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“I want to see you in my office in twenty minutes,” Grummond said.
I sighed. It was first thing Monday morning, and he had just scolded me about all this on Friday afternoon. What more could he possibly have to say?
“All right,” I said. “Let me just go get my things in order, and then we’ll talk.”
Grummond turned and walked away toward his office, and I went to my desk and sat down.
It felt like coming home after being on some sort of vacation. I was surprised that a part of me missed being at the desk I’d claimed as my own while I was with Brian. I missed knowing that he was the only other person in the office. And while I’d felt annoyed by how he kept looking over my shoulder while it was happening, now I wished he was still here. He was a hell of a lot better than Grummond; that was for sure.
I pulled out the folder and opened it up, staring at the numbers and the little notes I had made on sticky tabs.
How could anyone steal seventy thousand dollars from a government agency and assume that it wouldn’t be noticed?
Of course, that was why Jack was the most likely suspect—he’d taken it from his own department. If anyone else had taken money from the automotive section of the SEALs’ finances, I would have expected Jack to be the one to catch it. So one of two things had happened here—either he was the one to take it, or else he’d failed in his duty to stop it from being taken.
And there was the fact that he had done his best to be the person helping me in my investigation.
Had he honestly just meant to be helpful? Or had he been trying to ensure my eyes didn’t land on this folder?
If he didn’t want me to look at this folder, he could have taken it with him when he left the building.
That was true—but also, he couldn’t have known when he left that the power would go out. And he probably hadn’t known I would be locked in, either. He had left me in the hands of Brian, who was angry at me. He had probably assumed that I was about to leave the building and that there would be no issue with leaving me alone with paper documents that I was unlikely to resort to anyway.
That could be the final piece of evidence I needed. What if some complex digital firewall was set up to keep me out of the electronic version of this file?
That was what I needed to know. Because if that security measure did exist, it should be easy to figure out who had set it up—and that would tell me who was trying to keep this information a secret. It could be the piece of the puzzle that would prove Jack’s guilt or innocence.
There was nothing to be gained by looking at these numbers anymore; that was for sure. I put the file away in my briefcase. What I needed was to get back into the computer system.
But first, I was going to have to talk to Brian. And before I could even do that, I had to deal with Grummond.
I had no idea what I was going to say to him. But I knew he would want a very detailed progress report, and I wasn’t going to get out of here without giving one.
I locked my briefcase in the bottom drawer of my desk. There was no way I would risk that file being seen by anyone until I was ready to share it and present my interpretation of the contents.
I got up and went over to Grummond’s office. He had left the door open in anticipation of seeing me there, and he looked up as I approached.
“Good,” he said. “Sit down, Barrett.”
I sat.
“Listen,” he said, without preamble. “You’re new here, so I’ve cut you some slack.”
“Have you?” I frowned. “I’ve been on this assignment less than two weeks.”
“I don’t know how long you think these things are supposed to take, but this is a routine job,” he said. “Unless you found something unusual, I would have expected you to be in and out in forty-eight hours so that we could move on to other things. I know it’s your first job, and I don’t want to be too hard on you, but I’m giving you one more day to close the book on this thing.”
“One day? Are you serious?”
“We can’t afford to spend this much time and energy—not to mention department resources—on a routine annual investigation,” Grummond said. “Wrap it up and file your report by this time tomorrow.”
“You can’t expect me to finish everything up that quickly,” I said. “I have loose ends to tie up.”
“Well, tie them. You’ve taken too long already, and we need to move on.” Grummond eyed me. “You know, I did want to believe you would be right for this position. I know who your father is—well, everyone knows your father, of course. We all wanted to see Henry Barrett’s daughter do well in the department. But we need to consider whether this is the right fit seriously.”
“I haven’t even filed my report,” I protested. “You can’t already be saying I’ve failed at my assignment.”
“It’ll depend on the quality of the report,” Grummond said. “For all the time you’ve taken, I’ll need to see something excellent.”
