The Intelligence Unit Series
The Guardian Chapter 6

After a weekend full of ibuprofen, Netflix, and Camila's homemade chicken tortilla soup ("you don't seriously think I'm going to let you spend the weekend alone after you just got mugged, do you? What kind of best friend do you take me for, mija?"), Delia felt better, at least in the physical sense. The skull-rattling pain in her head had been reduced to a throb, then again to a dull ache as the weekend had progressed, and her bruises had already grown less tender and begun to fade.

Her resolve, on the other hand, felt as if it had taken the express route through a wood chipper. Just as Matteo had expected, her cell phone had been turned off less than two minutes after her attacker had left her on the pavement, and the canvass the patrol officers had done at the scene had yielded not one lead. Neither her bag nor any of its contents had been recovered. That big, brave step she'd so recklessly taken when she'd downloaded those files had not only come back to bite her square on the a*s, but had done so with a near-galactic level of embarrassment. Bad enough that the first time she'd seen Matteo in four years, she'd just had to be wearing a droopy hospital gown that had barely covered her underwear, let alone her freaking dignity. No, she'd just had to add insult to injury (literally) by trying to sidestep the truth, only to be called out, then told in no uncertain terms that her big, brave step had been a great big flop.

Sitting back at her desk, Delia released a heavy sigh. Her laptop might've been replaced by the IT department as soon as she'd walked in the door an hour ago, but-just as she'd feared-every single account added up right down to the penny. No trace of the discrepancies she'd seen. No mysterious encrypted file.

No proof that she hadn't imagined it all.

A knock sounded off on her door, bringing her chin from her chest and her brain back online. "Come in," Delia said.

She'd no sooner gotten the words out than the door to her office rushed open. "Holy moly, Delia!" Kent edged his glasses higher over the bridge of his nose as he looked from the cell phone in his hand to the spot where she sat behind her desk. "I'm so sorry. I was swamped with the McElroy merger over the weekend so I went radio silent to get the work done. But Latoya in IT just told me you were mugged on Friday?"

Delia's face warmed with a fresh batch of homemade embarrassment, but she put on a brave face. "Yeah. Luckily, I had my keycard in my pocket, so we don't have to worry about any of the account information that was on my laptop being exposed. Sorry we had to replace it, though," she said, but Kent waved her off.

"We have all sorts of security measures in place for stuff like that. Insurance, too. Plus, I've got, like, thirty laptops in the IT storage locker. I can barely keep track of them all."

He gave up a sheepish shrug. Honestly, Delia wasn't all that surprised. Kent never seemed to have forgotten the days when Cromwell A&M was just a four-person outfit working out of the spare room over his parents' garage.

"I'm more worried about you," he said, sending an owlish blink through his glasses. "Are you okay? Do you need a few days off? Of course, your insurance should cover all the hospital bills, but if it doesn't-"

"Oh, no. I'm fine, really," Delia said. She'd worn a top that covered her healing bruises, for the most part, and her headache really had receded into not much more than a bad memory. "It was scary, but very few personal robberies end up with life-threatening harm to the victims." A fact that Matteo had-naturally-been right about, and that Delia had-naturally-researched when she'd gotten home. "Actual statistics vary across jurisdictions, of course, but...yes. I'm fine."

"You're sure?" Kent asked, and Delia nodded.

"Yep. I just want to forget about it and move on."

"Okay, then. If you change your mind about taking some time off to rest, just let me know." Heading to the door, Kent stopped three steps shy of the threshold as if his body had just caught up with his mile-a-minute thoughts. "Oh! I almost forgot. You emailed me on Friday asking if we could talk. What's up?"

Shit. Shit. Delia had been hoping her email had gotten lost somewhere between his work on the merger and his typically scatterbrained mind. But even if she could be one hundred percent sure she'd seen something untoward in the accounts, she couldn't prove it, and she definitely couldn't prove who had done it. Flinging around accusations with no shred of truth to back them up was career suicide, not to mention potentially slanderous. Matteo was right. She didn't have any recourse.

"Oh, gosh," Delia said, pasting a smile over her face that made for a tight fit. "I forgot all about that. It turned out to be nothing. I figured it out on my own. No worries."

Kent gave her a funny look, caught somewhere between concern and disbelief. "If something's on your mind, I'm happy to talk it out."

"No! I mean"-she grabbed wildly for her composure, forcing it down with a deep breath-"it was just a silly problem with the account balances. User error on my part. All fixed."

"Oh." The look on Kent's face lingered, but only for a beat before-thank the stars-his mind seemed to catch on something else. "Well, okay. Glad you got it all sorted out, although, I'm not surprised. I know I've been really distracted with the McElroy thing, but Peyton's taking the lead now that I've negotiated the terms of the merger and gotten the legalities in place. In fact, she'll probably be out of the office all day in meetings. So, if anything like that comes up again..." "You'll be the first to know," Delia chirped.

"Well, technically, I'll be the second to know, because you'll have been the first," he said with a goofy grin, and Delia had to laugh.

"Fair enough."

Waving as Kent left her office, Delia turned back to her newly minted laptop. No less than six separate times, she tried to replace a solid groove with her work, to let the logic and the order of the color-coded numbers soothe her mind. No less than six separate times, she failed spectacularly, until finally, she propped her elbows on her desk and her head in her hands.

She hadn't been wrong about those accounts. She hadn't.

Nothing would have made her skirt the rules by downloading those files other than one hundred percent certainty. Yes, Matteo might have told her she had no options, and Delia understood, at least in the logical sense, that the odds of replaceing her attacker or recovering her things weren't in her favor. But he'd been so quick to dismiss most of what she'd said, and even quicker to shuffle her off to the fraud division (a.k.a. where paperwork goes to die-she knew, because she'd checked the success rates on those cases when she'd researched the stats on robbery-related deaths). Her case might not be a big deal to a hotshot Intelligence Unit detective, but couldn't he at least have listened a little before shooting down everything she'd told him?

And while she was at it, couldn't he have been a little less gorgeous as he'd grouched his way through her statement, too?

Her cell phone buzzed halfway across her desk, making her jump. Peering down at the caller ID, her breath caught in her throat.

Remington Police Department.

Flattening one palm over her desk to steady herself, she used her other hand to pick up the call. "Delia Sutton."

"Ms. Sutton? This is Sergeant Callahan, from the Thirty-Third precinct. You reported some items stolen in a personal robbery on Friday night, is that correct?"

"Oh, my God," Delia blurted, her heart beginning to race. "Yes! Did you replace my laptop?"

The pause on the other end shorted out her hope before the sergeant could answer. "I'm sorry, no. But one of our officers did locate an item that matches the description of something on your list. A pendant?"

Delia's heart squeezed. "Oh! Yes. It's a moonstone pendant, about the size of a quarter. It changes from silvery gray to aqua, depending on the light. It's on a length of black leather cord, with a silver plate on the back that reads To Delia, Love Dad." "That's the one," Sergeant Callahan said. "Would you like to come down to the precinct to pick it up?"

"Yes, please."

The pendant might not be her laptop or the flash drive she so desperately wanted, but at least it was something. Thanking the sergeant, Delia ended the call, eyeballing first the time, then the work in front of her. It was a little early for lunch, but she wasn't getting anything done, anyway. Maybe retrieving her pendant would give her enough peace of mind to focus.

Gathering her purse, she headed to the elevator, then out to the street beyond. The drive to the Thirty-Third precinct was a matter of minutes without traffic to fight, and soon enough, she found herself in the lobby, going through security to gain access to the large front desk that spanned half of the space beyond.

"Can I help you?" asked a uniformed officer whose nameplate read Sergeant Pearl Callahan.

"Sergeant Callahan, hi," Delia said brightly, then realized-duh-that the woman had no clue who she was. "I'm Delia Sutton. We spoke a little while ago? About my pendant?"

"Ms. Sutton. Of course," Sergeant Callahan said with a polite smile. Turning toward another officer who was standing not far from Delia, she said, "Matthews. You're probably going to want to take this one since you made the replace. On that pendant, from the personal robbery?"

The cop didn't hesitate. "Oh, yeah. Sure. Hi." He walked over and extended a hand toward Delia, his green eyes crinkling around the edges, and okay, wow, apparently, good-looking was a job requirement around the Thirty-Third. "Officer Xander Matthews. I was on patrol this morning when my partner and I came across your pendant. She's stuck in a meeting right now, but I'd be happy to get your property for you."

He led the way to the far end of the desk, and Delia followed. "I thought I'd never see that pendant again. Where on earth did you replace it?"

"It was pure luck, honestly. We were grabbing a cup of coffee this morning at Sweetie Pies-you know, that bakery down by the hospital? The woman behind the counter noticed our uniforms and asked us to take a look at something she'd seen in the alley, by their dumpster out back."

Delia tried to make the logical connection there and failed. "I'm sorry. She thought my pendant looked suspicious?"

"No, ma'am. She thought your laptop bag looked suspicious. Or what was left of it, anyway."

Delia's heart lunged at her breastbone. "You found my bag?"

Officer Matthews's dark brows lifted toward his hairline. "Sarge didn't tell you?"

Her silence must've made it apparent, because he let out a low whistle before continuing. "Your bag was in the alley. Best guess is that it fell out of the dumpster when the thing was emptied early this morning, but it was torn to shreds. The woman noticed an empty wallet right next to it, though, and with the number of personal robberies we see in the city, she thought it looked fishy, like maybe it had been ditched. My partner and I took a look, and found your pendant in the side pocket of the bag."

"Was there anything else in there besides the wallet and the pendant? A flash drive, maybe?" Please, please, please...

Officer Matthews's expression was all apology. "No, ma'am. No flash drive, I'm sorry. Just the laptop bag, the empty wallet, and the pendant. We ran them through the system and saw the pendant was a match for the one on your list of stolen items. The guy who robbed you must've ditched everything in the dumpster after he took the items he thought were valuable."

The facts came together in Delia's head, lining up in order, one by one, until her chin snapped up. "Officer Matthews, may I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"Are there security cameras outside Sweetie Pies? Ones that maybe lead into the alley, or show the alley itself?"

"I can't be one hundred percent sure without checking," Officer Matthews said, "but most of the businesses down there do have them. I wouldn't be surprised if Sweetie Pies is one of them."

"So, it stands to reason that there might be footage of whoever stole my bag taking it into the alley on Friday night?" Delia asked, excitement pumping through her veins fast enough to make her nearly dizzy. Oh, God, there might be proof. Or at least a lead, something-anything-to get her on the path to that flash drive.

Officer Matthews shook his head. "It's possible, but there's a lot more to it than that. Even if there are street cams or security feeds, it's not always easy to have them reviewed. You'd have to reach out to your case officer to see if he or she can pursue it." Delia paused. Okay, so the idea of being face to (grumpy) face with Matteo again wasn't exactly on her Happy List-at least, not as far as the robbery was concerned. He'd already made it wildly clear that the case was dead to him. But Delia hadn't imagined those discrepancies, and she sure as hell hadn't imagined that encrypted file. Those accounts were her responsibility. For God's sake, she'd created the system herself, especially for Cromwell A& M. She might not be able to take that big, brave step Camila had talked about by going to Kent-at least, not until she had proof to back up what she suspected. But she could do this. She would do this.

So she looked Officer Matthews directly in the eye and said, "Great. Then I'd like to see Detective Matteo Garza. Right away, please."