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Screeching tyres. Horns blared.
I closed my eyes, waiting for the inevitable smash.
Twenty
Tristan
I
closed the door to my office and leaned against it. Exhaling, I thudded my head against the timber and grasped the handle for balance. My head was still spinning with the events of that morning.
Ryder had docked the yacht at the marina, and I’d moved like a zombie, my legs carrying me to my car and my vehicle practically driving itself to my office.
What the fuck had just happened?
One minute, I’d been planning a day of research and reviewing more assessments that had been submitted. The next, I was on the phone with a panicked Flynn asking me to go with him to see Zali. I hadn’t hesitated. I’d dropped everything, dumping my plans, bowing out of meetings, and rearranging my schedule so I could be there.
Nothing had been more important to me than getting to her. I should have been scared by the hold that the two of them had over me, but I hadn’t given myself time to think. I’d reacted, going with my gut.
And a little with my heart.
In some ways I was glad I’d gone. In others…. Well, I wished I’d stayed ignorant of certain facts.
It was the second time I’d been on Zali’s yacht. The sheer opulence of it took my breath away the same as it had the first time. Knowing its price blew my mind. I’d wondered how a twenty-something who didn’t come from money had afforded it. I didn’t think I’d underestimated her capabilities, but I sure as hell had underestimated just how rich those capabilities had made her.
That should have been my first clue. Cyber investigators were glorified research assistants. But hackers? White coats got paid decent money, but I didn’t think that’s what she did. I’d brushed off her claims that she’d stolen the money, not wanting to hear it as an admission. But after seeing her progress, I realized that she was telling me the truth in a blasé kind of way, testing me to see if I believed her.
Yet, when I stepped into that room, I didn’t see a criminal mastermind. I didn’t see someone who could and did destroy lives for their own gain, something she’d admitted doing before. I saw a young woman—the same one I was falling for—who was hurting.
I saw her vulnerable and pushed to the brink. I saw her trying her best given really shitty circumstances. She was mature beyond her years in the way she approached research and analyzed information. But none of that mattered when she was sitting cross-legged on her desk chair in leggings a ratty tee with her hair up in a messy bun. I’d wanted to wrap her up in my arms. I’d wanted to pull her onto my lap and stroke that silken hair, kissing her and touching her until she became pliant in my arms. I’d wanted to curl up with her and Flynn and forget the outside world while she slept.
I’d wanted to walk away from all my responsibilities to shield her from hers.
She had more at stake in this whole arrangement than any of us. It was personal to her on a level I couldn’t comprehend, and the stress from it shone through like a beacon.
The progress she’d made was phenomenal, but I wasn’t surprised. She’d spent more time than every other student combined had dedicated—and probably would dedicate—to the entire project. The outcome was the mind map of a genius. It outshone every other assignment I’d seen. Although that wasn’t difficult. The other students had put together something a whole lot more typical—a written piece or an oral presentation in third person that was detached and devoid of emotion—and ultimately not all that helpful for the podcast.
Zali’s time and intelligence had generated some seriously impressive results. She was incredible, a force to be reckoned with. She’d dug up more information on her mother’s company in days than I’d managed in two years of research. She’d narrowed down leads and blown open other ideas, making connections between people and organizations that I didn’t even know existed. The project was jumping forward in leaps and bounds thanks to her. She’d run ownership checks on each of the investors and many of the target investments and had progressed into double-checking information disclosed in financial reports in an attempt to create a money trail.
It had never even occurred to me to do that. I’d accepted the financials at face value, the same way that the liquidators had.
But as impressed as I was, a disquiet had also settled over me.
Brushing off her comment that she’d stolen the money for her yacht had been a faux pas on my part. I hadn’t wanted to believe it, not when—as crass as it was to admit—I could get my dick wet. But what kind of cyber investigator could come up with that kind of information so quickly? I could no longer ignore questions of where she was getting the data from and how was she getting it. Especially when I knew much of the information was protected by privacy laws and unavailable even to legitimate researchers.
The wall of data, as beautiful as it was to see, was also a flashing neon hazard light. It had me backtracking, needing to get myself out of there.
My head screamed at me to run, to get as far away as possible from her.
What she did for a living had finally hit home. The pieces clicked into place. The rose-coloured glasses came off. I saw her in a different light, one that I was terrified of.
I hadn’t quite believed Flynn when he’d said she could bury me, another faux pas on my part. I’d blown off Ryder, too, the third in a growing list of shitty decisions on my part. Naïvely, I had thought that revenge porn or a phone call to my boss would be it. But my worst-case scenarios, my foolish thoughts of what she could do were child’s play compared to the league she was in.
I’d had no idea what she was capable of.
She’d shown me a glimpse.
I’d run.
