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She showed enough skin and too many angelic smiles, and I came running like a scraggly coyote with a bone.
“You’re certain it was ours? There wasn’t another drone following you?” she asks.
My jaw snaps together. “Certainly not. Do you really think I’d have gone ahead with it if I thought we were being followed? Besides, we’re the only private entity with a completely silent drone. Unless Destiny is with Naval Intelligence or an undercover alphabet agency, she couldn’t have dreamed of getting access to the lab.”
“No, sir. That’s my point.” She brings up pictures of the shots in Meghan’s video and holds up her tablet. They’re probably all over the internet by now. “But did you notice how close these shots are? If there was a drone following you, I’m sure you’d have noticed.”
I frown at the pictures.
Maybe we wouldn’t have noticed while we were camping and busy as hell under the trees, but we definitely would have out on the water, where there was nothing but wide-open sea and sky and so much silence.
And Destiny, too, in that tight little wet suit.
I finally see Hannah’s point.
Any regular civilian drone would’ve been noticed quickly from its noise alone at an altitude that low—exceptfor our proprietary ultra-silent stealth model. The same drones that are still prototypes and haven’t been released to the open market yet.
Destiny couldn’t have gotten access to the research lab.
Then who the hell did? And how?
The handful of prototypes are all armed with chips that set off security alerts if they’re removed from the lab without an override code from the executive level or a senior researcher.
If Destinyhadsomehow gotten access, she wouldn’t have known about the tracking chips, I’m sure.
But anyone working in product development...
Fuck.
Maybe Destiny didn’t do it.
Maybe it’s an inside job, but not her.
Again, who?
I collapse in my chair, scrubbing my hands over my face, trying to hold my head together.
There would have to be a massive payoff for anyone on payroll to stick their neck out doing something so heinous.
Vanessa Dumas bribing an insider to keep smearing me is a real possibility—she certainly hates me enough—but she’s already gotten her way by forcing our scandal into the limelight. There isn’t enough worth her resorting to corporate espionage.
I could say the same for Destiny, too.
Like a pin stabbed into a balloon, the pressure blows out of my chest. I breathe past the crushing weight that’s sat there for the past ten minutes, tighter than a boa constrictor.
It wasn’t her.
Dess didn’t fucking orchestrate this.
For now, that’s enough.
The relief melts me alive. Hannah watches me slump in my chair, suddenly rendered boneless.
I don’t understand why it matters so much, yet I can’t deny that I feel a hundred pounds lighter knowing she didn’t betray me.
She never used me.
Hell, she’s as much of a victim as I am.
