“Professional?” I suggested. “Like maybe he’s making these tapes for more than just personal use?”

“Exactly that,” Beck murmured his agreement as he peered at the camera and monitor set up. “Let’s find the Petrova recording and get out of here.”

This part—the part where they hacked into Senator Green’s dirty little sex server—I was of no help in. So I stayed out of the way and leaned my back on the open doorway, waiting patiently for them to do their thing.

A few moments later, Beck’s phone vibrated against my boob. Then vibrated again. And again. “Beck, your phone is going nuts,” I whispered, reaching into my dress to fish it out, but only managing to push it further down. There wasn’t a whole lot of space to move in the tightly boned bodice and I’d somehow managed to push his phone down to the space under my boobs instead of pulling it out.

“Ugh, I can’t get it out, either,” I admitted when he frowned at me in confusion. “You need to unzip me, it’s stuck here.” I tapped his phone through my dress where it sat flat against my diaphragm.

“It’ll be one of the boys,” Dylan murmured, shooting Beck a sharp look. “Someone must be coming.”

“Or Jasper is bored,” Beck said back, looking indecisive. “We still don’t have the recording.”

“Keep going,” Dylan urged him, “I’ll retrieve your phone and check.”

I almost laughed at Beck’s look of horror, but we weren’t really in a position to be arguing, so I turned my back to Dylan and swept my hair out of the way. “Quick,” I hissed, “I’d really love not to end up in jail for breaking and entering if someone is coming.”

Dylan didn’t reply, just quickly slid my zipper down, and I needed to act fast to catch my dress against my breasts and prevent it from falling completely to the floor. His warm hand snaked around my waist, plucking Beck’s phone from the waistline seam where it had gotten stuck, then deftly zipped me back up.

“Damn, Dylan,” I chuckled. “Expert at undressing girls, huh?”

A warning sort of growl came from Beck, and Dylan just winked at me when I turned back around. His attention was on Beck’s phone as he keyed in the passcode and opened the messages—then cursed.

“Yep, company. The senator is on his way with tonight’s lucky victim.”

Dylan reached past me and tugged the hidden door closed, shutting us inside the tight space, and I squeaked a sound of confusion.

“There’s no time to get out without being seen,” he explained to me, then indicated to Beck who was rapidly tapping at the little keyboard attached to the server. “Besides, we still don’t have the recording we came for.”

“So, we just ... wait it out?” I whispered back, a bit incredulous. “What if he finds us here?”

As I said this, one of the monitors showed the main door of the office open, and Senator Green enter with a pretty blonde on his arm. She held a glass of champagne in her hand, and was dressed in a cocktail length sequin dress.

“Wow.” Her voice came through the speakers loud and clear to us, and I flinched in panic. “You have so many books.”

“Don’t stress,” Beck murmured to me. “Sound proofed room, remember?”

I let out a sigh of relief. “Oh yeah. Sorry, I forgot we’re living in a James Bond movie right now.”

The inane conversation between Senator Green and his girl—who I was pretty sure I’d seen in a major motion picture recently—continued playing from the monitor’s speakers, and I rolled my eyes at how airheaded this chick sounded. “Can we turn the sound off? Or down?”

Beck fiddled around with some switches then shrugged. “This one should be sound, but as you can see”—he demonstrated, turning the dial and the volume didn’t change—“it doesn’t seem to be working.”

I groaned and slid to the floor with my back against the little door. “Let’s hope she’s not a screamer, then.”

Beck shot me a wolfish grin, and I glared at him. The last thing I wanted to do, while getting front row seats to live action porn, was think about him making me scream.

Ignore, ignore, ignore.

“So what was that comment Graeme Huntley made about some vote?” I asked them, desperately seeking a change of subject as the sounds of conversation turned into breathy moans and the monitors displayed it all from every damn angle. Some were even zoomed.

Beck was the one to respond, as he plugged a thumb drive into the server and started a file transfer to it. “So, Dylan told you how Delta began as a combination of our five families? Well, technically Delta was meant to be six families. Balance and symmetry were big in those days, as well as the fact that the Langham ancestor had a wife who fancied herself a bit of a numerologist. She’d convinced him that six was the lucky number in business and Delta would only ever be completely powerful if there were six ruling parties.” He paused, giving me a shrug. “People were superstitious back then.”

“So what happened?” I asked, having to speak over the sounds of moaning as our friendly senator sucked on the actress’s nipple. I wasn’t even guessing, he’d positioned her in exactly the right place for the cameras to get all the action. “How come it was still only five?”

“The sixth family that was going to be involved was killed in a house fire,” Dylan said, “and since they were all sentimental, the company decided to hold a sixth chair for them, to keep numbers even, but no new family would be added unless everyone votes and agreed on it.”

“So every twenty years, a vote is held,” Beck continued, leaving the file transfer running and joining Dylan and me on the floor. “And it’s open for any other company to ‘proposition’ Delta for a seat on their board. A controlling vote. It requires a substantial buy in, of course, so that leaves very few in a position to even try. But Huntley has a lot of money.”

“Until now they’ve never had any pull, but you only need two votes from Delta board members to have a shot,” Dylan added.

“Fuck,” I breathed out. “Catherine’s one of those, right? That’s her end game?”

Beck and Dylan exchanged a glance. “We don’t know. She’s done a very good job at distancing herself from Huntley; today was the friendliest I’ve ever seen her be with her brother. Usually it’s sneers and harsh words.”