“That was a long shot anyway. You’ve got other mechanisms in place. Utilize those to infiltrate their system, even if it takes a little longer than you’d like. Remember, Collins, you don’t take down an operation of this size overnight. You millennials need to learn patience.”

If his supervisor caught wind of what Daniel had been doing, he would be singing a different tune. The litany of things he should be working on could fill this entire room. He had a list of potential targets to investigate. Gigabytes of files his FinCEN colleagues had managed to access awaited his review. That’s what he should have been doing instead of seeing how far he could get his tongue down Samiah’s throat.

He’d gotten it pretty damn far.

Fuck. Stay focused!

As the others gave a rundown of their current investigations, Daniel used the time to gain some control over his thoughts. He needed to get his head back in the game and stop allowing himself to get derailed from his overall goal.

“I’m sure everyone has noticed that Stewart isn’t here.” Dwyer’s deep voice corralled his attention away from his musing. “He’s gone under. He got one of the suspects in the Kolinsky case to flip. The cooperator gave him key information on how the oligarch was able to gain access to those millions of credit reports. It may be the thing that cracks this case wide open.”

Daniel’s muscles froze as a deep chill spread from his core throughout his entire body. While he was here in Austin doing his best imitation of the nerdy love interest in a rom-com, Bryce Stewart was kicking ass and taking names on his undercover investigation. Why not just hand the Vegas job over to him right now?

There was more at stake than simply one-upping his office adversary. This job was his opportunity to prove that he’d chosen the right career path. If he closed his eyes, he could hear Joelle’s voice in his head, telling him that he was wasting his skills working in the public sector. Those words had affected him more than he was willing to admit. His need to show her—to show himself—that he’d made the right choice when he joined FinCEN was as important to him as getting the best of Bryce.

And just like that, Daniel knew what he had to do.

When he arrived at Trendsetters the next day, he was refocused and ready to tackle the tasks Lowell Dwyer had entrusted him to complete. His original game plan had been to devote 40 percent of his time to doing Trendsetters’ work and the other 60 percent to ferreting out whoever was behind this money-laundering scheme.