Part 14 (1/2)

This was the worst possible news. If Brecken knew about Inspex, the only ace I had left was the work I'd already done. All that work... How the h.e.l.l had Brecken found out? And who else knew?

d.a.m.n it. ”I need to go.” I paused, considering my next words. ”I have no desire to fight with anyone. I'm only doing what I think is best for Conure. Just like my father would've wanted.”

18.

Andi Getting a phone call from a guy shouldn't make a twenty-three-year-old woman feel like she was thirteen. Or even more embarra.s.singly-act like it. Especially when the guy who was calling had no interest in her, no matter how old she was. Not to mention that I'd just set some pretty firm restrictions on what our relations.h.i.+p was and wasn't. Sadly, those restrictions had very little to do with what I wanted and didn't want. Proven by my prep.u.b.escent reaction to seeing his name on my Caller ID.

Oh yeah, and there was still that sentence s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g around in my head: 'I'll figure something out.' What the f.u.c.k was wrong with me? So far I'd been able to dodge Rob's calls, but I was tired of getting the same voicemail message asking how it was going. How did he think it was going? It was s.h.i.+t. This whole thing was s.h.i.+t.

So I stopped squealing, sat back down, ran my hands over my smile, and put on a grown-up expression. He was a man...who I worked for...who obviously needed to talk to his very professional a.s.sistant, so maybe I should pick up the d.a.m.n phone already.

”Hi,” I squeaked. Oh yeah, that was professional. And lots of points for originality, too. Ugh.

”Who else do you work for?” Hayden's voice was flat, expressionless, and that put me on an uncomfortable edge. He hadn't used that tone of voice with me since our very first phone call, back when he didn't know me at all. So...

”What's wrong, Hayden?”

”Tell me who your other clients are.” The order was more growled than spoken.

”Why? Do you need a new b.u.t.t plug?” I snapped. ”Because whatever you have up your a.s.s right now seems to be working just fine.”

”I'm glad you're amused because I sure as h.e.l.l am not. I want the names of any of my compet.i.tors that you work with.”

What the h.e.l.l? I hadn't even figured out how to screw him over without s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g him-physically or professionally-so what was he talking about? ”I can't tell you that. And you know I can't tell you that because it was on the contract you signed with the agency.” So why was he asking? ”We don't share information on our clients.”

”Even when someone offers you enough money to do so?”

Whoa. Maybe my paranoia was misdirected. Maybe everyone in business was a crook, and Hayden was no different. ”Are you...are you trying to bribe me?”

”I'm not into sloppy seconds. And I don't cheat to get what I want. All I want to know is who you gave it up to and how much it cost him.”

”I'm sorry-all I heard was the incredibly offensive parts of that statement. Was there anything else to it? Anything that didn't make you sound like a complete a.s.shole?”

”Tell me who it was, Sara.” He hadn't called me that since our very first conversation. And, weirdly, it made everything more real.

”No one bribed me.” I was pretty sure I was in an intellectual sort of shock-the type where your brain comes up with a bunch of scenarios but, since none of them make any sense whatsoever, everything just kind of shuts down and plays dead and the only thing left is b.i.t.c.hiness.

I took a deep breath. ”What's this about?” I should've just hung up, maybe yelled a couple of curse words before I did. But this was such a huge departure from the Hayden I'd gotten to know, and I really needed something to help my brain sort this s.h.i.+t out.

”It happens sometimes-a compet.i.tor playing the game well, making a lower bid, calling my bluff-and I suck it up.”

I had no idea where he was going with this, but it didn't sound like he was going to break into song anytime soon.

”When you play for high stakes, you accept that you'll lose a few. But I can't lose this one. So I made a few calls, spoke to some of the people I've been negotiating with...” He paused. ”d.a.m.n it, I can't lose Inspex! I can't. It would ruin everything.”

This was about Inspex? ”You know what would be great, Bennett? If you told me what the h.e.l.l you're talking about and what it has to do with me.”

”I'm going to ask you this once. And your answer had better be the truth.” He paused for a moment. ”Have you been leaking information about Inspex to my compet.i.tors?”

”What? No!” I jumped out of my chair. ”No, I didn't do anything like that. You send me something, I work on it, and then I send it right back to you. I don't print out anything, I don't talk to anyone else. I swear.” This was bad. I couldn't prove a negative. If he accused me publicly, Emilia would have no choice but to fire me. And if he decided to push it, I'd have to come clean to protect Emilia's business. And then I could be brought up on charges. Again. ”I swear, Hayden. I didn't share anything with anyone. If someone leaked stuff, it wasn't me.”

Not for lack of trying, though. My anger was so incredibly hypocritical. I had intended to give something to Rob's blackmailer. I just hadn't decided what would satisfy a criminal but not ruin two good men. Which meant that I was innocent of whatever Hayden was talking about. Being accused of something I didn't do felt worse than being accused of all the awful things I did.

”I want to believe you, Sira,” he said, sounding defeated. ”I want to trust you. But this is business. This is beyond my trust issues or even my livelihood. This kind of thing affects everyone involved, all the way down to the person who repairs the copier. If I don't close this deal, my people don't get paid. I can't hide this-it's already gone too far.”

”I can find out who did it. Please, give me a chance to find out what happened before you say anything to anyone.”

”How do you propose to do that?”

By breaking the law, my plea agreement, and my promise to myself that I would never hack anything ever again. It didn't matter that I would be doing it while trying to help because that was the same excuse I'd given myself last time. Trying to help one person always seemed to hurt someone else. And in this case, I wasn't even sure I was concerned with helping Hayden or Rob. I think I was more concerned with helping myself.

”There's always a trail left behind,” I said. ”You just have to know how to find it.”

”Then find it. Prove I was right to trust you, Sira. Please.” It was the hardest 'please' I'd ever heard, as if he'd squeezed it out through a locked jaw. It was also the most desperate. Only Hayden could pull off those two inside one word.

I kept my questions focused-what had been leaked and to whom. His tone was flat as he told me about his conversation with the senator, how Conure's biggest US compet.i.tor had been sniffing around for information he hadn't shared with anyone else. Then Hayden had called the owner of a small parts manufacturer who Hayden had discovered and no one had ever heard of. Whoever leaked the information had obviously known exactly what was in the deal Hayden was about to propose, probably down to the page number it was on.

”I didn't do this,” I said when he was done. ”But I'll find out who did. Promise.”

”I hope so, Sira. I really hope so. I'll be spending the weekend figuring out if there's a way to salvage this, to have something to present to the board so they don't fire me. I'll need to tell them who screwed us over, and I really hope I won't have to use your name.”

”Me, too,” I whispered too late.

After he'd hung up on me-not that I was doing anything but pretending to be an empty line anyway-I slumped down into my chair. He'd given me a chance to find out, which meant that he hadn't already convicted me, but he didn't sound hopeful either. I knew he'd hated making that call as much as I'd hated getting it. But he'd given me a chance. And despite the fact that it meant breaking the law again, a chance was more than I deserved.

So far, I'd been putting off doing anything about Rob's situation. Now, with this chance-fingers crossed-I would do the right thing for the right reasons and wouldn't ruin anyone's life who didn't deserve it.

It took a while to hack into Conure's mainframe. The firewalls were old-school and easy to get through, but there were a lot of them. Hopped up on caffeine and nervousness, I kept checking over my shoulder as if a S.W.A.T team would barge in any second. Thankfully, besides being paranoid about all the wrong things, I'd somehow gotten in a few of the right things, too.

The second I'd stripped down and reconfigured the new computer Hayden bought me, I set up a complicated routing system for my IP address and a much better security system than Hayden's multimillion-dollar company had. First, the cops would need to know to look, and then they'd need to know where to look. And since this was my first hack since I'd gotten busted-yay me, where's the cake?-I was probably way down on their list of interesting people.

Once inside the mainframe, I could basically go wherever I wanted to. Every email, every doc.u.ment was accessible. Nowadays, even the copiers left a trail of everything that had gone through them. For ease of use and speed of copies, doc.u.ments were scanned onto the hard drive and then printed from the digital version. Convenient for everyone-including people who shouldn't be looking. People who weren't allowed to.

People like me.

19.

Hayden I slammed the door and threw my briefcase on the floor. I wasn't going to get any work done tonight. I wasn't going to do anything but fume. I'd been duped. All I could hope for now was that it hadn't been by Sira. I'd given her far more sensitive information than I should've, allowing a person I barely knew access to secrets that could ruin the biggest contract Conure had ever bid on and make a US senator add me to the list of people not to do business with.

Stupid-stupid-stupid. Sira could be working out of a prison for all I knew. Maybe that's why she couldn't meet me in person-visiting hours were only for family or conjugal visits.