The window was rapidly closing. If whoever was behind this closed up all the bank accounts they’d been monitoring, tracking them would be almost impossible.

He had to infiltrate that database. In it lay everything they would need for a capture and conviction. Someone on the Trendsetters side was inflating the number of customers logging into Hughes Hospitality’s free Wi-Fi every month. Even if he wasn’t able to discover who was behind it, getting into their system would give him the raw data on the actual number of logins. Once they were able to show the discrepancy, that would be enough for a court order.

But none of that would happen if he couldn’t bypass their security and access the damn database.

Except now he could.

Daniel sucked in a swift breath, fighting against the wave of nausea that pummeled him. The thought had lingered at the periphery of his conscience since the moment he learned that Samiah’s security access had been changed. He’d quickly banished any notion of using her. This job was important, but it could not come at the expense of hers.

As he peered down at her face right now, the tension in his shoulders eased by a tiny degree. She was peace and fire and satisfaction and love all rolled into one. He could not do this to her.

But would he ever have a better chance of getting into that system?

Weighing the costs of betraying Samiah versus not betraying her was a game he never wanted to play, but he didn’t have the luxury of not playing it. Not anymore. He’d wanted to give himself one more week to infiltrate the Trendsetters licensing database, but now Daniel wasn’t sure he had a week to spare. At the rate those bank accounts were closing, he might not have another twenty-four hours before the money-laundering outfit went completely dark.

The implications of that happening sent the tension shooting right back into his muscles. At last count, a little over eighteen million dollars had been laundered through the Trendsetters Wi-Fi payment system software. The money had been used to fund a chain of payday loan businesses, but the DHS had put Quentin on the case because they suspected those were just a front for other criminal enterprises. They had to put a stop to it now. Before more money could be funneled. Before more people met with “accidents” like the one Daniel suspected Mike Epsen had.

There was no question that Mike’s accident was related to this case, not after discovering the man had been on the initial rollout team. The fact that the anonymous tipster had been uncommunicative since the accident only proved that those behind the money-laundering scheme who wanted to silence Epsen had accomplished the mission they’d set out to achieve when they ran him into that city bus.