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So he had to. “How do you think he found out where you are?”
“I don’t know.” Ewan scrubbed a hand over his face, visibly calmer now but still distressed. “I must’ve…left clues.”
“You tweet a lot.” Jack didn’t follow Ewan on Twitter, but Channon did, and sometimes Channon showed Jack the tweets. Ewan wrote them in an incomprehensible dialect that Channon found hilarious. Jack didn’t get it. Anyway, it was possible that Ewan had left clues to his whereabouts on social media. “Do you have Instagram?” Ewan nodded warily. “Maybe you geotagged something or posted a photo with a traceable landmark. And I know Nate has his dev team listed on the company website. It wouldn’t be hard to google.”
Given that employee emails were their first and last name at the company domain, it also wouldn’t take a genius to work out how to contact Ewan that way.
Ewan shuddered, rubbing his eyes. “Fuck. Fuck. I saw one of his friends last year. That fucker probably told him…Christ, I don’t even know what.” He gave Jack an anguished look. “He works in tech. He’s probably got contacts here.”
Jack put his hand on the arm of the chair, close to Ewan but still not touching him. “What’s his name?”
It took Ewan a moment to unstick his teeth from his grimace. “Gary Caldecott.” The name seemed to make him feel sick, he was so pale.
“I’ll tell security not to let him into the building,” Jack promised.
Ewan’s face scrunched up. “Fuck, it’s not as bad as that, is it?”
“Probably not, but better safe than sorry.” Jack hesitated, thinking about the implications of everything Ewan had said. “Are you worried about your physical safety?”
He watched Ewan’s expression crumple and had to force himself not to lift his hand from the arm of the chair and wrap it around Ewan’s shoulder to steady him. “No…no, that’s not it. I just wish he didn’t know anything about me at all.”
Jack made a mental note to make sure the concierge of the building Ewan lived in also knew not to admit Ewan’s ex. Then he focused. Ewan was the most important thing right now, and Jack felt compelled to care for him in the ways that he could. “We can block his email. We can scrub you from the website, and anywhere else you are online for that matter. There are services to handle this.”
“You don’t have to,” Ewan said miserably.
“I do, actually.” When Ewan looked up, surprised, Jack fixed him with a serious look. “Nate asked me to take care of you, so I intend to do exactly that.”
It seemed to shock Ewan out of his misery. He blinked, looking around Jack’s office as if for the first time. Whatever he saw, it made his lip curl—whether from disdain or discomfort, Jack couldn’t tell. “Naw, you’re too busy for this shite. You don’t hafta do anything for me.”
“I know I’m the last person you’d want to help you,” Jack said, unable to keep all his frustration from his voice, “but I’m what you’ve got right now. You can hate me all you want, but I’m going to do this anyway.”
Ewan looked shocked. Then he frowned. “I don’t hate you.”
“Strongly dislike, then.”
This made Ewan shake his head. “No. You’re, you know, you. Channon likes you enough.”
It was better than Jack would have expected. “Faint praise, but I’ll take it.” He leaned away, wondering how hard Ewan would bite if Jack offered him a hug. “I’ll make some calls. How are you feeling?”
Ewan took a shuddering breath. Then he shrugged. “Like pish. Better than before.”
“Good.” Jack stood up and leaned back against the desk. “I’d like to check up on you later. Have dinner with me.”
Ewan’s eyes just about bugged out of his skull. “What, at some fancy fucking restaurant?”
He sounded so scandalized. It made Jack smile. “Or at my place.”
Ewan made a face. “Is this a come on? I’m not sucking your dick.”
God, he was so…prickly. “It isn’t. We can go to Nate’s if that makes you feel better.” Jack had a key, after all, and he was pretty sure Ewan did too.
Ewan regarded him suspiciously, but in the end he said, “All right.”
“Good. I’ll meet you at your desk at half past five.” Jack regarded Ewan narrowly. He looked better, a little less like he might be going to faint or puke. Still, he’d clearly been shaken. “You can stay here as long as you like. But if I get a phone call, I’ll need you to be quiet.”
This triggered a sound halfway between a snort and a snicker. “Naw thanks.” Ewan shoved himself out of the chair and backed away, eyeing Jack as if Jack were the feral one. “Uh…see you at half five.”
And he went, closing the door behind him with a soft snick instead of a bang.
