by Aria Ford
I frowned. “Check it? What for?”
“Just a warning we had. You saw this big deal about the hackers? Well, it's about that. If you can let me sit down? It won't take five minutes.”
“Why my PC?” I asked. I couldn't help how my heart was pounding. I knew it was ridiculous – why would anyone suspect me of anything? – but I couldn't help it.
“I don't know,” the young man said. He looked at his hands. “Just routine, I guess.”
Routine? This was the first I'd heard of a routine like this, and I'd been with the company for two years.
“Okay,” I said unhappily. “Go for it. I'll go grab a coffee or something; come back when you're done.”
“Perfect. Thanks, sir.”
“Pleasure,” I muttered under my breath as I headed off to the coffee-room.
While I was in there, the coffee hot and scalding my lips, I tried to figure out what this was all about. I was fairly sure there was nothing “routine” about what the young man was checking on my PC. I saw Shane walk past and called to him.
“Shane?”
“Mm?”
“You also been kicked out of your office?”
“Also? No...have you?” He grinned lazily.
“Some guy came in to check my PC,” I said. “Technical support or something. I guess they're checking everyone following this hacking thing.”
“No,” he said with a frown. “Just you, by the look of things.”
I shrugged. “That's weird.”
He gave me an odd look. “Yeah, it is.”
I coughed uncomfortably. Great. Talk about giving people ideas. I was a regular master of subterfuge, wasn't I?
“Oh, well. Probably nothing to do with that. Maybe I managed to send something to print twenty times again, and they're trying to figure out how I do it,” I quipped.
He grinned. “Probably.”
“See you,” I said, heading back to my office quickly.
I was hoping to catch the technician in action, but by the time I got there he was already offline, just pushing in my chair.
“All done,” he said with a nod.
“Thanks,” I said. “I think.”
He laughed and went out.
When I sat down again I couldn't help feeling a bit uneasy. What had he been doing on here? I felt like my privacy had been violated. Every file I opened or every document I worked on, I had the sense that someone else had been into it before me, looking through and critiquing it.
This is stupid, I told myself. If you keep this up you're going to go nuts. Stop being so paranoid.
I decided I should try and tell Liam as soon as possible. Maybe I could sneak him in here to see what there was to see. Actually, Liam had a remote login for my computer. He could connect up right now if he had to, and tell me what was going on.
I messaged him.
Just had a visit from some tech guys looking on my PC. You couldn't maybe log in and see what they've been doing?
He messaged back in a minute or two. In a meeting. Will do when finished. Give me ten minutes.
I sat at my desk for fifteen minutes, trying to focus on the email I'd just received from the accountants, asking me about some legal issue pertaining to tax. I could feel by brain starting to burn – corporate tax law was never my favorite part of the picture – when my phone made a message-tone again.
I reached for it and checked the messages at once.
I can't.
I frowned.
Sorry? Not sure I know what you mean here..?
He sent a message back immediately.
I mean I can't log in. Someone's locked me out.
Oh. I put my phone down heavily and sat there, stunned. I didn't know what to do or think about that. My heart felt like it had stopped. If someone had just gone onto my PC and just shut Liam out of logging in, that meant that they knew about him. Would it be possible, then, for them to link the hack to my PC, and thus to me? If they did that, it was only a matter of time before they started going through my files and finding all the information I'd collected to make the case.
Dammit! My heart was thumping as I quickly grabbed a flash-drive and went to copy the information onto it.
Gone.
I stared. No way. No absolute way. I navigated to the directory in my head. “Home. Documents. Misc. Case.”
There was no such folder. It had gone.
My brain stopped working, lost in a jelly of panic. If they had found that – if they had actually looked for it in my files, and wiped it off my PC, that meant someone knew.
“Oh, my...” I leaned on my desk, making myself breathe. In. Out. In. Out. My heart was thumping in my chest, big slow thuds that surged through me. What was I going to do?
“Mr. Leblanc?”
“Oh, for...” I jumped in the air and then whipped round to see Mrs. Slate at the door. “Sorry. What?”
She laughed. “I'm sorry, Mr. Leblanc. But you do look funny when you get a fright...” she was laughing at me, full-lipped mouth covered with a well-manicured hand.
I wiped the scowl off my face. She was a sweet older woman and I didn't want to offend her. “What is it?” I asked. “Is someone looking for me?”
“Oh, no...just need your signature on these papers...They need looking over by our legal expert. You must really concentrate, you know,” she said, still chuckling. “I've never seen someone jump like that when I call their name...” She trailed off, still giggling at me.
I sighed. “I'm having a bit of a day,” I said tightly.
“Oh. Oh, I am sorry. Is there something I can do? I can get you a cup of coffee?”
I smiled warmly. “I'm okay, thanks. Any more coffee and I'll start flying. Now, what are these?”
I took the papers from her and heard her still giggling as she went out.
I read through the documents with a distracted air. They could have been mortgaging the company for a sack of potatoes and I wouldn't have actually noticed at that moment. I signed them anyway.
The sooner I can get finished in here, the better. I looked at the clock. It was just before lunch hour. I would try and finish up with the contract I was writing and then go to lunch. I needed to get out of here before my nerves actually wore through altogether.
I finished the contract, grabbed my coat and headed down the hallway, wanting to put as much distance between the building and myself as possible.
“Hey,” Shane called me from his office as I hurried past. “You're in a hurry.”
“Yes.”
“Where're you going?”
“Out.”
I didn't want to stop and talk. I wanted to get out of here as quickly as possible.
When I hit the sidewalk, I found I was walking toward the car-park at full speed. I stopped and made myself slow down and think. There wasn't any point in escaping. Nothing would look more guilty than just running right now. What was I even running for?
Could they actually fire me on the strength of anything in that file?
Dubiously. None of it was actually secret information – most if it was records of interviews with older employees, detailing things they remembered about the time the shady deals supposedly started – but the fact that I'd put it all together in one place made it fairly clear I was gathering information for something.
I am a lawyer, and I know that they don't have much of a case against me right now.
It would take some supreme stretching of the facts to actually prove I was up to something. For the moment I came off as weird and snooping, but not actually breaking any laws. Whew.
There's only one thing I did that was actually illegal. And that was giving Liam remote login capabilities on my PC.
As I'm not particularly computer-literate, I wasn't sure if they would be able to see for sure that I'd helped Liam to set that up. Maybe they'd assume he was some kind of crazy computer-whiz who'd done it all by himself. Maybe he'd just happened to choose my PC as his point of entry into the network.
“Hang on. Where am I?”
In my headlong flight from the office, I'd just carried on walking. I stopped and looked around. I was somewhere up near the end of Flagler street, cars whizzing past me, people talking at pavement cafes or into their cell phones. I was a single point of silence in the seething, chattering hordes. I stopped and stood still. It was a weird feeling. A bit like being invisible, I reckoned. Me and my problems were a silent, tiny island, isolated in this sea of chatter.
I wish Ainsley wasn't mad at me too. If she wasn't, maybe I wouldn't feel so isolated. With heavy footsteps I headed back up the street the way I'd come. There was no point in standing about on the sidewalk missing lunch. Maybe if I had something to eat and a good cup of coffee, I'd be able to think of what to do to fix things with her.
I retraced my steps to Starbucks, heading inside. Checking my phone showed me she hadn't answered my messages yet. I really was alone. But I wasn't going to leave it. I'd run away from her too many times and this time I was going to do what I hadn't done before. I was going to be honest.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ainsley
I was sitting behind my desk, doing my best to work. I felt drained and miserable after that confrontation with Drake.
Why did I have to go and shout at him like that?
All things considered, I had been perfectly within my rights to blow up at Drake – he'd had it coming for the last eight years. But I still regretted it. I was just starting to like him again.
After my shouting at him like that, he'd probably decided to walk away for good. Oh, well. I tried to make myself believe it didn't matter, that there were plenty more where Drake came from and so why did I care? I considered getting hold of Lacey and trying to find Warren Lark – the guy I'd met at the party with her. That ought to make me feel a bit better.
“Ainsley?”
I turned to Emmy, who was sitting at her desk with a big frown tracing her brow. “Yeah?”
“Do you know where blue whales go in the winter?”
I stared at her. “Is that a trick question?”
She laughed. “No, I mean it. I'm helping Stan with his project. For seventh grade. It's about sea creatures.”
I rolled my eyes. “I don't even know where blue whales come from. Never mind where they go to. Ask Google.”
She laughed. “Okay, I'll ask Google. Here we go. Blue whales...winter. Listen to this. The blue whale spends its winters in the warmer waters of the Gulf of Mexico, migrating in the summer months to the arctic. So that's a trick question, isn't it?”
“A trick?”
“Well,” she smiled. “They don't go anywhere in winter. They're here in winter – they go away in summer. To the Arctic.”
“Just put “Gulf of Mexico,” I cautioned. “That's easier.”
“Well, okay,” she said with a shrug. “I guess so.”
I nodded. “Sorry, Emmy. My head hurts anyway...figuring out migratory patterns of the Blue Whale is a bit advanced right now.”
“Had a long day?” she asked sympathetically.
“Not really,” I said. “Just a hard one.”
“Oh. Well, it's lunch break,” she said cheerfully. “I'm taking Piper and heading down to the Food Dudes. Want to come?”
“Uh, no. Thanks,” I said politely. “I have to stay and finish this preface.”
“Oh. Okay,” she shrugged, then stood and unslung her handbag from the back of her chair, wrapping herself in a thin yellow cardigan. “Don't work too hard, hey?” She said on the way out the door.
“I'll try not to,” I said.
When she had gone, I leaned on the desk with my arms, rested my head on them and tried not to cry.
I shouldn't be letting this get to me. It's not like we'd been together long. It was three days or something.
Three days and eight years.
Yes, it was a big deal I assured myself. Finding Drake after so long, then losing him because of a stupid fight was reasonably that upsetting. I wished it hadn't happened like that. If only I'd never seen him in the park. But if I hadn't? I would still be resenting the fact that he never told me anything and I'd still be shocked by how much he'd changed. I'd still be mad at him for refusing to tell me what was on his mind.
I glanced at the clock. It was one P.M. I stretched out the aches in my back and considered going to find some lunch myself. No point in starving myself on top of all his nonsense.
I shrugged on my leather jacket and headed down the stairs into the street.
As I walked along the sidewalk, heading to Starbucks, my phone went off.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Ainsley?”
I stopped dead. “Hello?” It couldn't be. How could it be?
But it was. “Hi, Ainsley,” Drake said. “Are you having lunch now?”
“Y...yes,” I said. “Are you?” I couldn't believe it.
“Yeah,” he said. “But I'm lonely and I was wondering if you'd do me the honor of joining me at the cafe?”
“You mean Roast and Ready?”
“Yeah,” he said. “It's not too far from your work, you said?”
“Yeah.”
I felt as if I was floating as I walked quickly and briskly up the sidewalk, around the corner and into the main street. It was as if my skin was porous, or magnetic, somehow drawn toward him. I could almost have found him, I fancied, just by shutting my eyes and walking up the sidewalk. My heart was tuned to him like a compass pointing north. It always had been.
I arrived at the cafe and spotted him at once in the back, sitting with a coffee and a bagel.
“Drake?”
“Hi, Ainsley,” he said. He looked up and smiled and I was shocked to see how tired and drained he was. His handsome brown eyes were sunk deep in under-eye bags and his skin was pale and grayed out as if he hadn't slept properly for days.
“Drake!” I said. “Hell. What's up? You look...” I trailed off, unsure what to say.
“Thanks,” he grinned dryly. “I feel like that too.”
We both laughed and I took a seat opposite him. “Seriously,” I said as I turned to face him. “What have you been doing to yourself? You look wrecked.”
“Thanks,” he said again with a humorless chuckle. “I feel pretty wrecked. It's just stress.”
“Oh.” I frowned. “Tell me about it?”
“That,” he said with a lopsided grin, “is exactly what I promise to do. But first, a request.”
“Sure,” I said, feeling a small fireworks-display go off inside me at his suggestion of information shared.”
“Okay,” he said. He looked at me and grinned. “Will you come to my place for dinner?”
“Oh!” I smiled at him. “I'd like that. I think,” I added wryly.
He chuckled. “You remember I'm not a very good cook.”
I shot him a look. “You're very good. You just do too much at once.”
“And then get stressed when it's not perfect. I know,” he sighed.
“The story of your life?”
He shot me a weary smile. “Uh-huh. How'd you know?”
I laughed. “I do know you, Drake.”
He nodded. “You do. And I wanted to say sorry. Properly this time.”
“Oh?” I frowned. My heart, which had been in danger of melting from the moment I got his message, was actually floating now, like butter does, melting in the pan.
“I never said sorry for keeping secrets from you. For not being honest. For not telling the truth.”
I swallowed hard. “No need,” I said hoarsely. “Actually, that's not true,” I countered. “There must have been a need, or it wouldn't feel so good now.”
He smiled and I sniffed.
“Kleenex?” he dug in his pocket and passed me a tissue.
I smiled.
“Thanks.”
“No worries.”
We sat there in the busy, loud cafe and the sound rose and fell around us. I couldn't have been happier if I'd tried. My whole soul felt at peace for the first time in ages. Ever since he'd come back into my life, something had been not sitting quite right. Now that he'd said sorry and meant it, the pieces had fallen into place again.
“What time is dinner?” I asked.
He grinned. “Well, I'm going to duck out of work at five, and so I'll start cooking at six...shall we say six thirty?”
“Okay,” I said brightly. “That sounds perfect.”
“Of course I won't be finished then,” he warned. “In fact, I'll probably just have started and there'll be two pans with stuff in them and a third one with something burning in it and I'll need you to take over or call the fire-department...” he trailed off, laughing.
I laughed too. “Oh, Drake,” I said. “I'd almost forgotten.”
“Forgotten what?” he asked. His eyes, despite their tiredness, crinkled merrily at the corners and he smiled.
“How there's never a dull moment,” I said.