Page 45 of Saving Meadow

“I’m sorry this happened to her,” I whispered. “I liked her.”

“I did too. Come on, let’s get you some coffee.” He stood and set me on my feet, before taking my hand and guiding us back to the kitchen. “Can you go in late today?” Nick asked.

“No. The big boss is coming down. There’s a meeting at nine with all the account managers,” I told him. “I was planning on being in a little early to make sure I had everything ready.”

“You sure you’ll be alright?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’ll be fine. Thanks for letting me use you like a Kleenex.”

“Anytime.” Nick moved an open notebook aside and set a cup of coffee in front of me.

“What’s this?” I asked, pointing to the paper and taking a sip of java goodness.

“Something for work. I thought I was on to something, but it ended up being a bust.”

“On to what?” I asked, reading over the familiar names. “Sorry. You probably can’t tell me.”

“It’s fine. I trust you. You told me if a client erased something from their cloud it would still be on the company server. I was trying to see what companies the bars were buying the cloud storage from to see if I could find a connection. But, as you can see, none of the names are the same.”

“Six of those companies buy space on our servers at Fusion,” I told him.

“What? What do you mean?”

“These.” I picked up a pen. “May I?” He nodded, and I checked off the names. “They all rent space from us.

“Explain how that works?” he asked.

“Okay, well, let’s take Chesapeake Lock as an example. They have clients that purchase space for storage. Chesapeake grew quickly and didn’t have the infrastructure in place to service all their clients, so they purchase space from a larger company like Fusion. I’m making up a number, but Chesapeake buys one terabyte of space for ten dollars and sells it for twenty. The smaller company still turns a profit even when they must outsource. Now, most smaller companies use the profit to reinvest purchasing larger servers themselves, so they don’t have to continue to rent space. Some don’t. Chesapeake didn’t, neither did Bay Broadband. Both are on your list, and both are being bought out by Fusion.”

“Fuck, that’s what we missed.”

Nick picked up the list and contemplated the names.

“Would Fusion have access to the files?”

“What do you mean?”

Nick’s frown deepened as he placed the list back on the counter and studied me.

“It kills me to ask you this. My gut is telling me to keep the woman I love far away from this investigation, but the agent in me knows better. You’re already involved and it kills me.” I’d lost track of everything he’d said after woman I love. Did Nick love me? Was that what he was saying?

“Meadow?” he called.

“Sorry. What?”

“If this is too much for you, I’ll dig in when I get to work. I should do that anyway. Never mind.”

“No. I’m fine. Explain what you need again,” I told him.

“Where’d you go?” I bit my lip trying to play it cool like he hadn’t just rocked my world. I was afraid I’d misunderstood what he had said and didn’t want to make a fool of myself if I had. “Red?”

“It’s just you said the woman I love,” I blurted out.

“And that bothers you because?”

Bothers me? Shit, I wasn’t making any sense. I knew I should’ve kept my mouth shut.

“You love me?” There, I’d said it. My lungs started to burn the longer Nick stared at me in silence. I couldn’t find my breath as I waited for him to answer.