The Mating Call: Drekinn Series (23 page)

Shane laughed and smiled when she dropped her bag on the ground and huffed frustrated. She must be having a bad day. Today would be the last bad day she had if he had anything to do about it. Blake moved his chair around until he could see her too. They watched in silence as she did her normal routine. Blake pulled out his cell phone and called Rex again.

“
Rex, hey, we're taking her after work so we don’t raise any suspicions,” he said into the phone, and Shane nodded.

“
We're ready,” his friend’s gruff tone said into the phone. “Make sure she knows you are friends of mine. Maybe that will at least stop her from screaming bloody murder until you get here. If she thinks she's being kidnapped, she may try to attract attention.”

“
Yeah, yeah, I know. We already have a plan,” Blake said into the phone and smiled.

He finished his conversation and hung up. Blake rubbed his hands together and smiled. “Finally.”

Shane chuckled and looked at his friend. “Yeah, finally.”

***

There was that feeling again, she thought, and looked when she threw away her lunch. Someone was watching her. She walked slowly to the entrance of her building and then paused and glanced behind her.
No one
.

Shaking off her feelings, she walked back into the building to finish up her work and get the hell out of there. Today was the day she left, she had enough information; Phoebe just had to find someone to give it to.

She walked into her office and stored her purse under her desk so she could slip the drive out and back in without anyone noticing. Phoebe became good at it; so far, she had downloaded hundreds of documents the bosses would be pissed about if they found out. She refused to let up though. She needed one last document to make sure she had it all to tie together.

Looking around and smiling politely at the other people surrounding her; none of them realized or cared who they worked for, she thought. It was terrifying to think this many people would work for a mob boss and his sons. The rumors were floating around the office the boss, who had been arrested already, was still calling the shots. If she had been working here for any other reason than what she was, she would have quit. Her morals would never allow her to work for these type of men.

Glancing around the office, she bent over and pushed the small drive into the USB slot. Now to finish what she started, then she was going to go and find her brothers. After researching them, she had discovered that they were honorable men. She knew they would help her. One was in the FBI, and the other was a lawyer who had blown his father's cover and had him arrested.

The file she was looking for was protected. She was able to crack the encryption fairly easily; it contained the bank accounts all the company's illegal activities went to. There was also a list of people that were paid to do different jobs (she assumed that the police would want to know who these animals had killed). They had a list. It wasn’t even very inventive. The file was called the Kill List, which is where she found her brother's names, as well as her mother's. She had been shocked.

While she knew that her birth mother had been killed under suspicious circumstances, but to see in black and white that they had hired some guy named Rocco to kill her, seemed unreal. Where the heck do they come up with these names anyway?

Phoebe looked around and then slipped the drive back into her purse in the side area she had torn out for a hiding spot. When she sat back up, she could see a large, scary man walking toward her with intent.
Oh crap
, she thought, and sank back into her chair and waited. She knew it was a crap shoot if someone would find out she had been copying things. When the beefy man stood in front of her desk he said, "Mr. Digrossi would like to speak to you."

Phoebe nodded and quickly gathered her things and took them with her. At least if they were going to search her, she would know if they found the drive in front of her. Then she could try to explain that she was taking work home. The files she had copied were encrypted on her drive as well; unless they had a smarter computer geek than her, they would never get inside it. Looking at how easy it was to get into the files herself, she knew they didn't have anyone quite as smart as she was working here.

This is when she hated that she had been so smart growing up. Her adoptive parents were very cold. She had never wanted for anything in her life, but when it came to affection, she was starved for it. They tried, but when they adopted her, they thought they couldn't have children. When her adoptive mother found herself pregnant with their own child, they had already completed the adoption. Phoebe knew if they hadn’t signed the papers, they would have given her back. As it was, she was a token child; they had to show how generous they were.

Phoebe made the most of it though. She went to school, and when they learned how smart she was, they put her in accelerated classes, and touted how their daughter, who had come from nothing, had been allowed to flourish under their care. She couldn't count the times she heard her adoptive mother say that if they had never adopted her, Phoebe would have turned out to be a criminal.

When she turned eighteen and they gave her a trust fund, she had thanked them and left. Never contacted them again. She felt bad about taking the money, but she had needed it to make sure she could start a new life. So she had bought a new name and made a new life and researched her biological family.

When she found her birth mother, Tami Shoen, she had been excited, they had met several times, and Phoebe finally thought she found someone who would love her for who she was. They talked about her birth, and she had been surprised to hear that she had been given up in order to protect her. Tami explained who her father really was, and Phoebe had been horrified when she heard all the things he had done, including trying to kill his own children.

Her biological mother and she had really begun to connect when she had been killed. Phoebe had been devastated, and then she began to wonder. The police report said she was drunk and driving on a curvy road in the middle of the night, Phoebe knew for a fact her mother didn't drink. It was one of the things they talked about. Her mother had been a party girl when she was younger, that was how she met Mr. Digrossi; he took advantage of a young woman who was trying to find her way in life. After Tami discovered she was pregnant with her, she stopped drinking altogether. She explained to Phoebe that after making such a huge mistake with her choice of men, she refused to allow impaired judgment as an excuse for her mistakes.

Phoebe had not been a mistake, Tami assured her. But her father was. If she had it to do over again, Tami said she would have been stronger and left with her and hidden from the man. As it was, Digrossi had threatened her, and she gave up her child.

That's when Phoebe hatched her plan; she was going to take the Digrossi family down for taking her mother away from her. She knew they were somehow responsible, and she was going to make sure they paid. But all of her plans could be coming to a head right now as she walked behind the large, rough man who was leading her into the lion's den.

They entered the elevator and Phoebe began to feel the panic rising. "Where are we going?" she asked when she saw the man push a button that went lower instead of to the top floor where the executive offices were.

"Mr. Digrossi is in the security office," he smirked and Phoebe became more afraid.

They knew!
She always thought they would figure out it was her; she just hoped it would be after she left. Obviously she took a little too long to get the information. She knew she should have done it all at one time, but the file she had been searching for was hidden. It took her these extra days to find it. Once she located the first ones, she had just tagged them until she found the rest. But as time wore on, she was afraid of losing what she found, so she started to copy them. With each day, she found more and more incriminating documents. She felt like she had to get them all before she left. Now she knew it was a mistake.

They arrived at the floor where security was housed and the large man grabbed her arm and pulled her in back of him. She made a noise, and he turned and glared at her. "Don't make this harder."

She shivered at the tone the man used and nodded. Walking slowly behind him, she looked around for someone who could help her, but there was no one in the hallway. When they reached the end of the corridor, she wanted to scream. But the man quickly opened the door and shoved her in the office, as if he knew she was about to do something.

Junior Digrossi was sitting at a large desk with his hands folded across his stomach. She supposed some people may think he was handsome, but she thought he looked like a smooth-talking shyster. His black hair slicked back against his head, and his mean eyes that glittered an amber shade. He was tall and built, but she knew it was more from the workouts he got in defense training than from living right. The man was the master of indulgence. If the sites and stuff he had stored on his computer was any indication how sick the man was, she was in trouble. He liked pain, and inflicting pain on women.

"Ms. Stone, it's so good of you to come and see me," he said smoothly.

"Like I had a choice," she muttered and looked at the man defiantly; she was beyond trying to act innocent. She knew that they found out what she was doing, why hide it? She had been caught and was probably going to die. So be it, at least she had sent the documents she already had stored to her unknown brother, Andre. It had been hard finding an address, but she was the best. Phoebe put it in the mail this morning.

Junior Digrossi laughed and she felt a shiver run up her spine. He was pure evil, she thought, and looked at him in the eye, and sadly, he was her half-brother. "So, you know why I called you in here?"

Phoebe paused and weighed her words before answering, this was a game he played; she knew it, so she answered, "I'm assuming it's about my job."

His eyes narrowed and said, "Ms. Stone it has come to my attention that you have been looking into accounts that don't concern you, can you tell me why?"

Phoebe put a confused look on her face; she planned this. "What accounts?"

Junior stood up and stalked her around the desk. "The account you were in just moments before my associate showed up."

She once again made herself look confused and said, "I was dictating a letter for your brother."

"No, you weren't," he said confidently.

"Yes, I was looking at my computer log,” she said. Phoebe knew what it would say; she had written a program to hide what she was downloading when she signed off her computer. Junior may have seen what she was doing in real time, but when he looked back it would say she was dictating a letter to a prospective client.

"You wanna play it that way? Fine," he said and walked back around his desk and turned the computer screen so they could both see what he was looking at. "It shows your last log in this morning at 8am, and then there is your lunch break."

She nodded and looked at him with a stony expression, so he wouldn't think she was worried about her work. When she was hired, she had played this part, a crisp and non-social, dumpy woman. All of her clothes in her apartment looked like they came out of the nineties. She didn't care. Once she was done, she would be able to get her hair done again, and maybe let the glasses go. Although she had come to like the glasses, they actually didn't hurt her eyes like her contacts did when she stared at the computer screen.

"Now this is what I want you to look at, why were you in this file?" Junior said without looking at the screen.

"Because that is what I was hired for," she said back to him and then waited.

Junior glared at her and looked at the computer and froze. "What the fuck?"

"Sir, I really don't like that language in my presence. When I was hired here, I told you then that I was a stickler for proper office behavior," she said briskly and then looked at him.

Junior and his brother had both made it a point to seek out the newly hired females and attempt to hit on them. She had warned them she would not put up with harassment, especially not in the workplace. Later, she had heard Junior and another male executive talking about how they wanted to make her their 'bitch'. Phoebe had been pissed, but she ignored it and kept her mouth shut.

Looking back, she knew she should have handled it differently. She should have actually said something to the assholes, but she had chosen to keep her mouth shut.

"It was right here," he glared at the man who stood behind her. "What the hell happened?"

Rocco walked around the desk and picked up the phone and called someone, she assumed in the computer department. She knew that people watched what the workers were doing; they acted like 'big brother'.

"Can you come in here quickly; something seems to have happened to the screen Mr. Digrossi was working from."

Phoebe rocked back on her flat, ugly heels and waited; she knew they wouldn't find anything, at least not while she was still here, it would take hours for the IT guy to find her trail, if he was even that good.

A small man came into the room without knocking and was mumbling to himself. He rounded the desk as if he didn't even see Junior and pulled the keyboard to him while he looked at the screen. She watched as his fingers flew across the keyboard and felt a lump of fear begin in her stomach.
Shit
, he was good. She assumed since she had never seen any geeks in the building that they didn't have anyone intelligent enough to actually catch her, she was wrong apparently.