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“Aha. Well, you’re in luck. You will actually have an entire office to yourself. The project I want you working on is very…classified…so to speak so it becomes very important that you have a private space.”
My mind continued to spin as he finished looping around the cubicles and gestured to a small office that was sandwiched between two other office spaces. The occupant of the one to the left of mine looked up and waved at us as we walked by.
He extended his arm, gesturing to the middle office, and I stepped past him to enter the room. It was a pretty simple space, but there was a window with a view of the city, the walls were painted, and the furniture was nice. It was more than I would have ever expected for myself. I wanted to thank him again, to express how much of a difference this opportunity was making for me, but I remained silent.
“You can decorate however you see fit. I will have a proper name plate outside the door installed by the end of the week,” he rambled on.
I acknowledged his words with a nod and ran my finger along the edge of the desk, feeling the smoothness of the polished wood under my fingertips.
“All right, one more thing to show you and then we can make the rounds and meet the rest of the team,” Cooper continued as he turned and left the room.
Cooper gave a brief tour as we walked around the office and led me to a new room on the opposite side of the floor as my office. I stepped inside and lights automatically flickered on overhead. It looked like an employee lounge area, except it was on a whole other level than what I had pictured. There were sleek looking leather couches, like the one in Cooper’s office, on two walls, with a couple of matching chairs completing the large sitting area. Then there were two long, espresso-colored wooden tables with matching chairs in the middle of the room. On the farthest wall there was a full kitchen that looked like something out of Architectural Digest. It was contemporary but warm with dark woods and stone counter tops. Two commercial-sized refrigerators stood side by side. One of them had clear doors and you could see an array of prepackaged sandwiches, fruit, veggies, drinks, and snack items.
“Wow. This is incredible. Completely not what I was picturing,” I said, my eyes struggling to take it all in. Everything was so well organized, and it seemed as if a lot of thought and personal care had gone into this room.
“What were you expecting? Cheese puffs and nachos?” He smiled at me.
“Well, yeah! Kind of. I don’t know.” I couldn’t help but laugh. “Seriously, though, Cooper, this is amazing.”
He shrugged. “I care about my employees and wanted to make a nice space for them to hang out and provide healthy meals to save them money and time. I figure it’s the least I can do, considering how hard everyone here works.”
I nodded, feeling silly for gushing about everything like a small town bumpkin on her first trip into the big city.
Cooper spent the next hour introducing me to the rest of the small—but obviously tight knit—team before we went back to my office. He shut the door behind us and I felt myself relax, thinking we would finally be able to act normal around each other.
“All right,” he started. He gestured for me to take a seat behind the desk, and he sank into the opposite chair once I was seated. “Let’s talk about what I need you to do.”
My heart fell a little as it became obvious he didn’t want to talk about anything personal. I tried my best to tune out my disappointment and focus on his words as he gave me the rundown of my job description.
“What I need you to do is…investigative…in nature,” he said, emphasizing the word. “Plush is in need of an overhaul, a re-branding if it is going to stay afloat. I happen to know that you are a skilled programmer and are very…ass kicking…I think was the term used to describe your skills with tech stuff, and recovering information. The fact that you were able to access such a complex and secured database like Spotlight’s showed me that you’re perfect for this job.”
I cocked an eyebrow. “You want me to hack?”
“I wouldn’t call it that. Let’s just say I need to know what the competition is using in their products. You know a lot about the cosmetic ingredients. I still have your scathing review of Plush products saved to my email. And I know you have the abilities to get the information and decipher it.”
He leaned back, his speech apparently concluded. I gaped at him, not sure I even believed what he was asking of me.
“Cooper, that would be illegal. I mean, I can get you the general ingredients, but as for a recipe or anything proprietary…I don’t know.”
“I know this is asking a lot, but you have to trust me. I wouldn’t ask you to do this if it wasn’t very important.”
“But what do you need it for?”
“I can’t tell you.”
“Cooper—”
“Allison, that’s the job. For right now, that is what I need you to do. End of story.”
I nodded at his words,
although the ramifications of what he was asking me to do were still pinging around my mind. I could go to jail—to prison! Maybe for life! “I’ll think about it.”
“Excellent.” He stood and swept out of the office, closing the door behind him.
My heart crashed at his sudden disappearance and a new fear crept in, wondering if maybe getting me to this point had been his end game all along.
Chapter Sixteen
