The Last Second by Robin Burcell Read Free Book Online Page B

monitor. “Why are you still working on those things?”
    “I think it’s some sort of program code. Why would they have copied it, unless it was something important?”
    “At least take a break.” He started typing, and she wondered if he even knew she was there. Hell. Did he even know she was a woman? “You want to have sex?”
    He stared at the computer, not hearing a word.
    “We could do it right here. On the desk.”
    “Wait a sec,” he said, typing fast.
    “Isn’t that stuff supposed to be classified or something? It’s from the freaking FBI. What if they catch you?”
    “This from the girl with the sticky fingers? They shouldn’t be leaving this stuff on hard drives if they don’t want someone reading it. Lucky for them it’s only me and not some terrorist, right? Besides, I erased the hard drive so I could reinstall it in the copy machine after I fix it.”
    She hopped off the file cabinet and moved to the window, peering out the slats of the vinyl blinds. The car was still there, the two men sitting in it, but the third man was gone. “Maybe those guys waiting outside are the FBI. Coming to arrest you.”
    “Yeah. Right. Besides, one touch of the button, this thing’s erased. They’ll have a hard time proving their case.”
    “Can you play with this later? I’m hungry.”
    “I called in for pizza right before you got here.” He held up his car keys. “I’ll share if you go pick it up . . . ?”
    She took the keys, gave an exaggerated sigh of discontent—­not that he paid the least bit of attention—­then said, “Money?”
    “Upstairs. And don’t take all of it!”
    “Have a little faith, Bo. I don’t steal from my friends.”
    She walked through the dark shop, then on up the stairs. Bo lived in the loft above the warehouse shop, even though the area wasn’t zoned for residential. Maybe not the nicest view out the second story window, unless you liked to watch cars on the freeway, but the neighborhood was quiet. And since the commercial warehouses closed at night, Bo had considerable privacy, something Piper cherished, since her own apartment complex had paper-­thin walls and nosy neighbors to the extreme. She turned on the light, found his wallet on a mirrored tray at the kitchen counter, took out enough money for the pizza, then stopped. The strangest feeling swept over her, and she looked around, not sure what was wrong. And then it occurred to her that the window was open.
    Strange, since Bo wasn’t the fresh-­air sort, especially in winter, when he was paying for the heat. And it definitely was cold in here.
    Shrugging it off, she turned out the light, and was just starting down the stairs when she heard the swish of the shop door opening.
    She stopped in her tracks. Looked down the stairs, and though from up here she could see only their legs as they both headed straight for Bo’s office, she knew without a doubt they were the two men from the car. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to realize they weren’t there for a late night sale of used copier parts.
    “Bo Brewer?” one said.
    “Who’s asking?”
    “You got something of ours. We traced it to your computer.”
    “Are you the police?”
    “We’re much bigger.”
    Piper’s heart started a slow thud, and she stepped back in the shadows. Please don’t let him get in trouble . . .
    “The numbers you were running? Where’d you get them? And what are you trying to do with them?”
    “I—­I found them. I don’t even know what they are.”
    “That right? From where?”
    “A hard drive. I wasn’t doing anything with them. I just wanted to know what they were.”
    “Where is it? The hard drive?”
    She imagined him pointing to the bin on his desk as he said, “But it’s erased.”
    “Listen real careful. I need to know every copy you made.”
    “Just there. On the computer. But it’s erased. I swear.”
    They were going to arrest him. Would they arrest her, too? She stuffed Bo’s keys in her