Page 120 of Protecting Love

“Like what?”

“I don’t know. It’s money related. They were doing so well, then they weren’t. It’s like the cash flow just halted. I can’t put my finger on it. One minute we are hiring all these people, giving them raises, having parties. Then it all stopped. As if the money was cut off. You saw it. People weren’t even working that hard half the time. Most of it was because they were ticked all those perks were gone.”

“So you think there is money coming in from another stream and it was cut off?” she asked.

“I’m not sure what I thought. I suggested the strategic consultant about six months ago when there were talks about maybe having to shut the doors. It made no sense to me. How we went from thriving to possibly closing. I didn’t see where we lost clients. I used to love my job and suddenly, it’s just nonstop fighting. Staff are pissed that all their freebies are going away. Some people were let go for no reason before you. I didn’t want to lose my job, but I had no proof.”

“There are whistleblower laws,” she said.

“I had nothing to say. No facts. Nothing. I mean that. I thought for sure if there was something, you’d find it. But you didn’t. Then when Rick got laid off and you said he’d made a comment about things and not talking about what he saw…”

“You thought you could frighten me to look more. Or to find answers?” she asked.

“I hoped.”

“Those calls from you asking advice. Or saying there was more going on? Was any of that true?”

“All of it,” Debra said earnestly. “I thought if I appealed to your morals that you’d worry that maybe you made a mistake. I know you didn’t, but it’d have you going back to look again. I mean it. I don’t understand why Rick was let go. His team was actually doing well. Maybe I went about this all wrong.”

“No maybe about it,” Fletcher said.

“Why did you send the letter yesterday to keep looking? Did you know for a fact I was again, or just hoped?”

“You tried to open that file,” Debra said. “I marked it to get an alert. But you didn’t ask me for the password.”

“What’s the password?”

“I don’t know. One night, I got the file off the server. I don’t think I was supposed to know it was there. It was in the finance section, but IT was cleaning things up when I was working late. My computer was spinning while I was trying to access things so I just clicked on another department to see if they were having the same issue.”

“You picked a file at random or were able to open things?” he asked.

“It’s a folder. I couldn’t open it. It was called New Folder. No one does that. I just thought it was a mistake and it’d be empty. That’s the only reason I clicked. But it was locked and with everything else that was going on back then, I just took a risk.”

“You weren’t afraid someone was going to catch you sending that file to me?” she asked.

“Or worry that it’d come back to Paris and maybe put her in danger if it was something?” he asked.

“I didn’t send it from my work email,” Debra rushed out. “I saved to a USB, then later that night I created a new email, close to my work one, and sent it. I hoped you wouldn’t have noticed the difference and I sent it with a few other files.”

“I didn’t,” she said. “I hate I didn’t see that.”

“People don’t always notice what they just assume is fine,” he said. And since the file was on her computer and not in an email, he wouldn’t have even thought to check himself.

Debra was smarter than he gave her credit for.

“So what is it you think is going on?” Paris asked.

“I really don’t know. I’m probably wrong and feel horrible. I just didn’t know what to do. I really meant you no harm. I just thought the rat would be gross and maybe make you think more.”

“Theatrics,” he said.

“They do that stuff on TV,” Debra said, shrugging.

And it worked.

He’d seen firsthand Paris’s reaction to it.

“Tell me in your words what is going on there,” Fletcher said. “What you think is different or off.”