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“This is Zane.”
“It’s Anne. I need some information.”
Luke was ignoring his laptop and watching me with curiosity.
“Shoot,” Zane said.
This wasn’t going to pan out. I’d need to go a different direction. “Who was in the office before eight—seven local time—Tuesday morning?”
“Mike Mejia, Jon Shepherd, Greg D’Angelo.”
Not a long list, but I didn’t expect it to be. “Dropping a list of dates in messenger. Looking for a common name among them.” I gave him ten dates that fell before we had big code breaks, including the major one that first delayed our launch, months ago.
While Zane typed, I forced myself to breathe. I didn’t dare look at Luke. I didn’t need another layer of stress added to this.
“Mike.” Zane spoke with certainty.
“Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.” I hung up.
I finally turned to Luke again when he sighed. “What are we looking at?”
It was too obvious. Too easy. Why hadn’t we seen it before? Because we didn’t want to think one of our own would turn on us. This project meant everything to all of us.
“Mike is behind a lot more than a leaked ending,” Luke said.
Maybe. “It’s all circumstantial, and we’d have to do an audit on the code, to see if there’s more to it than meets the eye. But the leak... signs point to him. What next?” I’d been taking stabs in the dark to get this far. “You can’t just fire him, any more than you fired Billie.”
“True, but I can talk to him. Do you want to be there?”
“Do you think I should be?”
“I think I’d like your opinion on the matter, but ultimately it’s up to how comfortable you are with the whole thing.”
I didn’t want to look Mike—or anyone—in the eye and ask if they were involved in trying to destroy our project. But I had to know. If one of them was responsible, I had to ask him why.
“I’ll be here.” However, I would let Luke do most of the talking. I needed to absorb. Take my cues from him. Make sure my shitty instinct didn’t speak out of turn.
Luke called Mike in first. If we felt like he was okay, he’d be involved in our conversations with the two people on his team. My gut told me he was where we needed to start, and that made me nervous.
“Hey.” Mike smiled when he walked in the room. He settled into a seat a few down from Luke and never looked at me. “Manager pow-wow? We gonna discuss before Ms. Fortier pulls another power play, like yesterday?”
“Something like that.” I couldn’t hide the sarcasm in a retort I didn’t mean to say out loud.
Mike didn’t so much as flick a glance at me. “I understand that someone without a lot of experience makes bad calls sometimes. It’s not her fault. But yesterday’s stunt is going to cost us days of sifting through the fallout. Days we don’t have.”
Fury mingled with doubt. I hadn’t fucked up, but that didn’t stop the Shawn-voice from asking, Didn’t you?
“No, it won’t.” Luke’s tone was hard. “Anne made the right call, and no one’s life fell into a downward spiral because they had to change their password.”
Mike pursed his lips. “You’re the boss, which is why I’m here. What can I do for you?”
“We’re looking at the storyline leak that happened the other morning,” Luke said.
Thank God he was stern and cool, because my doubt was clashing hardcore with my knowledge.
Mike nodded. “The information that came from Billie’s account.”
“It looks like that on the surface, but we don’t think she’s the culprit. Which is why Anne made the call she did yesterday.” Luke’s expression was marble. A Greek god, carved wearing a modern wardrobe.
