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Chapter Sixteen
Luke didn’t take issuewith my decision to force the password change. I trust you. His assurance didn’t soothe me the way I think he intended. Why couldn’t I trust myself?
On the drive back to the hotel, Luke called Chase. Such great pals, they decided which of them got to date which woman and had each other’s numbers.
Luke put the conversation on speaker, to make sure everyone was on the same page, and told Chase finding new rooms was a bust, so he’d have roommates again tonight.
So much for avoiding Chase.
I didn’t say anything. I didn’t know if it would be worse if I let the anger flow and wanted to take it back later, or forgave them when I wasn’t sure that was the right thing to do.
With Shawn, every time we fought, he’d insist it was my fault. For saying the wrong thing. For overreacting. For making him mad.
I’d figured out after that wasn’t the case, but my fucking brain still wavered on how to spot when I was interpreting things wrong. Especially here and now, with them.
Back at the hotel, I set up camp on the couch, pulled on my headphones, and opened my laptop. If that didn’t say, leave me alone, I didn’t know what would.
Chase returned a short while later and stopped in front of me with a warm smile. “Hey.”
I pointed at my headphones and stared back blankly.
“Annie...”
It didn’t matter that my music mostly drowned him out. I saw his lips move. Saw them form my name. Heard his voice in my head. I clenched my jaw and stared at my computer screen again, refusing to look up until I saw his legs pass by and disappear into the other room.
I had to get over this, and now was as good a time to start as any. Work would distract me. Hopefully.
When I was talking to Zane earlier, I’d put the pieces together that, if someone used internal passwords to make their hops and release our spoiler info, they could have just as easily used Billie’s info to frame her. The thought had nagged me since that conversation, and it was the biggest reason I hadn’t looped Luke in yet. We should have fired Billie the moment I had the information, but my gut said not to.
My gut also said Luke would have listened to me, if I’d asked for time. But my gut lied a lot. What if I was wrong about Billie? What if I told Luke, and he fired her anyway, but she didn’t do it?
I hated keeping this kind of secret, even though he’d lied to me. His sin wasn’t corporate-espionage level; it was just Anne-is-gullible-and-fun-to-play-with level.
I didn’t know where to start, to prove anything about Billie one way or the other. Her other work? On-network activities?
Like I’d done so many times in the past few months, I found myself staring at the version control system—the way we kept track of who was making changes to the code and what changes they’d made, in case we needed to roll back to something previously overwritten. This had very little to do with leaking a series spoiler, except that we’d split the details up between teams, so no one had the full picture.
Sure, someone could put the pieces together and figure out the full story—a lot of fans had done that—but a direct script excerpt? Something no one had full access to, unless they had administrator-level rights to source control? Which would include a person with their manager’s password?
Had Mike been in here, poking at things?
I stared for hours, but nothing clicked. It all looked normal. Billie had accessed a large number of files, but they were all ones she should be working with.
My gaze drifted to the computer clock, and when I saw it was almost nine, my stomach growled. There were no answers for me here tonight. Maybe when my head was clearer.
Time to grab some food then pretend I could sleep.
I closed my laptop, set it on the coffee table, and pulled off my headphones. The moment I could hear the world again, the faint sound of the TV in the other room rushed in to meet me. It would be so easy to walk the ten or twenty feet to the bedroom, and talk to Chase and Luke. But I couldn’t. What if I did that, and I set myself up for more of the same?
The sound of a door opening drew my attention, and I looked up to see Chase emerge from the bathroom. I traveled my gaze up his body, over gray sweatpants and his bare chest, to his damp hair and captivating stare. God, he looked good. The past rushed back in a wave of longing and desire, of staying with Sadie and always hoping for a glimpse of something like this.
Fuck, that hurt.
“I really am sorry. Talk to me, please,” he said.
I wanted to. Wanted it so desperately that part of me was willing to accept and agree with anything he said, to make things right. That was the problem—I’d cave, and they’d think they could do something like this again. The way Shawn used to.
I shook my head, grabbed my purse, and walked out of the room. My heart dove into my empty stomach with a thunk, and my brain warred with itself. I was being unreasonable. But I wasn’t. But I was. But... I grabbed my phone, more out of habit than because I wanted to look at it.
