Page 27 of Saving Meadow

“Honest to God! Are you standing here on my woman’s front porch insulting her? Holy shit lady, you’re fucked. Maybe you should be more concerned about your manners and less concerned about who Meadow is dating. Not only is she ten times better looking than you, but she’s got a hundred times more class. And that is part of what makes her so beautiful. So, unless you got another apology to hand out for being a rude bitch, I’d suggest you get gone.”

“I’ll just talk to you at the office.” Beth turned to leave and bumped into the pizza boy, knocking the box in his arms making him stumble back before he regained his footing, saving the pizza. “Clumsy idiot. Watch where you’re going.”

What the fuck?

“She’s not worth it.” In my anger, I’d missed Meadow coming up beside me. She reached down and grabbed my hand, giving it a firm squeeze. Her touch did wonders to ease some of my anger, but I was still pissed.

Meadow and I would be having a conversation about what not worth it meant. No one had the right to speak to her the way Beth had. But first I had to get our pizza and settle Sally down. I’d never heard her growl at anyone before. Animals had good instincts. Sally not liking her only further solidified my dislike of the bitch Beth.

“Pretty dog. Is he friendly?” the pizza guy asked.

“Her,” Meadow corrected. “Yes, she’s normally friendly. Unless you’re a rude bitch apparently.”

I was happy to see Meadow’s smile was back, obviously pleased that Sally had growled and protected her against Beth’s insults. That kind of pissed me off as well. Not that Sally did it, but that Meadow was genuinely pleased a dog had stood up for her. Fuck. She had no one to make her feel safe and cared for. No one to cushion the blow and take her back when the world was crashing around her. I hated that for her.

I paid for the pizza and shut the door. “Who was that?”

Meadow didn’t answer. Instead, she went into the kitchen and started opening cabinets, getting plates and glasses out, setting them on the counter.

“Meadow?”

“I work with her,” Meadow sighed. “She’s a miserable human whose sole purpose in life is to be mean to people.”

“She always that rude to you?”

“That wasn’t rude. That was mild compared to how she behaves in the office.”

“You’re shitting me?” I asked, and Meadow shook her head. “Please tell me you are shitting me.”

“Afraid not. She’s like that to everyone except the boss. She is sugar sweet to him and kisses his ass. She’s even kinda mean to her clients. Today she was extra pissed because she lost two accounts. The boss isn’t going to be happy. Business has been down the last six months. I’m kinda scared they might start laying people off.”

“Fusion Telcom, right? What does the company do?”

I haven’t had time to investigate the company Meadow worked for yet. With a crazy serial killer running around and being on a clock until she killed again, I had to prioritize. Besides, I’d like to get to know Meadow directly from Meadow – not a case file. I already knew too much about her from reading police reports and medical records.

“There are two divisions, infrastructure and storage. One team is dedicated to building phone systems, interoffice networks, and security systems. The other is focused on system management and storage, both onsite and cloud systems. I work for the system management side.”

“Sounds interesting. What do you do?”

“I work with four system managers. I handle their reports. I’m an overpaid secretary and file clerk.”

I highly doubted that was all Meadow did, but like anything else, she tried her hardest not to draw attention to herself.

“What does Beth do?”

“She’s a system manager. She’s a computer whiz. Which is a good thing, because most of her work can be done remotely. As you saw, she’s not a people person. Most of her clients only use our cloud storage. Very few of our clients use onsite hard drives.”

Online cloud storage?

“Do your clients use the cloud to store their security camera feeds?”

“Yeah. Most do. Why?”

“Nothing. A case I’m working on. The security feeds were deleted.”

“If they were stored in the cloud, it would only take a few keystrokes to delete the file. Any employee with the login could do it. Or the system manager. Hell, even I have access to our client’s storage. The only thing I cannot access is the files they encrypt, but those folders are typically the accounting files and bank information. People are ridiculously loose with their information. They think because they store it with a password someone can’t backdoor in. They forget someone has to manage the system and how much data they use.”

“If a file was deleted from your server is it gone forever?”