by Cole, Cassie
Jason flinched and put down his food. “That reminds me of a question I had earlier today. How did he see the security footage?”
The change of topic caught me off guard. “What?”
“You said he doesn’t have a computer on his desk, but he showed you the security footage of the note you wrote Cas.”
“Well, he showed me on my computer at the front desk…”
“Was that where he originally looked at it?” Tex asked. “Or did he already know where to look?”
“Maybe he had someone else find it for him,” Cas suggested.
“No,” I cut in. “They’re totally right. I remember when he showed me, he took my mouse and navigated to the folder on the network share himself. He clicked through the file system pretty quickly. Like he knew what he was doing.”
“So…” Cas spread his hands. “Does he have a hidden computer somewhere?”
They looked at me for an answer. “Maybe. I don’t know. I’ve only been in his office a couple of times. Why would he hide one?”
“To keep up the persona of being technology averse,” Tex said. “In case there’s ever legal discovery, or a court subpoena. He can pretend he doesn’t know anything, or has his subordinates do all the work for him.”
I thought that was a stretch, but I didn’t want to shoot them down while they were excited. Plus it didn’t really involve me.
“That’s something to worry about later,” Cas said to the others. “Lexa’s copies of the cover letters is the corroborating evidence we need.”
“Between the recorded testimony, and these cover letters…” Kai said.
“Fucken right!” Jason said. “We’ve got them!”
They were all acting like me copying the files was a certain thing. I didn’t have a chance to interrupt and tell them I was concerned about it.
But if this was all true, then how could I say no? Was Blackrock Energy really responsible for all these deaths? Was Bryson covering it up himself, or did it just happen under his careless nose?
“Once we have all of that, we’ll be able to nail the managers involved.”
“In how many cover letters have you seen Berlin drilling technique mentioned?” Jason asked.
“At least seven times, from four different people.”
“Four people!” Tex said. “Some of them’ll flip on Bryson.”
“If he’s guilty,” I pointed out.
“Right, right.”
As we ate dinner and they made their plans, it seemed like they thought his guilt was a foregone conclusion. But there was still a kernel of doubt in my mind.
35
Cas
I was elated for a dozen different reasons.
It had been a long week. Hunting down the workers in our spare time while doing our actual site visits during the day meant Kai and I had been running on three hours of sleep per night. There were a lot of nights where we drove 100 or 150 miles in the dark to meet with someone who knew someone who knew someone else, all to track down the right people. Finally getting what we needed so we could come home was like emerging from the bottom of a swimming pool, finally able to take a deep breath.
Not only that, but then finding out we had potentially corroborating evidence? Holy shit-balls, we were on cloud nine. We might actually pull this all off.
But the biggest reason I was happy was Lexa. Seeing her was a hot mug of cider of a cold night. An extra blanket in the middle of the night. An extra pillow to rest your weary head.
Shit, all of those analogies were cheesy. But that’s how I felt around her. As if that wasn’t enough, she was getting along with the others. Tex, obviously, but even Jason appeared to be softer around her. I wondered if they had done anything yet, or if they were close.
Everything was falling into place.
As we ate dinner and caught up on everything, I yearned for her. It was so much more than sexual desire. I’d missed her during our time apart. Her voice, her laugh, the way she looked sideways at me and gave half a wink to let me know she knew I was looking at her.
We shot the shit for a while in the living room before Kai got up and stretched his huge body. “I am desperately in need of sleep.”
“Me too,” I said, glancing down at Lexa.
“I’ll come with you,” she quickly said. Tex raised an eyebrow.
“She’s mine tonight,” I said. “And I’ll fight any one of you who disagrees.”
Lexa turned to me. “Oh? I’m yours, like a piece of property, huh?”
“Yep.”
“Good,” she said with a grin.
Tex spread his hands on the couch. “Been spoiled all week. Figure you deserve some quality time together.”
“I appreciate your generosity.”
As we went upstairs I noticed Jason’s eyes on us just a little bit longer. Was he jealous? Tough to tell. I wondered if anything had happened between them.
I led the way to my bedroom, but as I stopped in the doorway Lexa cleared her throat. “So, uhh, Tex has been sleeping up here while you’ve been gone.”
I laughed. “The first thing I did when I got home today was clean the sheets. These are fresh as daisies.”
“So you’ll share a girlfriend,” she said carefully, “but sharing bed sheets is too much?”
“A man has to draw the line somewhere. In any case, I figured we could sleep in your room.”
A sly smile spread across her lips. “I guess we can do that.”
I hugged her to me, burying my nose in her soft hair. Inhaling her scent. I could feel her warm breasts against my chest and her arms pressing into my sides.
“Hey,” I said. “This might be weird, and I hope you don’t mind, but I was hoping we can just cuddle tonight.”
“Yeah, right. Just cuddling.” The humor on her face drained away. “Oh, shoot. You’re serious.”
“Kai and I haven’t gotten a full night sleep since we left. I’m afraid I would pass out in the middle of the act if we tried.”
“Good thing I like cuddling,” Lexa said. “No, that’s not true. I love cuddling.”
We got ready for bed and crawled under the covers like a married couple. I took the left side of the bed without protest. It suited me just fine because it was closer to the door. Some primal instinct deep within my brain to protect. She turned out the light and then snuggled up against me, resting her head on my chest while I rolled an arm underneath her.
It all felt normal. It felt right.
“I’m going to be asking this a lot,” she said in the darkness. “Are you sure it’s not weird that I’m sleeping with the others?”
“Not even a little bit. Wait. Others?” She tensed against me, so I quickly added, “Not that that’s a bad thing, I just thought Jason would take longer to warm to you.”
“Yeah…” she said. “He sort of jumped me when I showed him one of the suspicious documents at work today. It was in an empty office on an abandoned hall in the building. Don’t worry—I avoided all security cameras.”
I was surprised they did it at work. Even a little angry about it. It was risky. I couldn’t believe Jason would do that, especially after ridiculing us for not focusing on the mission. How could he lecture us and then do something reckless?
I stopped an examined my reaction. Was it genuine, or was I jealous? Maybe a little bit, since Jason hadn’t told us yet. He hadn’t really had a chance, though.
“Once we have those documents, and can corroborate everything, we won’t need to sneak around,” I said. “We’re almost done here. Then everything can return to normal.”
I closed my eyes and thought of that as I fell asleep.
36
Lexa
Hold the phone.
Almost done here?
The words were like a punch to the gut. I thought we would have months together before their audit was complete. That’s what they’d said. It felt like they had only just started!
Once he’d said the words, I couldn’t relax. I was finally
cuddling with the man I’d been waiting for and I couldn’t enjoy it because my mind was racing a mile a minute, thinking about what would happen after. They were based in Fargo, so they would probably go back there. I still had my condo, a big fat albatross around my neck until further notice. And depending on what happened at Blackrock Energy, I was probably out of a job. No, scratch that: I was certainly out of a job. There was no surviving whatever bomb they would drop on the company. Especially if I helped them do it.
Crap. If I helped them, would I ever get hired anywhere again? Who would want to hire the girl who helped sabotage one of the largest drilling companies in North Dakota?
Thoughts swirling, I barely slept. I wasn’t sure if it was due to fear about my financial situation, or concern about the four men who would soon be leaving me.
I didn’t want them to leave.
I woke up extra early, because it was better than sitting in bed staring at the ceiling. I started getting dressed to go for a jog before remembering that Tex and Jason were sleeping on the air mattresses downstairs again.
You know what? Screw it. I knew I needed to get my workout in to feel good about the day, so I finished getting dressed and braved the cold. I didn’t make it the full 30 minutes I usually did on the treadmill, but I lasted longer than the mile I’d run when I tried it last week. Progress was progress. And it got my blood flowing.
I decided to do something nice for the one member of the group I hadn’t been with. By the time Kai came downstairs I was already dipping bread into an egg batter. He paused at the bottom of the stairs and stared at me.
“Guten morgen,” I said while tossing butter into the pan. It sizzled satisfyingly. “That’s the most German I know, so please don’t test me.”
“Your accent is not bad,” he said. “What is all this?”
“I’m making you breakfast.”
“I can see this,” he said. “The question is why?”
“Well,” I said, “you made breakfast last time. I’m returning the favor.”
He scowled at me, which made his cute face look almost pouty. “This is not our arrangement.”
“We don’t have an arrangement beyond the rent you’re paying,” I pointed out. “You can make me breakfast every other day. I’ll make breakfast the rest of the time. Unless you don’t like French toast…?”
He sat at one of the bar stools in the kitchen and crossed his arms, but argued no further.
“How were the site visits?” I asked as I flipped the toast.
“They were…” He took a deep breath to collect himself. “They were difficult, Lexa.”
I could tell he meant more than just technically difficult. He meant emotionally, too. I wondered what was hiding beneath those tall German walls.
“It’s good that you got what you were looking for,” I said.
“It is.”
“It could not have been easy talking to those people. Re-living the accident.”
“It was not,” he said simply.
“If you ever need to talk, you know I’m here.” I served the two pieces of toast onto a plate and slid it across the counter. “Here’s syrup and butter. If you want more, just let me know.”
He looked at his plate, then back to me, then back to his plate.
“Okay, okay,” I said with a chuckle. “You probably eat eight pieces.”
“Perhaps six would be fine?” he asked sheepishly.
“Six it is!”
He moaned around his fork after taking the first bite. “This is wonderful! Simply wonderful.”
“Wunderbar!” I said.
“Yes, exactly!”
“Okay, so I know how to say two things in German.”
He grinned as he took a second bite, then a quick third. I got started on the next two pieces before he inhaled those.
“Oh!” he said when he was half done. “That reminds me. Here is a USB drive for you.” He placed the tiny rectangle of plastic on the counter.
“Oh?”
“For the documents. The cover letters?”
“Oh. Right.” I took it between my two fingers and felt its weight. It was hardly heavy enough to sense. “I’ll see what I can do today.”
“And, uhh…” he said, scratching his head. “There’s one other thing I would ask.”
My stomach sank. “What’s that?”
“I do think I would like eight pieces,” he said. “Six simply will not do!”
I laughed and said, “That’s an easy request. Coming right up.”
*
There weren’t many of my secretarial tasks to do this morning. Bryson didn’t have any meetings today, which meant no conference rooms to prepare. Nobody else in the building had any special visitors either. Thankfully I had a stack of courier documents to edit and send out.
Going through the work felt less natural than before. Now that I’d told the others what I’d found, and had agreed to smuggle copies out on a USB drive, I felt like a spy. Everything I did took on exaggerated importance: propping up the original copy, creating a new file in Microsoft Word, transcribing every word into the document before editing. I felt like I was doing it wrong, or too conspicuous. That someone watching on the security camera would instantly know I had other motives.
I stopped, took a deep breath, and told myself it was my job. There was nothing suspicious about it at all unless I acted suspicious.
It helped that today’s batch was completely normal. No secret code in any of the cover letters at all, which allowed my nerves to settle down and caused me to get into a groove. When I was done I repackaged everything, scheduled the courier pick-ups, then put my hands in my lap like a good little girl.
Eventually I started thinking about what I would need to do next: copy everything onto the USB drive. It was a trivial task. Plug the drive into the computer, copy the files, then remove it. It would take seconds.
But I couldn’t muster the energy to actually do it. I came up with elaborate excuses while greeting the employees who came through the front door. Bryson was probably watching the security cameras, or had hired someone to watch me at all times. Jotting down my every move. Would whistleblower laws protect me from stealing data off a Blackrock computer? Surely that was a violation of some sort of computer espionage law. I imagined being caught up in the legal system for years while trying to fight Blackrock’s team of lawyers. They had a lot more money than I did.
Not only that, but helping the boys gather this evidence was only accelerating their departure. If I didn’t help them, how much longer would they stay? How many more days would that buy me with Cas, and Tex, and even Jason? I felt like I’d only just gotten to know them. I had so much more I wanted to do with them, sexual and non-sexual.
Bryson came in at his usual time, though he was with two other employees—a man and a woman who were talking his ear off about business. He gave me a halfhearted wave as he passed through.
Now that he was in the building it was extra hard to steal the documents. It was silly to think so, but his physical presence changed everything.
That reminded me of another reason that was lurking in the back of my mind: I was still somewhat skeptical of Bryson. He’d been so kind to me throughout all of this, almost taking me under his wing. How many CEOs would do that for a temp working at the front desk? The idea of him being some ruthless money-grubber who carelessly allowed deaths at his drill sites just to finish a few days ahead of schedule seemed… Impossible.
I wanted to trust my guys, but it wasn’t easy.
I wondered if Bryson did have a secret computer somewhere, like Cas had suggested. That would help make things more clear. I pictured a compartment on his wooden desk popping open on the surface to reveal a computer screen, like a James Bond gadget. Although that was silly, the main point I’d made last night still rang true: Bryson navigated the file system to show me the security video too easily. He didn’t stumble with the mouse and struggle to double-click. He knew what he was doing on a computer, and
on the Blackrock file system specifically.
Maybe if I found evidence of his secret computer I wouldn’t need to steal the other files.
I came up with a plan, which was easy since I had little else to do behind the desk that morning. I copied one of the earlier cover letters from my local computer to the network share, then double-checked the file creation date to make sure it was today. Just in case.
I rehearsed what I was going to say, then called him. “Hey Mr. Bryson, sorry to bother you—do you have a sec? I have a question about something.”
He chuckled warmly. “I’ve always got time for an employee in need, Lexa.”
I found him alone in his office. I closed the door behind me and sat at the chair across from his desk.
“How can I help ya?” he asked.
“Well…” I began. “I’ve been working on these cover letters. But there’s a weird part in one of them that I’m not sure if I should correct, or leave as-is. I didn’t want to bother you with it, but I wanted to make sure it wasn’t important wording…”
He waved it off. “Not a bother at all. Where is the cover letter?”
“I saved it on the network share, if you wanted to pull it up…” I trailed off and looked around the desk as if just now realizing he didn’t have a computer. “Oh. Umm, I guess I should have printed it. I’ll be right back…”
Bryson hesitated, which told me everything I needed to know. I rose slowly and turned, and then he said, “That’s alright.”
He grabbed his key ring from the corner of the desk, then used that to unlock the top-left drawer of the desk. He pulled out a thin Dell laptop. “Keep this around in case I need to get technical.”
He was putting on an obvious act. It felt like a confession.
It was a widescreen laptop with a full keyboard. He punched in four digits into the number pad on the right—was it 1-4-2-8? What kind of a password was only four number digits long?
Bryson looked across the lid at me. “Where is the file?”
“Go to the main network share, then the documents sub-folder…” I walked him through navigating the directory while he pretended to go slowly. The act was so obvious now that I knew.