“Wait, how did you get it?” Mateo asked.
“I asked. She knew who I was. It turns out Heather’s parents left the trailer. They got some big payout from the school after what happened. Took the money, left all of Heather’s things. Her grandma is now living there.” Sian rubbed at her temple. “I said that I’d come back to get whatever she didn’t want. That’s okay, right?”
“Of course,” I said. “I can bring you back later.”
The smile on her lips lifted my heart.
“Let’s get out of here.”
She held the laptop to her chest like a lifeline.
We climbed back into the car and as we pulled out, Mateo made a call to Fred, organizing a meetup to deal with the laptop. I expected Fred to put up a bit of a fight, but clearly he wanted to know what happened to Heather as well.
With that, Mateo dropped us back off at Gideon’s place before he took off to deal with the laptop.
Sian was pissed that he’d taken it from us.
I put my hands on her shoulders, pulling her back against me and holding her. “You know why we can’t go, right?”
“No. Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“Fred’s dad doesn’t want him near any of us. He believes we’re the problem to his son. We’re the cause for getting him beat up.”
“We are though.”
I wrinkled my nose. “We’ll agree to disagree on that one. But Mateo can get to Fred and handle this. I trust him.”
Sian rested her head against my shoulder. “You’re right. I don’t know why I have any doubts.” She blew out a breath. “I’m hungry. Are you?”
“I could eat.”
She took my hand, leading me inside.
There was no one around, and I was more than happy to prolong my time with Sian.
****
Mateo
“The basement?” I asked.
“Believe me, my dad won’t come down here. It’s my man cave, as he likes to call it.”
“More like a nerd cave,” I said.
When I got close to Fred’s house, he gave me strict instructions on where to park my car and how to get through the gates. To be honest, I think he was having fun at my expense, doing some weird spy movie shit.
It was all good fun. I was more than happy to play along for now.
With the laptop in Fred’s hands, he’d already opened it up, connected it to his own stuff, and now, he was inside, only it needed a password.
“If I was Heather, what kind of password would I use?” Fred talked to himself.
I stood, arms folded, waiting.
I didn’t like sneaking around but Fred seemed more than okay with it.
He did five different passwords, but none of them worked to get into the laptop.
“Try Sian’s birthday,” I said, giving him the dates.
Fred snorted. “Please, her best friend’s? Someone like Heather wouldn’t use her best friend’s birthday to … okay then, I guess Heather did.”
I smiled at Fred’s blush. “What you don’t know about Heather is that she was in love with Sian. They were best friends, but Heather wanted her.”
“Did Sian know this?” Fred asked.
“Yes. Toward the end.”
“And she was still friends with her?”
“Yes. Sian made it clear to her that she didn’t see her that way. She loved her like a friend.”
“Ouch,” Fred said, already clicking away. “Heather never said anything to me.”
“Did you like Heather?” I asked.
I recognized jealousy when I heard it.
“No, man, of course not.”
“You did.”
Fred was silent for several minutes. “I had no idea she liked chicks. That’s all.”
I didn’t say anything else.
He got to work on looking through the laptop. At first, he brought up a couple of images that showed Sian and Heather together; they both looked happy.
“I can’t believe she’s dead,” Fred said.
Seconds ticked by, then minutes. He closed the images and got to work on the files.
“I did like her,” Fred said. “Before I was attacked, I was going to ask her out. I never got the chance. At least now I know the answer.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Heather wouldn’t have wanted me.”
“You don’t know what Heather would have liked. I only know that she was in love with Sian. It doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have had a soft spot for you.” I wanted to console my friend, but there were no words.
I didn’t know Heather enough to say for sure she’d go with him.
Fred said nothing else and got to work, going through the computer. I listened to him typing away, finding myself thinking about Sian as he did. The way she felt wrapped around me today. The feel of her lips on my dick.
I hadn’t expected her to want me, but she was so much more than I expected. I didn’t want her to leave, but I had no idea how to win her over. How could I stop the woman I wanted from leaving?
“Holy shit!” Fred sat back in his chair, hand over his mouth.
“What? What is it?” I asked.
I stared at the screen and didn’t know for sure what he’d found. I recognized the name. “Why did Heather have Alexander Roberts’s information?”
“She was digging. She was trying to find a way for Sian to fight back against her father, and she … she found it. Halloween night, she didn’t go to any party. She stayed home and hacked into his system. She found his paper trail. I knew she was amazing, but fuck me, I wish she had taught me this.”
I looked as Fred showed me the paper trail she’d gotten from Alexander’s life.
“Not only has she gotten proof of embezzlement here, with the linked accounts, she found it going back to when he was in high school with your dads.” Fred pointed at the screen. “Look. He was making a bigger play back then. What’s this?” Fred clicked on a file and I saw it was a video. “Do you want me to press play?”
“Yeah, press it.”
The screen was blank, and then I saw Heather as she sat back in a chair. “Hi, it’s me, Heather. Girl genius, computer badass. Sorry, Fred. I guess, I don’t know why I’m making this, but I feel I have to. After everything I’ve seen, it just … yeah. So, hi, Sian. As I’m making this now, you’re being initiated into The Society. This is a very important organization. For the most part, it can be bad. Keeping the rich rich, and the poor, well, poor. Er, but not only does it keep the power and the systems rolling, it also has a process where it finds people, like me, to bring in.”
Heather tucked some hair behind her ear. “And so, I want to apologize to you, Sian. When I got my scholarship, I, er, I was … The Society granted it to me in return for me befriending a girl. A girl whose mother had been damaged by this organization, and they wanted things to run smoothly. I was to make her time enjoyable at school and properly guide her to the moment when her initiation would be a choice.”
Now I was fucking reeling. All this time Heather had been working for them.
Heather rubbed her hands together, but it wasn’t an act of greed. “I like you, Sian. You know I like you, and that is never going to change, and I’m sorry I lied to you. My job was to take care of you. I … I didn’t look into your dad until after I talked to Fred, and then I realized that I could help you. You want to live your own life and I get that. The Society offered me everything. The chance to be better than my parents. To fit into this world where I’m supposed to be. The career, the life, the power. All I had to do was this one thing.” Heather stopped.