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Chapter Eighteen
I wish you didn’t make me...The mental Shawn-voice faded as Luke held my gaze.
“If she was wrong, I’d say so. That doesn’t happen very often, though.” Luke was talking to Chase, but he was focused on me.
“Fair point.” Chase’s agreeing with Luke silenced the voice even more.
I didn’t want to think about me. “Tell us a story about you.”
This was when Chase would bite back. He’d tell me no. To stop. That I was stupid for pushing the issue.
“When I was fifteen, I was at Jax’s. One of the rare times I spent more than a few minutes at his house,” Chase said.
I didn’t know this story. If I did, it wasn’t in this context.
“Something was peeking out from under the corner of his bed, and I was curious. New comic? Naked chicks? The glossy cover and hint of colors made me think it was the latter, so I tugged. Nope, none of the above. Naked dudes. Alone. With each other. With the biggest cocks I’d ever seen. Not a single woman to be seen anywhere, and trust me, I looked. I stared at those pages and had no idea why they made my skin so hot.”
Luke looked like he was trying to hide amusement.
I’d expected if Chase shared a story, it would be something lighthearted and flippant. That wasn’t where this was headed.
Chase shook his head. “Jax came back from wherever he was—grabbing something out of the basement, or who remembers—and the instant I saw him, I shoved the magazine under the bed and ran back home. I was so embarrassed by my own reaction, I didn’t talk to him for days.”
“Is that why you pushed Sadie away from him?” I couldn’t imagine, and the timeframe didn’t line up.
Chase huffed out a laugh. “No. That was something completely different. I didn’t understand how the pictures made me feel. It took me a while to process. That it didn’t mean Jax was interested in me. That I could like girls and boys. That I could be turned on by them and still daydream about you.” He locked his gaze on mine.
Heat flooded my face, and I turned away. I didn’t want to feel better around him and Luke, but I did. This was how it always went with Shawn, though. Wasn’t it? We’d fight. He’d apologize and be sweet. We’d start over.
Why did this feel different? Not so littered with landmines?
We wrapped up lunch, and Chase left us to work. He’d convinced our vendor to accept our new deadlines and requirements, and was off to try to sign someone new while he was in town.
I only had a few hours left, to keep Billie from being fired. She probably had no idea—at least I hoped she didn’t. My mind was clearer than it had been since we arrived, and now was the perfect time to go back over all the information I had.
Big problem was, I didn’t have any more idea of where to look than yesterday. I stared at the source control, willing it to give me answers. All those files, ones Billie should be working on, checked in at seven. Eight, Mountain Time, since that was what my computer was set to, and those times made sense. We’d all been working late hours, and checking a file in at seven at night was nothing, comparatively speaking.
My brain clicked, whirred, backed up, and replayed what I was looking at.
Those were morning timestamps. “When did the leak happen? What time?” I asked Luke.
He half glanced at me. “We were on the plane, so... between eight and nine?”
“Our time.”
He nodded.
“You ever talk to Billie before ten?” Now I had his full attention.
“Mandatory meetings, but no, not really.”
It couldn’t be this easy.
Why would someone do that?I’d asked Zane.
Because they either wanted you to know it was them...
Or were arrogant and didn’t think they’d be caught. Not what Zane had said, but I could see it. I dialed him on the speaker phone between us.
