by Katie Reus
“Yeah, I can imagine how hard it is to work with Graysen. Can I ask you something personal about him?”
She nodded, then paused to place her drink order with their waitress. When the woman was gone, Isa looked back at Mara. “You can ask anything you want.”
“This is a nosy question and maybe I shouldn’t even be asking it, so tell me to shut it, if so. You never said if he explained the specifics of his operation—why he did what he did where your…father was concerned.” Compassion was clear in Mara’s eyes and Isa knew her friend wasn’t asking to be malicious.
Familiar pain tightened in Isa’s chest. She hadn’t talked about what happened with her father with anyone, really. After she lost all of her friends in DC it had been easy to shut everyone out Except for Mara. And she was really glad that she had opened up to the other woman.
“I know the basics of why my father was going to be arrested. But I didn’t dig any deeper and…Graysen didn’t tell me anything more than what the media reported.” And every day since then it was hard for her to come to terms with the contrast between the man the media had portrayed her father as and the man she knew. The man who had sold state secrets was a monster, someone she couldn’t imagine knowing.
Mara nodded, her lips pulling into a thin line. “I thought so. Look, I have some information for you. And I know I’m risking hurting our friendship by even bringing this up but I think you need to see it. For yourself, if you’re ever going to heal. Some of this is classified, and those parts have been redacted, but everything else you’ll be able to read. When you’re done with the file you can give it back to me or burn it.”
Isa had always wondered what Mara had done before marrying Harrison and getting heavily involved in charity work. Mara had been pretty vague, saying that she’d worked for the British government. Now Isa wondered even more if the woman had managed to get classified information. “You got this information on your own, or from Harrison?”
To her surprise Mara’s cheeks flushed slightly. “Neither. I got it from my father-in-law. He pulled some strings. And fair warning, there are some graphic pictures in there. They’re not pretty.”
Isa could feel the blood drain from her cheeks, but didn’t say anything as their waitress brought the appetizer and drinks. She ordered a small salad even though she wasn’t remotely hungry anymore, mainly so the waitress would go away. “Will you tell me what’s in the file before I open it?”
Mara’s expression was grim. “There’s information in there about exactly what your father did, and pictures of the people who got hurt because of his treachery.”
Isa swallowed hard but nodded. She didn’t see any judgment or recrimination on Mara’s face. It was still difficult to talk about this with anyone, but if Mara thought she should look at the file, she would. She didn’t trust many people anymore and her friend was one of the exceptions. “Okay, I’ll read it.”
Mara lifted a black and gray wool coat off the bench next to her to reveal a simple black purse that was more a shoulder bag than anything. She unzipped it and pulled out a fairly thick manila file. She paused for a moment then slid it across the table. “Wait until you’re home to read this.”
Nodding because her throat was too tight to talk, Isa took the file and slid it into her own purse.
“Is it okay that I brought this up?” Mara asked, concern in her eyes.
Somehow Isa found her voice, and nodded. “It is. It’s just hard to talk about.” Unless she was mentally prepared for it—which was pretty much never.
She felt as if the file was burning a hole in her purse, and it took all of her self-control not to whip the thing out and see what was inside. But she got through lunch and made it back to her temporary office to find Graysen waiting for her.
Things between them had been awkward since he’d showed up at her place on Monday, and she could admit that she’d been avoiding him most of the week whenever she could.
When she found him leaning against the window of her office, staring out at downtown, she tensed. “Is everything okay?” she asked as he turned to face her.
She’d noticed that there had only been a handful of people in their offices on this floor.
He nodded. “Yes. Hamilton called a company meeting to discuss all of the arrests today. That’s why it’s like a ghost town.”
Nonetheless, she shut the door behind her in case anyone was around and might eavesdrop. “I still plan to go through more employee files this afternoon and tomorrow.” She wanted to make sure that they crossed all their t’s and dotted their i’s. “Was there something specific you wanted to talk about?”
His shoulders were tense, his blue eyes unreadable. For a moment she thought he was going to say yes, but he shook his head. “No.”
When he strode for the door she realized he didn’t plan to say anything more. Maybe he had just come here to see her.
It pleased her and broke her heart at the same time. She hated this giant divide between them because…she’d never gotten over him. Even if she wanted to deny it, that was a simple truth. Michael or Graysen, she’d fallen hard for the man. Even with all his lies, they’d shared so many intimate moments that made her feel as if… She sighed, the ache in her chest spreading outward, making it hard to breathe for a moment. It didn’t matter. Nothing would ever fix what was broken between them.
It made it harder, knowing he’d jump back into a relationship with her if she said the word. She ached to call out to him, to stop him from leaving, but she had no idea what to say.
Once he was gone she collapsed into her chair and placed her head in her hands. After taking a couple deep breaths she opened her bag and started to pull out her laptop but paused, and plucked the manila file out instead.
She should be working. Probably shouldn’t even be looking at this, whatever it was. Mara had told her to wait until she was home and alone, but her curiosity wouldn’t let her leave it.
* * *
Isa’s fingers flew across the keyboard. She was trying to focus on work, but was having a hard time concentrating after reading that file Mara had given her. After seeing the pictures of some of the people who’d been killed because of her father’s greed… Nope. Isa swallowed hard and mentally shook herself even as she cursed her trembling fingers.
Taking a deep breath, she stopped typing for a moment. If she allowed herself to dwell on what she’d read earlier she wouldn’t be able to do her job. And Red Stone and the clients who hired them deserved better. She should have waited like Mara told her to. Curiosity had gotten the better of her.
Later tonight she would try to digest everything she’d learned. Though she had a feeling it would take a very long time to come to terms with the truth of who her father had been. A year later and she still couldn’t quite deal. Now with even more information about the depth of his treachery… She rolled her shoulders once and ordered herself to focus on the present. Soon enough she’d talk to Graysen about what she’d learned today. She couldn’t think about that though.
After the busy afternoon they’d had here, she still had more research to do, namely following the trail of emails and other projects Shawn Grady had worked on. Grady was one of the people who’d been escorted out of the building today, but not arrested. Not yet that she knew of, anyway. The other two, Gina Scott and Roy Winston, had been the ones arrested.
But Grady had been one of the people who’d accessed her laptop when he thought no one was around. It turned out that he’d planted tracking software into her laptop so that he could shadow her movements. Graysen had caught the man on video in her office and Isa had quickly figured out what Grady had done to her computer.
But after looking at his financials, it didn’t appear as if he was stealing money or information. Which meant she needed to dig deeper into him. If he’d planted that software on her computer it was for a specific reason. Maybe he’d just been better at hiding his trail than the other two. She was determined to find out why he’d wanted to know what sh
e was up to.
Emerson was currently working on the same thing so Isa had no doubt they’d figure out what this guy had been up to soon enough.
As she started looking deeper into Grady’s emails, she frowned when she saw a couple from the VP of the company. Looking back through Grady’s email history, his communication with the VP was very rare, but then he’d received an email telling him that he was needed for an urgent meeting only an hour before he planted the software on Isa’s computer? It could mean nothing—probably did—but she made a note of it. Sometimes the most benign things ended up mattering in her job.
Moving on from there, she did something she hadn’t planned to do—she pulled up personnel files on Alan Persky, the VP of Raptor Aeronautical. There were a handful of people Hamilton had said to leave out of their investigation, including Persky.
After everything she’d found to date…yeah, that wasn’t happening. Hamilton had hired Red Stone to investigate the company and that was what she was going to do.
But as soon as she was done today, she was going to ask Graysen to come over to her place tonight. After everything she’d read in that file, they needed to talk. There were some things he hadn’t told her—things that would have made her more willing to talk to him a year ago. More open to forgiving him.
She simply couldn’t understand why he hadn’t given her what Mara had given her today. It certainly would have helped make his case for being forgiven.
For a moment, she stopped what she was doing and rubbed a hand over the back of her neck. She reached for the phone on the desk, tempted to call him. When she’d come back from lunch the security guard had been insistent she leave her cell phone with him.
After the arrests today and all the commotion, she knew Raptor was cracking down on security. And technically the security guard should have been insisting from the beginning that she leave her cell phone every time she entered the building. In her report, she’d already noted the lack of adherence to strict protocol.
Isa clenched her fingers around the phone, picked it up, but immediately put it back in its cradle. Now wasn’t the time to talk to Graysen. Not about personal stuff, anyway. And she knew he was with Hamilton right now, going over more of Raptor’s security issues. What she wanted to talk about could wait until they had privacy.
Flexing her fingers, she got back to work. But she was determined that tonight she and Graysen were going to have a serious talk. And maybe, just maybe…they had a future after all. She wanted to know the truth of why he’d withheld so much information for so long, was even withholding it now.
If not for Mara, she’d still be in the dark.
Chapter 12
Icy fingers of unease danced up Isa’s spine as she packed up her laptop. She tried calling Graysen using the landline, but his cell phone went straight to voicemail. Maybe his phone was downstairs too, or maybe he was still in a meeting with Hamilton.
She doubted it, considering how late it was. She’d been in the zone for the last three hours, downloading information to her laptop and a backup flash drive which she’d securely tucked into the pocket of her pencil skirt. It was well past seven and she should have been out of here a couple hours ago. But once she’d started digging into Persky, she hadn’t been able to stop. The information she’d found had her edgy and desperate to get it out of the building. But she needed to tell someone what she had first. For all she knew, she was wrong about what she’d found and it was nothing, but…her gut told her otherwise.
Since Graysen hadn’t answered her, she peeked out into the hallway. The place was empty so she shut her door and immediately dialed Emerson. Her friend and coworker picked up on the second ring.
“Emerson here.”
“Hey, it’s me. I’m calling from a landline.” She cleared her throat and looked around even though Graysen had personally checked this office for recording devices other than their own and found none. She knew no one was watching her. “Listen, I found some really strange information. I’ve downloaded everything and I’m heading out of here now. Where are you?”
“At the office still.”
“I’m coming over right now. Wait for me, okay?”
“Of course. Is everything okay?”
“Ah, yeah. Have you talked to Graysen lately?”
“No. I tried calling him a while ago and it’s going straight to voicemail. Need me to ping his phone, find out where he is?”
“No…ah, yes.” Isa needed to talk to him too. She hated that she couldn’t just email the files to Emerson but she wasn’t able to send such sensitive information over regular email. And she couldn’t trust a file hosting service either. It was against Red Stone protocol and Raptor Aeronautical’s protocol to send or upload any classified information that way.
Considering the business Raptor did with the government, she understood why they had the security measures in place. And there was a chance the information she wanted to send—specs for military drones—could be seen by the wrong people. Hell, this was the kind of information even she didn’t want access to. Now that she had it, however, she needed someone with more knowledge than her to look at the files. Since Emerson was part of the team working on this job and was by far the most tech-savvy person Isa knew other than Lizzy Caldwell, it made sense to give her a crack at the files. But she’d be calling her boss on the way to the office to let him know about this as well. She’d be looping everyone necessary into this.
“Give me a sec.” There was a flurry of typing in the background, then, “The location of his phone is the lobby of Raptor.”
Isa let out a short curse. “So’s mine. He’s not there.” But at least it meant he was in the building. Or she assumed it did. She couldn’t imagine him leaving his phone behind.
“What’s going on?”
“Ah, I’m not sure. Maybe nothing.” Feeling completely paranoid and not caring, she kept her words vague, not wanting to say too much over the phone.
The information she’d found had the VP’s digital fingerprints all over the files she’d discovered. As if he’d tried to hide some of the records he’d had access to. He’d done a good job, but she’d been doing this kind of work for a long time, knew exactly what to look for. If she hadn’t specifically been looking for anything out of the ordinary, however, she wouldn’t have found it.
“I used to work for a tech company that had a strong focus in work effectiveness. I was trained well and I can read code on a basic level and…” She lowered her voice even though her door was shut and she was almost certain she was the only one left on this floor for the day. “There’s something wrong with some of the files I came across. Odd-looking code has been input into places it shouldn’t be. It’s subtle and maybe I’m wrong but…I don’t think so. Unfortunately, I don’t know what any of it means.” She just knew it shouldn’t be there. She really hoped she was just being paranoid and that it was nothing.
“Okay, head over here now. I won’t leave.”
“I’ll be there in about…ah, fifteen minutes. Maybe twenty. I’ve got to grab my cell phone downstairs then I’m gone.” She wanted to wait to talk to Graysen first, but she needed to get this information out of the building and into the right hands. If anyone could understand this information, it would be Emerson. The woman was brilliant.
“I’ll be waiting for you,” Emerson said.
Once they disconnected she slid her laptop into her bag. The hallway seemed unusually quiet as she strode down toward the elevators, but she figured that was just her own nerves at what she’d found.
It was weird being so disconnected without her cell phone. Maybe that was why she was feeling so tense. Halfway down the hallway, the lights went off.
Instinctively she froze. Rolling her eyes at her jumpiness, she shook her head. The power going off was weird, but not unheard of. The city lights streamed into the hallway from multiple open doorways, giving her enough illumination to see, but it was so silent. Without the hum of computers, copy machines and ev
erything else, it was beyond eerie.
Still, those icy fingers of unease she experienced earlier intensified as she realized that she could see lights from other buildings. Which meant it wasn’t a general blackout. She ducked into the nearest office and strode to the huge window. Every building she could see downtown was brightly lit up. When she picked up the landline of whoever’s office this was, there was no dial tone.
So the power in this building went off, as well as access to the phones, and it wasn’t storming out? All the alarms in her head went off.
She didn’t want to panic and read too much into this, but if it had something to do with what she’d found, she needed to get the hell out of here right now, cell phone or not. For all she knew someone had been listening to her phone conversation. It seemed unlikely, since Graysen had personally checked her office, but…he’d been busy today. They all had. Maybe something had slipped past them.
She inwardly cursed. Maybe she shouldn’t have made that call to Emerson at all. But she’d wanted someone to know what she’d found before she left the building. As she headed back to the open doorway she paused at the sound of male voices.
Because she was feeling paranoid, she ducked behind the door instead of announcing her presence. She knew she was probably being stupid, but she’d rather laugh at herself later than make a mistake. Breathing unevenly, she looked through the crack of the half-open door.
Muted footsteps strode down the hall at a steady pace.
“She should be up here,” a quiet male voice said.
She?
Anxiety slithered through Isa at his words. As far as she knew she was the only person here right now. The floor was very large, however, so maybe—