8. Madelyn

CHAPTER 8

Madelyn

I wake up the morning after Dominic’s appearance at my workplace armed with a plan. Since it’s pretty clear I can’t get rid of him, the obvious thing to do is ignore him until he grows bored and leaves on his own.

The only problem is that he doesn’t strike me as the sort of man to give up easily. But I can do this. Kill him with kindness.

It’s what my mom used to say.

Sometimes the best weapon a person can wield is kindness, Maddie. Kill them with kindness.

Granted, in the real world, you can’t actually kill people with kindness. But for a seven-year-old girl who was prone to punching boys in the face, it was pretty solid advice. From today onwards, if I have no choice but to speak to Dominic, I’ll be perfectly amiable.

I’m good at that, pretending away my feelings. I don’t feel angry or embarrassed. I feel nothing when it comes to him. I repeat the words like a mantra over and over in my head. I repeat it as I step into my office at work.

Surprisingly, he doesn’t show up to the morning debrief. Joshua carries on the meeting without pointing out his obvious absence, which is odd. I know he’s already here; I caught sight of him in his office when I was coming in. Dominic’s just choosing not to show. If it was anyone else absent, Joshua would make a disappointed face and call them out for it in his office. But with Dominic, he’s obviously letting him do as he wishes.

That does not go over well with Kenny.

“You catching the favoritism going on?” he asks after the meeting when we head over to grab donuts. “Hale doesn’t show up for the mandatory debrief and Joshua doesn’t even bring it up?”

I shrug. “Maybe he’s busy?”

Kenny shakes his head. “No, it’s not that. I heard the only reason Hale got the job is because those two are friends. Joshua pulled some strings.”

My eyebrows rise. “Are you serious?”

I’m finding it hard to believe because, number one, I seriously thought Joshua was better than that. And number two, I never would have pegged Dominic as a guy capable of having friends.

“Yeah, he absolutely did. The entire thing has a bad smell. The guy suddenly shows up as an intelligence analyst when we already have an extremely qualified and capable one?—”

“Thanks, Kenny,” I say with a warm smile.

He smiles back and then continues. “I took a peek at his file, and Hale’s got no work experience prior to this job. The guy drives an Audi. He’s obviously loaded, so what the fuck is he even doing here?”

I take all that in silently for a couple of seconds. “What else did you see in his file?” I question curiously.

“Not much more, to be honest. He’s thirty-one years old, graduated from Harvard, studied computer science. It’s all clean information to justify his being here, but I’m still suspicious as fuck. He gives me a bad vibe.”

Damn. I’ve never seen him react this strongly to anyone, ever.

“I’m sure he’s not that bad,” I say, waving off his concerns. I can’t believe I’m defending Dominic right now.

“Why? You know him?” Kenny counters with a raised eyebrow.

“What?” I say on a laugh. “Of course not.”

“Really? Because you two looked pretty cozy yesterday when I found him in your office. And then you agreed to go out for lunch with us when you never do. It seemed like you couldn’t get out of your office fast enough. Why is that?”

Jeez, I feel like I’m being interrogated.

I smile, looking up at him. “There’s nothing going on, Kenny. I promise. Yesterday, Dominic was just asking me something about work. He and I are strangers.”

He’s a stranger who knows what it’s like to be inside of me, but a stranger nonetheless.

Kenny still looks a little suspicious, but he shrugs and his expression clears. “Alright. Just be careful around him, Maddie. Okay?”

“You got it,” I assure him. “I’m going to head over to my office. See you later.”

Armed with a donut in one hand and a cup of coffee in another, I start walking towards my sanctuary. But of course, I have to run into the devil himself on the way. I’m about to start scowling. Then I remember my mantra.

“Is that supposed to be breakfast?” he questions, eyeing my hands.

The man has a weird obsession with my meals.

“Good morning, Dominic,” I say brightly in reply. “Did you have a good night?”

His brows furrow. “What’s wrong with you?”

“What do you mean?” I ask innocently.

“Cut the shit. What’s up with the complete one-eighty attitude?”

He has such a way with words. It makes me want to slap him half the time.

“I’m trying to be friendly. Like you said, I can’t get rid of you. I figured we should be friends instead.”

“Friends,” he repeats dryly.

“Yes, friends. On that note, can I call you Dom, instead of Dominic? Friends call each other by nicknames.

“I don’t ascribe to the idea that nicknames are necessary for interpersonal relationships. Or any relationships at all,” he informs me in a bland tone.

I blink, my mouth agape. After a couple of seconds, I manage to shut it.

“I’m still going to call you Dom,” I decide.

“Do whatever you want, Madelyn. But you will not shut me out,” he states, eyes narrowing.

I take a sip of my coffee, my expression innocent. “Who said anything about shutting anybody out? I’m talking to you right now, aren’t I? In fact, I fully believe we can peacefully co-exist as coworkers in this environment.”

“Coworkers, friends, you and your needless labels. What, calling yourself my ‘one-night stand’ isn’t enough for you?”

My eyes widen and I hurriedly look around to make sure no one heard him.

“Announce it to the whole world, why don’t you?” I whisper-shout.

A muscle ticks in his jaw before he exhales. “Come on,” he prompts, turning around.

“Where are we going?”

“Your office. We have to work on something together.”

I don’t argue as we walk over to my office. I take a seat in my chair, placing my donut in a safe place before looking back at him.

“What’s up?”

“You and I are going to solve the case of the missing kids that happened over at Northwestern,” he announces.

My jaw drops. “That case is almost a decade old.”

Is he crazy? Does he have any idea how many people have tried and failed to find those missing kids?

“So you’re familiar with it,” Dominic says with a satisfied nod. “Good.”

“Of course I’m familiar with it,” I mutter.

It happened about two years before I joined the FBI. I remember being a little obsessed with the case, doing anything I could to find out what happened to those kids. In the end, I couldn’t. It still haunts me.

“I already looked through all the information on record about the case. Four kids, all in their third year of college, are suddenly abducted one night. There’s no ransom call, no news—they simply vanish. Chicago PD is called to investigate, but they get nowhere. Then the FBI gets involved.”

I have no clue why he’s telling me all this, but this is the most he’s ever spoken in my presence, and I’m intrigued to find out where he’s going with it.

“The FBI didn’t find out much, either,” I say, deciding to add my two cents. “The only thing we could establish was that all four of them were involved in an academic research project sponsored by a private tech company, SyTech Labs. But it wasn’t just them. There were more than ten kids in that program. Why were only those four targeted?”

“I talked to one of them,” Dominic states.

My eyes widen in shock. “What?”

“Not one of the missing kids. Obviously,” he says on a smirk. He grabs one of my keyboards and takes over one of my screens. He logs into his own account and pulls up a picture of a young woman in her late twenties with brown hair. “Emily Raines. She was a part of the research project.”

“They already interviewed all of the remaining kids from back then. None of them knew anything,” I tell Dominic.

“They said they didn’t know anything,” he corrects. “But something interesting came up after my phone call to Emily last night.”

“You called her?”

He nods. “Right after I received confirmation that she would talk to me.”

“And how could you have confirmed that?”

“Her husband works for Verona Energy. I happen to be a major investor at the company,” he replies.

My brain hurts. “You’re an investor at one of the biggest renewable energy companies in the US?”

“What can I say, baby? I’m a big believer in global warming,” he tells me, expression amused.

This is unbelievable.

“Circle back to Emily Raines. What exactly did you do?”

“I convinced her to tell me what really happened seven years ago.”

“You mean you threatened her with her husband’s job. Oh my god, Dominic,” I exclaim. “We’re the FBI. We don’t threaten or blackmail people.”

He simply rolls his eyes. “Are you done? Because you’re going to be interested in what she had to say.”

My chest heaves with a sigh. “What did she say?”

“Apparently, the four missing kids accessed restricted areas at SyTech Labs. Emily thinks they saw something they shouldn’t have.”

“While that’s good to know, it can’t be the basis for a reinvestigation. SyTech is a powerful conglomerate now. Back then, they refused to cooperate with the cops or the FBI, citing trade secrets. Now they’re practically untouchable.”

Dominic’s gray eyes darken. “No one’s untouchable.”

I pause at the expression on his face. That might be the most emotion he’s ever displayed. He blinks and everything disappears.

“You’re right, though, Emily Raines’ testimony wouldn’t be enough to re-open the case. Which is why I hacked into SyTech.”

“You did what?” I screech.

Oh my god, he’s insane. He’s insane and he’s going to get himself in trouble.

“I hacked into SyTech,” he repeats like I didn’t hear him the first time. “Don’t worry, I didn’t find much. They developed a Botox treatment a couple months after the kids died. I’m guessing that’s what the kids stumbled upon when they accessed the labs.”

“That’s such a reach,” I point out.

“Maybe, but the man in charge at the time, Kelvin Reyes, was a managing director. Today, he’s vice-president with a shit-ton of power. If anyone’s benefitted from the kids disappearance, it’s him. Plus, he has a past. Reyes used to work for a drug lord in a Mexican cartel until he cleaned up his act and stared working for SyTech.”

How the hell did he find out all that? Damn.

“You’re still reaching, Dominic,” I say, although what he’s saying doesn’t sound like a conspiracy theory anymore.

He might be right. Holy shit, he might be right.

“Which leaves me with only one other option. Money. If we can find a paper trail that connects Reyes with someone at the university, we’ll have enough evidence to reopen the case,” he explains. “He has to have had help from someone there in order to abduct the kids in the first place.”

I swallow. That actually makes a lot of sense. “So you want to look through the accounts of at least a dozen people from eight years ago?”

That will take forever.

“Yeah. You can do it, right?”

I scowl. He smirks. Asshole.

“Of course you can. Get to it, Madelyn. I’ll check back in at lunch so you can eat,” he informs me.

I roll my eyes. Again with the concern about my meals. He gets to his feet to leave, but I stop him.

“Hey, Dominic,” I call. “Why do you care so much? The kids are almost certainly already dead. They can’t come back.”

“I’m not doing it for them,” he replies, turning around and facing the door. “I’m doing it for the people still waiting for them. Their families. They deserve to know who’s responsible for their deaths. They deserve closure,” he states. And then he’s walking out of my office.

His words resonate deep within me. So deep it hurts. Dominic might not be as robotic or unfeeling as I thought he was.

Maybe deep down, he has an actual human heart.

Thanks to him, the case is cracked wide open with fresh investigations. Emily Raines and the rest of the kids step forward with new statements that lead us on a trail to a professor at the school—the one who had been in charge of the SyTech project. Apparently, he helped with the cover up. He confesses soon enough that the kids were abducted and killed because they stumbled upon illegal human trials at the company’s laboratory. Kevin Reyes is also implicated and it’s found out that he orchestrated the whole thing.

The entire story is national news two days later, with the perpetrators brought to justice. The kids’ murderers are apprehended and their families are finally able to get some peace.

And it’s all because of Dominic. If he’d never tried to get to the bottom of it all, none of this would have happened. I walk through his open office door holding a potted plant fitted with a red bow. Dominic raises an eyebrow in question.

“Hey, superstar,” I greet.

He’s become pretty popular in the office after the whole SyTech thing. I’m pretty sure he hates all the attention, but he did something truly amazing. And while I’m almost certain half the things he did to get to solve the case weren’t exactly legal, I’m glad he succeeded.

“I can’t believe you’re walking into my office of your own free will,” he drawls before nodding toward the plant in my hand. “What’s that supposed to be?”

I grin and place the pot on a corner of his desk, directly in the sunlight.

“It’s a cactus and a gift.” I announce proudly. “They’re pretty easy to take care of so you don’t need to worry about it. Just water it sometimes and it’ll grow. They’re pretty resilient.”

He watches me intently, studying me like he can see into my head. “And what have I done to deserve this gift ?”

“It’s a peace offering. I’ve come to realize there’s more than enough room for two intelligence analysts on the team. And you’ve proven yourself to be useful, so I figured we could start over.”

“There was nothing wrong with how we began in the first place,” he interjects.

My cheeks heat as I remember exactly how we began and what it entailed.

“The point is, I want to put it all behind us. Could we just be friends?”

“Friends, huh?” he asks, seemingly amused.

“Yep.”

He’d be a friend I fantasize about every night before bed and every morning when I wake up. But a friend nonetheless.

“Alright, Flowers. Let’s try it your way, then. Friends,” he says in agreement.

I beam. “Wait, Flowers? Is that a nickname? What happened to Mr. I-don’t-ascribe-to-nicknames-because-they’re-unnecessary-for-interpersonal-relationships?” I ask with raised eyebrows.

“Flowers isn’t a nickname.” He smirks. “It’s more of a description of you. Plus, it’s similar to your last name, Flores. But I’m not a big fan.”

“Of my last name?” I ask, feeling a rush of something go through me.

He nods once. This entire conversation is bizarre as hell.

“I prefer cacti to flowers,” I tell him.

“Don’t worry, Madelyn, flowers can have thorns as well,” he says, almost reassuringly. “That’s why it suits you so well.”

I blink, watching him for an incredibly long moment. He doesn’t move a muscle under my scrutiny, keeping up his easy, emotionless expression.

What is it about you, Dominic? Why do I constantly feel so drawn to you?