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“Money is going out,” Trent said, opening the passenger door so she could slide in. “I just can’t determine if it’s actually going to the artists.” Without saying another word, he shut the car door, leaving her to mull over his last statement.
She waited until he’d slid behind the wheel and started the engine before repeating her earlier question. “What was with the USB drive?”
“I figured we wouldn’t get much. So I came prepared. A friend of mine in Vegas runs a security company. And he wouldn’t want it spread around, but he’s a gifted hacker. I called him this morning, explained the problem, and he gave me a worm to implant in their system.”
“A worm?” Savannah had watched enough TV to know what he was talking about. But she had never considered that real people used them. “Are you telling me you planted some sort of spy software in the company’s computer system?”
“As good a hacker as he is, he could’ve cracked their system from the outside, but why bother when it’s so much easier to do it from the inside?”
Savannah was starting to feel hopeful. “So what does this get us?”
“Full access to their system.”
Leave it to Trent to come to her rescue once again. Savannah would never have conceived of something so clever and potentially illegal.
“So you’ll be able to see what’s actually going on?”
“That’s the idea.”
“Is it illegal?”
“I’d say it’s a gray area. Dylan is the majority shareholder in the company. They are denying you access to the books.” Trent backed the car out of the parking spot. “But it doesn’t matter. Logan assures me his software’s untraceable. They’ll never know what hit them.”
* * *
Adrenaline buzzed through Trent’s veins as he negotiated the LA traffic on the way to the hotel Savannah had chosen until she found a more permanent place to settle. The fight with his father had gone as expected. Trent glanced at Savannah. She hadn’t reacted well to Siggy’s vicious attack. It had taken a great deal of willpower to keep from acknowledging her distress and comforting her back at the label. He didn’t want either her or his father to get the idea something was going on between them.
In the old days when he and his father had fought, she had often come to him with comforting words. Initially he’d rebuffed her attempts to make him feel better, not understanding what she needed was reassurance
that he was all right.
He glanced at her now. She stared out the passenger window. Her face was impassive, but her hands, clasped around the purse in her lap, were rigid with tension. He recognized that she was stressed. He gathered breath, refrained from speaking. What was he going to say? That everything was going to be fine? He didn’t know that. And what was he doing getting more deeply involved in her problem with his father when he’d determined a decade earlier that he was done with the family drama?
“Dealing with Siggy isn’t going to be fun or easy,” he said, stating the obvious. “Are you sure you don’t want me to help you get back on your feet somewhere besides here?”
When he made the offer the night before, he hadn’t done so as an ex-lover or a brother-in-law. They’d been friends long before either of those things, and whether he’d always been able to admit it or not, she’d been there for him during some very dark days.
“I told you last night that I’m not going to take your money.”
“You could think of it as a loan.”
Her features relaxed into a wry expression. “I’ve considered that,” she explained in an overly patient tone. “My answer is still no.”
When had she become stubborn? Trent caught himself frowning. She wasn’t the same woman he’d broken up with two years earlier. And he wasn’t sure what to make of the change.
“Why are you so opposed to letting me help you?”
“I wouldn’t be in the car with you if I was opposed to letting you help me.”
“Then why won’t you take money from me? It’s not as if I’d notice it was gone.”
She cocked her head and stared straight forward. “I can’t explain it. Getting you to help me sort out what’s wrong at West Coast Records isn’t personal. I could hire a lawyer to do that.”
“I thought you were broke?”
“I might be able to afford a really bad attorney,” she retorted with a trace of a smile. And then she sighed. “To be honest, I wasn’t thinking straight before last night.”
“Last night? What changed last night?”
