She stared at me. I would have expected most people to jump up and down, be thrilled, be excited. Not Olivia Ashong. She stared with a gaze so intense I started to shift in my discomfort. “I hate to be the one to break it to you, but you’re not that good. I’ve already forgotten the whole thing. But I am curious, why would you give me this job?”
Oh, but I was that good. “Because until Saturday night, I didn’t even know you worked here, which means that you’re invisible. You can’t get promoted if you’re invisible. I don’t know exactly why you took this job with Kennedy, but you are capable of doing so much more, and I can offer you that opportunity.”
“So, just like that, without a proper interview or anything, you would give me the kind of job that pays a ridiculous amount of money to get that thing back?”
“Whatever you want, yeah. How about it?”
“I say until you can tell me what it is, or why it’s so critical, or even better, why I shouldn’t turn it into the police, my answer is no.”
Livy
Ben had been right in my office that morning when he’d talked about my wet panties. They’d been soaked. He’d been so damn smug. No way I was letting him know he affected me. And besides, I was with Dex. Ben Covington was merely a little harmless fantasy.
Right. So that’s why you’re running to Telly’s for a second opinion?
To be fair, it wasn’t the only reason, even though I knew what I was doing was a mistake.
Well, I’d made a series of them starting with turning down flipping Ben Covington for a job. I was out of my mind. The series of decisions I’d made since going to that stupid fundraiser had sent me on this path, and I wasn’t sure I could course correct.
What the hell was wrong with me?
Of all the stupid things you’ve ever done, Liv, this takes the cake. But like my mother always said, some mistakes had to be made.
It wasn’t like I didn’t know I was making one. I knew the moment I made a copy of the flash drive. Even when I’d brazenly told him he couldn’t have it, I’d known I was going to give it to him. But he’d used me, and I needed to know why and how much trouble I was in.
When I saw him in my office, some primal, feminine part of me had wanted to preen. He was dangerous with a capital D. And I was going to need to stay the hell away. But boy had I wanted to lean into his sandalwood scent.
I’d wanted to do other things to his towering frame too. I was pretty sure I needed a grappling hook to climb that mountain, and there was a part of me that was totally into that.
Nope. Stop it.
I had to stop thinking about him. Those ice-blue eyes. The charcoal vest over the crisp white shirt. The swatch of cerulean silk in his tie that accentuated the color of his eyes. God, I had problems. One, I had a boyfriend. Two, Ben Covington was possibly the most handsome man I’d ever seen on the planet. Three, he’d used me.
There was a reason he’d done it, and I needed to know why. I couldn’t explain it, but I hoped knowing would buy me some assurances. He was willing to give me a triple-pay upgrade. He owned the place, but no one did that unless they were desperate.
As I furtively glanced over my shoulder, I skipped up the stairs of the waterfront flats toward Telly’s place. She basically lived above Vauxhall tube station. After work, I’d taken the tube from Soho and headed straight to her place, knowing with every step that I was making a grave error.
But if I was making a mistake, I knew Telly was the friend to go with me. I was about to do something that was probably going to get me into trouble, but I couldn’t let it go. He was hiding something. Something that might be important for me to know. Like a scab, I couldn’t stop picking at it. I had to know if this was going to blow up in my face. I had to have answers.
At Telly’s, the closed entryway with keypad access didn’t stop me. I pulled out my set of keys and opened the door. There were several people on the lift with me as I headed up to the third floor. With each step toward Telly’s flat, I wondered what had gotten into me.
I knocked at Telly’s door, and it took a minute before I heard her footsteps on the other side. When she yanked it open, she was out of breath. “Hey, you gorgeous slag. Give me a minute.”
“Hey, Telly.”
She laughed. “Come right in. The look on your face clearly says, ‘This calls for wine.’ Tell me, is this a breakup surprise? Don’t tease me.”
I groaned. “Telly.”
“Okay. Sorry,” she grumbled. She stepped back to let me in and then closed the door behind me before she ran into her room. “Let me hit save on what I’m working on.”
“I’ll get the wine.” I practically lived there, so I knew exactly where to find it.
In her kitchen, I reached into the fridge. I knew I’d find a Moscato in there, because Telly, like me, didn’t actually like real wine. She liked the sweet stuff that tasted more like fruit juice than anything. I uncorked it and poured two hefty glasses. It was our shared joke all through Uni. We’d never be sophisticated enough for the real stuff. She’d always said it kept her real and then proceeded to laugh at all the wine snobs who insisted they could taste every single flavor and flower. She claimed that in her bartending days she often served cheap wine and no one could tell the difference.
I was inclined to believe her.
When she jogged back into the living area, she gave me a smile. “I love you. And I’m so glad you’re here. Sorry about the break-up comment. But what the hell? Is this about the mugging Saturday night?”
I laughed because only Telly could say that to me. Since Uni, we’d vowed to only tell each other the truth. The side effect of that promise was that now she could read me like a book.
I reached into the pocket of my trench. I hadn’t even bothered to take it off. The chill from the misty rain outside was still running through me. That was London in the early spring for you. I pulled out the drive and laid it on the kitchen counter. “No, this isn’t about the mugging. I canceled my credit card. The police are not hopeful it’ll ever be found. But that’s not what this is about. This flash drive, can you find out what’s on it for me?”
Her gaze slid to the flash drive, to my face, then back to the flash drive. “Where did you get this mysterious drive?”
“Uhm… it’s a long story. But I couldn’t read it. I figure you can do some hackery magic or something.”
She laughed then. “You recognize I can’t hack everything, right?”
“I know that. But I need you to hack into that.” I drank two large gulps of my wine. “It’s important.”
I stared at the flash drive, wondering what the hell I was doing. In the last two days, I had been afraid, worried, curious... and free. These were feelings I had been searching for half my life. And that energy had fueled my writing. It was like the adrenaline I still carried from that night had unlocked my creative center.
Ever since my mother died, there had been this empty part of me, and it tasted like dissatisfaction. It was eating at me. It ate away the carefully constructed life that I’d told myself I wanted and what I understood as living.