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“Spill. Now. Go.” Grace grabbed onto Lou’s arm and gave it a shake.
“It was Jones,” Lou told them, and then jerked her chin towards the door before she turned back into the other room.
“Jones?” Grace scrunched her face in confusion.
“Oh what the fuck. Are you serious?” Anton groaned, following both women through the door. In the other room there was a handcuffed Jones sandwiched between CERN security officers.
“He’s been stealing from us since the beginning. He even admitted to stealing RED and selling it to Orion Star,” Lou told them, crossing her arms.
Anton’s eyes narrowed as he glared at Jones. “He was with me the whole damn time.”
“I knew it!” Grace whooped. She looked at Anton, who shook his head in disbelief, and said in a quiet voice, “I told you he guilty-scuttled.”
Anton rolled his eyes. “Oh, if we had only followed the crustacean identifiers of guilt, we would have all been saved long ago.”
“Basically.” Grace shrugged, and then looked back at Lou. “How did this happen? We were gone for all of five minutes.”
“Try twenty. You two have been sucking face for a lot longer than you thought,” Lou told her with a wave of her hands.
Grace flushed. “Time flies when you’re having fun.”
“So it seems. Anyway, while you two were off canoodling, Jones over here made a big mistake,” Lou told them with an excited little hop. She was practically glowing now and it made Grace’s heart happy to see the Lou she knew come back to life again.
“Which was?” Anton asked, crossing his arms over his chest. His eyes were glued to where security officers led Jones away. “I can’t believe I trusted him.”
“Hey, good on you for giving someone a chance. I made a list accusing your whole team, soooo…” Grace let her voice trail off while Anton rolled his eyes.
“That isn’t going to make me feel any better,” he said but looked at Lou, “but finding out how he got caught might.”
“He came back for his cell phone,” Lou said, earning her incredulous looks from the couple.
“You can’t be serious,” Grace said. “His phone got him caught?”
“It would be sad if it wasn’t so well deserved. Jones spotted you two this morning in a coffee shop, and overheard you telling Anton to take your access code this morning. He knew Anton would be accessing the server today using your ID, so he waited, tailed Anton, and used a program to clone Grace’s IP address to log on with Anton.”
“What the hell?” Grace shook her head. “I was scanning for moles this morning and I looked past him?” she groaned. Of course she looked past him. Jones was forgettable. Without his photo on her cellphone out in front of her she had zero chances to recognize him. “Wait, they can do that?”
“You can do anything if you’re creative and smart enough, which apparently he was, though I overheard him insisting that Anton had never given him his due. Although, if he got caught like this, then I’m taking your side on him not being anything to write home about.”
“He was mediocre at best,” Anton muttered, pacing now. “He was dependable and that was good for what we were doing, but I have no idea where he got his Dr. Doom ideas of grandeur.”
Lou hummed and gave Jones another sidelong glance. “He might have been mediocre, but he pulled it off just like the IT tech told you. He was out of the server before anyone realized what had happened, and was home free before he came back for his phone. I still don’t understand it. I mean, he had our data, he had the payoff from RED...can’t he just buy 500 new phones?”
“Maybe that one had some great downloaded music?” Grace said. “Quality dog pics maybe—I mean, thatisworth being caught for.”
“Did he say why?” Anton asked, scrubbing a hand over his face. “I mean, why he stole? I compensated well, even if he felt overlooked. Why?”
“Typical villain speech. You didn’t deserve the fame and fortune. Blah blah.” Lou shrugged. “You had what he thought should be his. It was convoluted at best. Who cares? I’m mad I had to hear most of it before I went to find you.”
“Because I trusted him. I backed him up when Grace identified his thieving crab walk. That’s why. And you know what? I’m going to go handle this.”
“Trust me.” Lou wrapped a hand around his arm and stopped him when he made to go after Jones. “You’re going to want to punch his throat. He’s not worth it. You’ll have time to get the story from the lawyers.”
Anton’s lips pressed into a thin line, but he stopped and nodded. “Okay, you’re probably right. I’ll just...not punch him while I handle it.”
Lou squeezed his arm. “Good man.”
“Even though I want everyone to know that I want to, and I feel personally attacked at not being able to feed my urges.”
