up.” Jack clicked a button on the small remote he carried, and the screen filled with a picture of a very handsome man, mid-to-late thirties, with pale skin, twinkling blue eyes, and black bangs that flopped over his forehead. His boyish charisma positively leaped off the screen.
    “Coyote is a computer security consultant named Wyatt Cooper. He and Bailey have some history.”
    Jack’s loathing for the guy leached into the room. Sitting in the projector’s milky backwash, Bailey’s expression was battened down tight, but her emotions roiled like a storm at sea.
    They’d been lovers, of course. And he’d hurt her. An unfamiliar, wild tightness made his jaw clench and his temples throb.
    He wanted to tear the guy apart.
    “Get in line.” Chico clapped a hand onto his shoulder before dropping into Lukas’s empty chair.
    Across the room, Antonia rolled her eyes at the lot of them, no doubt attributing their reaction to testosterone poisoning. Well, she was dead wrong. His sister might be a genius, but she lacked the chromosome necessary to assess the fine nuances of the situation.
    It was unacceptable that this Dead Poet’s Society reject had caused Bailey even one second of pain.
    Jack walked through Cooper’s educational background, financials, and current residence.
    “Minneapolis,” Rafe noted with a scowl. “There’s a coincidence.”
    “Now we have to go back in time a little bit.” Jack clicked, displaying an old picture of Bailey.
    “Must we?” she muttered.
    “You know we do.”
    Rafe stared at the picture. She had the same haircut, was the same height and weight, and wore jeans and a sweater against northern California’s fall chill, but she looked...so damn young. It was all in the eyes. She looked brazen, confident, ready to kick the world in the ass—not yet knowing that sometimes the world kicked back.
    As Jack described her relationship with Cooper—lab partners in her computer science doctoral