“Well, even if you think it’s a local file, it’s usually on some sort of cloud server. That’s what your agent did. Since you said you shared your book with him before it went to your editor he pretty much just torpedoed every file with a similar name.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah, not great.” Lance was rapid fire typing in the chat window. “However, I have a very clever friend who works in cybersecurity and she gave me a few tips to look for default backups.” At what had to be my blank look, he laughed. “Like, when your computer shuts down for no reason or you have a power outage, you know how the computer comes on again and has the recovered file?”
“Oh. Yeah, I’ve seen that before.”
“The problem is, they don’t have real names and kinda just swim around in the cache files on your computer. Not exactly easy to find. However, with a few keyword searches, I was able to dig through and...” He tapped the key harder and a Word document filled half the screen.
One I’d never thought I would see again.
I stepped toward his desk and dug my fingers into his shoulder. “Fuck me. How did you do that?”
“Helped that you didn’t have a lot on your computer. Your research seems pretty organized.”
“Yeah, I’m very analog except for some library archives.”
“Works in your favor.”
Phoebe rushed her brother and wrapped her arms around his neck from the back. “You found it?”
“I found a version of it. No idea if it’s the finished file.”
“It doesn’t matter.” My voice cracked. “That story won’t ever be mine now. It’s been twisted in a way I can’t trust sharing with people, but I can use this to go after Christopher.”
“That you can.”
“I can’t thank you enough.”
“Well, you can thank me after I shore up your security.”
“I’ll just buy a new laptop for fuck’s sake.”
Lance patted his sister’s arm before she gave him some room.
“It’s forever going to replicate just because of your backups to the cloud that attach to your phone or some benign file will forever keep it open. Until I’m done with it.”
“I’ll be in your debt.”
“Nah. Just name a character after me and make sure he dies gruesomely.”
I laughed. “That, I can do.”
“Only problem is, you’ll need to leave your laptop here. It’s going to take me a while to make sure this fuckhead will be locked out.”
“And if I wanted to trap him first?”
Lance turned his chair around. “I’m listening.”
“I want Christopher’s reputation in shreds.”
“Dutch, don’t let him keep you in this angry place anymore.”
I held my hand out to Phoebe and she took it without hesitation. “I don’t want him to do this to another author.”
Her big dark eyes were worried, but she nodded. “Okay. That, I can get behind.”
“I’m going to need some help first.”
