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It happens the day before the Sips and Swirls event. She takes her phone with her to the bathroom, but when she leaves to go to lunch, I see the back pocket she usually slips her phone into is empty.
I log into the software with the cameras so I don’t get caught, disable the ones in this building, and rush into her office with a paperclip. I pull off her case, push the paperclip into the tiny hole to eject the tiny SIM card, and voila. It pops open. I grab the card, push the tray back into place, put the case back on, and rush back to my office. I reactivate the cameras, drop the SIM card into my desk drawer, and get back to work.
Or…I try to get back to work. My heart is pounding, and guilt washes over me.
The whole thing took less than sixty seconds.
I remind myself that she poisoned me. She has this act of revenge coming.
I still feel guilty. I hate that my responsibility is pulsing at me. I hate that I can’t execute a silly prank without feeling bad about it. This isn’t putting someone’s life in jeopardy, and she sure as hell didn’t feel guilty about that.
The entire thirty-two minutes she’s gone today, I wait anxiously for her to return. I think about putting it back. I think about what Spencer will say when I tell him what I did. I think about what my parents would think about me sneaking into her office to do this. I think about what Nana would think about it.
The thought strikes me that I shouldn’t mess with karma. I should let it do its thing. She’ll get hers in the end. I shouldn’t stoop to her level.
I grab the card out of my desk drawer, and I push to a stand to return it. This whole thing is dumb. It’s a stupid plan that isn’t going to teach her a damn thing anyway.
And just as I take the first step to exit my office, I hear her footsteps approaching.
I back up and plop back into my chair. I drop the SIM card back into my desk drawer and wait for the fireworks.
They come three seconds after she sits at her desk. “What the fuck?” she mutters loudly enough for me to hear from my own office. And then a loud, frustrated, “Ugh!”
She taps loudly at her keyboard as she likely looks up why is my phone in SOS mode, and then she grunts out more frustrated noises as she whines, “Why today of all days?”
She won’t dare ask for my help, but I know she’ll need it. She can’t leave the vineyard right now since she has the crew setting up for tomorrow’s event, which is taking place in our west parking lot. And by the time they’re done, she’ll still have to make the hourlong trip to Minneapolis where the phone store is located, and they’ll likely be closed by that point.
The guilt is still there, but this silly little act of revenge actually sort of feels good. It’s giving me a bit of a high that I can be a bad girl, too.
She appears in my office doorway. “Something’s wrong with my phone.”
I choose the path of not arguing with her and get to the point. “What do you want from me?”
“Ugh! Never mind.” She bolts from my office doorway.
I give it some time. I finish the email I’m sending before I head down to the tasting room, staying in line with my normal routine. Delilah is in there, but Nana is missing.
“Where’s Nana?” I ask her when she has a break for a moment.
“She’s out with the crew for Amelia’s event tomorrow.”
I hate for Nana to have extra work, of course—but I don’t so much hate that it’s to save Amelia’s ass, and now I get the opportunity to swoop in and look like the hero.
Sort of like she did at my event.
I head outside and see Nana talking to Eli, one of our maintenance workers, and I walk up to the two of them. “What can I do to help?”
Nana looks gratefully over at me. “Do you have this covered? I need to go sit a while.”
“Of course,” I say with a nod. I squeeze her around her shoulders. “Go sit.”
“You’re a lifesaver,” she says, and she heads back into the tasting room. She’s a firecracker, but she’s not a spring chicken anymore in her mid-eighties.
Guilt racks me as she ambles away. Maybe I’m more of a good girl than I ever realized because I’m not cut out for being a bad girl.
Chapter 49: Spencer Nash
Feeling the Crack
