She jolted, and her eyes found mine. “I thought I saw someone a few times—outside my apartment building or behind me on the streets—but I must have been imagining it. Forget I said anything.”

She stood, straightened her shoulders and hurried out of the office.

I watched her go, wanting nothing more than to call her back and demand to know every single time she’d seen something that made her nervous. I held my tongue though. I could look into things on my own if she didn’t want to share.

A few seconds after she departed, Kade and Zeke reappeared. They must have been waiting nearby.

“Is she okay?” Kade asked, giving me a look that said she’d better be.

“She’s scared. Seems to think someone has been following her, and given the kind of trouble Tom tends to attract, she might be right.”

Kade scowled. “I’ll have one of the guys check on her every now and then during the day.”

His massive chest heaved, and I could tell he had something else to say. “What is it?”

“It’s not too late to forget this whole thing with Willow. Send her back to Lennox Securities and return to the original plan.”

Zeke sank into one of the chairs opposite me. “I saw that coming.” He cocked a brow at me. “Did you?”

I ignored him. I’d had a pretty good idea what Kade wanted, but Zeke enjoyed winding people up, and it was best not to add fuel to the fire.

“Whatever this is, she’s involved now,” I told Kade.

“I don’t like it,” he replied.

I acknowledged his words with a nod, then turned to Zeke. “Remind me what you were saying before we were interrupted.”

Willow

I shut myself in the office bathroom and locked the door, my mind sprinting a million miles an hour.

If Ronan didn’t have people following me, then who did?

Perhaps I could have imagined the figures in the dark, but not the man who’d followed me after I got Ronan’s job offer. And then there had been the strange phone call with dead air.

I leaned against the door and closed my eyes, taking a few deep breaths. None of this was going as I’d expected. I was supposed to have dug up a heap of intel to have on standby in case Ronan tried to back out of our deal. Instead, I had a feeling Ronan was looking for ways to displace my brother, and someone else was scaring the crap out of me.

I needed to talk to Tom to share my suspicions and let him know about Ronan’s investigation. I headed back to my desk, grabbed my phone, and then returned to the bathroom. I couldn’t risk being overheard. I dialed his number and waited for the call to connect.

“Have you found something we can use against him?” Tom didn’t bother with a greeting.

I gritted my teeth. I was all for saving the family business, but he could be so single-minded it drove me crazy.