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Charlie shut the program down and backed up all the files to the server.
Keith wasn’t as smart as he thought he was. She’d never have reviewed the video if he hadn’t been so concerned about deleting it. And really, what the hell did she care who came to his office to visit?
“You’re here early.”
Charlie jumped in shock and spun
to see Dawn standing in the door, already dressed perfectly in a trim little yellow skirt and sweater. “Uh. Hi.”
“Good morning,” Dawn responded.
Charlie waited for the next words, the little swipe at Charlie’s character, but it never came.
She looked at the monitor over Charlie’s shoulder. “What are you doing?”
Charlie snuck a panicked glance back to be sure she’d closed everything. “Just catching up. You know. Making notes on cameras.” She scraped together all her paper and smacked it into a crooked pile. “Checking all the time stamps.”
“The time stamps?”
Crap. Her heart raced. “Yes. I need to be sure they all line up.”
“Hm. Anything odd?”
“No. Nope. Nothing at all.” Oh, man. Now she was covering up a husband’s affair. But really, this had nothing to do with her job. She didn’t owe Dawn anything. In fact, she owed Keith a lot more.
Damn this place.
“Be sure you let me know if you ever see anything unusual,” Dawn said softly.
“Sure.”
“Because you still need to train me on how to handle suspicious events.”
“Yes. Absolutely. Later, though. Today I’m checking security features in the rooms.”
Dawn stared her down for a moment, but she eventually sighed and walked away without a word. Charlie let out the breath she’d been holding.
Keith hadn’t been worried that Charlie would see a woman coming to his office. He’d been worried that Dawn would see. Charlie was beginning to lose her faith in marriage.
She laughed at the thought. Then laughed harder. She’d never had any faith in marriage, and she’d yet to see anything that would change her mind. Her own parents had been disasters, whether they were together or with other people. Working in Vegas had given her a crash course in all the ways men and women could betray each other. People married for reasons she could rarely understand, and then they stayed married for even more mysterious motives.
As for love... God. She hoped it never happened to her. There was no motive to that at all. It was just a natural disaster that slammed over you and took you down. All she could do was dig a bunker and hoard supplies and hope she never needed to deal with that emotional apocalypse.
How many times had she seen her mom ruined by it? How many cycles of euphoria and joy, followed by denial, then frantic despair? Then her mom would jump right back in, eager to manufacture some new happiness.
Charlie had only come close once. With a man who’d lied about everything.
No, love wasn’t for her. Love was the opposite of security, and security was Charlie’s specialty.
She logged out of the system and grabbed her notes to retreat to her office. As soon as the door was closed, she popped her laptop back open and went straight to the search engine.
Her hands hovered over the keyboard. It felt creepy to search out information on Walker’s old lover. Super creepy. He wasn’t Charlie’s boyfriend, and if he was, any insecurities she had would be a reason to talk to him about it, not snoop. But this wasn’t about Walker and the curvy, beautiful blonde he’d recently fooled around with.
“Hmph,” she grouched to herself. No, this wasn’t about that at all.
She typed Nicole’s name into the search field and watched the results pour in, dozens of references to Fletcher Guest Ranch. Pictures. Reviews of the ranch. A video interview with Nicole. Charlie took one look at Nicole’s perfect makeup in the still shot and skipped over the video. She wasn’t jealous. Exactly.
Ignoring the video, she clicked on an “About Us” headline, and there was a picture of Nicole with her husband, both of them smiling as if the ranch were a dream home for a dream couple who were still dreamy in love after all these years. Charlie clicked back.
