Page 134 of Cruel Lies

I made sure of it.

The door buzzes. Then it opens, because Navi has a key. He comes down the hall slow. When he gets to the bedroom doorway, he stops there. He looks at me standing at the window in a towel, and he looks at the napkin in my hand, and his face falls as he sighs sadly.

He doesn't gloat. I'd have taken it on the chin if he did. Fuck knows I've earned it. But he just stands there with his hands in his pockets, and after a while, he says, "From where she's standing, there's no difference between you and Todd. Do you remember when I told you that?"

I nod, not trusting myself to speak.

"It was in your office. Six weeks ago." He isn't cruel about it, even though I wish he would be. If he were cruel, I could get angry, and dealing with anger is easier than dealing with whatever the fuck I'm feeling right now.

"I remember."

"I know you do."

He comes into the room. He sits down on the edge of the bed, careful not to touch the napkin, like it's crime scene evidence. He looks tired. His tie is loose. He came straight from somewhere, or he's been sitting in his car in the garage downstairs for an hour working up the nerve to come up.

"You want a drink?" he says.

"No."

"Well, I do."

He doesn't get up to get one, though. He just sits there.

"I did what you told me," he says after a while. "The lockout. It's done."

I just nod again. I'm glad that's over with. Might as well rip everything away at once. No point in prolonging the agony.

"You want to tell me why you had me pull the trigger tonight? Now? Two hours after she found out?" He rubs a hand down his face. "Because when you called and told me to lock her out of everything, I figured you'd want the opposite. I figured you'd want to look like the good guy. Give it back. Grand gesture. That's your thing lately."

"It's not a gesture."

"So what is it?"

I set the napkin down on the dresser. I can't hold it anymore. My hands won't stop shaking around it and I don't want Navi to see.

"The party that pulled the second filing on the shell," I say. "Have we figured out who?"

"Not yet. Working on it."

"But it's someone. It's a real set of eyes, not a bot."

Navi nods slow. "Yeah, real eyes. Somebody who knows what they're looking at."

"That's why." I turn from the window to face him. "Whoever that is, they're inside the system now. And Cali's company was about to get pulled all the way into the middle of it. If those enemy eyes trace the wrong thread, they land on her."

Navi is quiet.

"So we locked her out," I say, "to get her out of the blast radius. A woman who has no access to those accounts is a woman who can't be tied to them. If it all comes apart—and it might—she'll be safe."

"That's not how she's going to read it."

For the third time, I can only nod.

"This doesn't make you seem like a good guy, Ro," warns Navi. Again, it's not unkind. Merely matter-of-fact. "Especially not to her. To her, you're still a lying asshole and a thief."

"I know."

"Then why do it?"