ONE

      Chloe Spencer tossed a piece of popcorn high into the air and deftly caught it in her mouth. A barely audible whimper rose from the vicinity of the floor beside her office chair. She glanced down and grinned. “Want some, do you, Geordie?”

      Her fifteen-pound chocolate miniature poodle stared at her with black button eyes, bright with intelligence. He gently took the snack she handed to him.

      Her computer chirped. She swiveled her chair around and rubbed her hands together in anticipation. As head of her one-person security company, Spencer Security, her job was to find and eliminate cyber threats and in-house data theft for companies she had contracted with. Sci-Fi Works Corporation was one of her clients, and a board member suspected someone in the company of stealing data and selling it to outside sources. He personally asked her to look into it on the sly.

      She hit a few keys to activate her webcam, and there sat CEO Peter Norris, right in front of his computer in his office. She had a perfect shot of him. Geordie snorted and she grunted back.

      Chloe quickly triggered the hidden software installed on all computers within the company—approved by the same board member—which allowed her to view and record anything an employee did on their PC. She also turned on her own camera and recorded everything she did—a security measure that protected her against a disgruntled employee accusing her of planting evidence.

      “Yeah, yeah, I know he’s way out of my league, but he’s not my type anyway.”

      Out of her league? That was putting it mildly. She didn’t live in the same universe as Peter Norris, the head of Sci-Fi Works Corporation. He was wealthy, successful and, from the information she’d gleaned in a routine computer search, a nice and straight-up kind of guy. And her? Well, she lugged around a ton of baggage. Her background wasn’t exactly what anyone would call squeaky clean, which was why she was sitting home on a Friday night instead of out on a date. She’d probably never marry because she would never tell anyone the reason she had spent time in juvenile hall. Her past held secrets and she meant to keep them.

      Propping her elbows on her desk, Chloe found herself held spellbound by Peter Norris’s stunning dark blue eyes—even though she wasn’t personally interested—when a knock on his office door reverberated through her computer’s sound system. She sat up straight and stared at the screen, curious to see who had arrived. A colleague? A late date with a beautiful woman? A partner in crime, helping him sell company secrets?

      The sound of a door opening and closing reached her, and not long after that, a heated argument ensued between two men. She turned up the volume on her PC and Geordie whimpered. She reached down and gave him a soothing pat, keeping her eyes glued to the computer screen.

      “Come on, get in front of the webcam so I can see what’s going on,” she murmured to herself.

      Two men were shouting at each other, but she couldn’t quite make out what they were saying. Her throat constricted when she heard a loud thump. Were they having a fistfight? Mr. Norris’s body flew past the screen and disappeared, and she heard him hit the floor with a solid thud. Chloe jumped out of her chair and leaned closer to the screen. She jerked back when a hand rose into view and pointed a wicked-looking gun toward the floor near the desk, the direction Mr. Norris had fallen.

      “No! This can’t be happening,” she whispered.

      The sound of a soft pop filled the room. She reached for the chair behind her as a few tiny red splatters hit Peter Norris’s computer camera, enlarging themselves on her screen. Easing into a sitting position, Chloe’s blood ran cold when a ski-masked face stared at her through the small droplets of blood.

      “Yes,