Page 111 of Never Forget

He looks tired and tense, but otherwise he looks a little too good in a white tank top and relaxed-fit jeans. Either he’s dehydrated or he was working out right before meeting us, because his arms are cut and bulging, with a raised vein snaking down the inside of one bicep. My mouth waters at the sight of it, and I have to clench my fists to keep from jumping over the table and licking that vein while I rub myself on him until one or both of us come.

Get yourself together, man!

“Please tell me the cute girl with the gap tooth was with you, and that this is a listening device and not some kind of brain probe,” Scott says, holding what looks like a small, circular bandage with a tiny transmitter.

“That’s Sunni. She works with Kit, and she’s basically the coolest person I have ever met.”

“Didn’t you sit next to Billie Eilish at an awards event once?”

“I also jammed with Dave Grohl. Zero contest, Sunni is a badass.”

Scott looks at Cory. “Should I be jealous?”

Cory pretends to think about it, then shakes his head. “Nah. A little young for his type.”

“She’s also not a six-foot five powerlifting happy shadow,” I say, my voice lowering into a softer, more serious tone.

Amber eyes flash to mine, holding me captive. I don’t dare look away. I don’t want to. This time I want him to see into my soul, past whatever barriers I’ve kept between us.

“The picture was from before you started,” Cory says matter-of-factly, interrupting the moment. Considering how coldly he’s treated Scott since finding out about the texts, I’d count that as a peace offering.

“I know,” Scott says before tearing his eyes from mine. “I never questioned it, but thank you.”

A server comes by and drops off several baskets of fries, onion rings, and potato skins.

“I’m starving and I figured you might be hungry too,” Scott explains. “I ordered a bunch of apps.”

The server takes our drink orders, and once she’s dropped them off and left us to our greasy meal, Cory gets back to business.

“We got a lot of information today.”

“Understatement,” I snort.

Cory does most of the talking, giving Scott a rundown of everything we learned from Kit and Sunni earlier today.

Scott leans back in his seat, running his hands through his hair and looking as confused as I’ve felt since Sunni started talking a mile a minute about patterns and numbers.

“Let me make sure I’m getting this right. This X Media Corp. is possibly sabotaging the band from the inside, and they might be the ones giving Francis information to carry out the bomb threat and drone attacks? That seems off to me. Putting aside that I missed the listening device in the cell booster, it was barely hidden. It could easily be traced back to the IT department and any employees who had their hands on it. Once the feds got involved, did they not expect they’d get caught?”

“To be fair, they haven’t yet. We only have this information because Sunni hacked into the label’s database,” I say. “It’s not like we can hand over the clues we got illegally.”

“Even aside from the hacked information, though. If we were sharing information with the feds the way we’re technically supposed to, they’d know about the bug.”

Cory nods. “No, you’re right, it’s sloppy. The botched drone attacks, too.”

“The outside attacks don’t match the MO of a covert internal operation. They’re either separate, or⁠—”

“Or Fucking Francis,” I finish for him. “He’s the only obvious connection. It all ties back to him somehow.”

“Both Francis and Curtis have mentioned that something is happening. Curtis said it was already in motion.”

Maybe we’re looking at this too closely, trying to find a reasonable explanation for something that isn’t reasonable. Neither Francis nor Curtis are reasonable people. Curtis is a known conspiracy theorist, so maybe we should be looking at this the way he would.

“Okay, take a step back,” I say, pulling the salt, pepper, and ketchup in front of me. “Let’s assume they’re talking about whatever is happening inside the label.” I move the basket of remaining fries to the center of the table.” The covert new hires, the bugs in the office. It would make sense that Francis knows about it since he’s clearly involved.” I squirt ketchup all over the fries. “The X Media Corp. and Curtis Howard.” I hold up the salt and pepper. “We don’t have hard evidence that they’re working together, but it’s a reasonable assumption that he’s fed them information. Their so-called news channel was the first to report about Jesse’s cloud breach.” I shake the salt over the fries. “So now they’re infiltrating the label.”

I sit back and look at the now soggy, over-salted fries, then up at Cory and Scott.

“There’s no pepper on the fries,” Cory points out.