42. Harlan #2
She doesn’t have meetings there, not with her nest inside, and so anyone who does enter her office should have a very good fucking reason.
I shove the lift button harder than necessary.
Isaac catches up just as the doors slide open and gives me a warning look.
“I’ll be with Cassidy. Keep me informed,” he says. “But, Ev, don’t fuck this, okay? She’ll notice if either of us goes down there smelling like we’re ready for a fight.”
“I know.” My jaw is so fucking tight it aches.
He pauses, studying me with that infuriatingly perceptive beta stare. “I know you’re angry. I am, too. But losing it now is not the right call.”
“Trust me, I fucking know,” I hiss, shaking my head. “But when I find them—”
“You’ll pass it over to me,” he says firmly. I snarl, and he raises a brow. “Do you want this done right and our mate protected, or do you want to do it your way and risk costing her the job she’s worked so hard to earn?”
Fucking bastard.
“I’ll hand it over,” I promise.
“You all right?” he asks.
“No.”
I’m about five seconds away from finding the first person who looks remotely suspicious and introducing their face to the nearest wall.
Isaac snorts, clearly hearing exactly what I don’t say. “I thought as much.”
“You?” I ask.
“About the same.”
I grimace but nod. “Well, let’s hope Cassie’s still having a good day. Are you coming in, or are we going to stand here for the next hour?”
He flips me off but gets in the lift with me. We’re silent as it moves, and when it stops on Cassidy’s floor, he steps out, pausing only long enough to clap a hand against my shoulder.
“Go solve it,” he says encouragingly.
“I intend to.”
The doors close again, carrying me up towards the executive floor as the noise of the launch party disappears beneath the quiet hum of the lift. Sterling better be there.
Their assistant looks up as I step out of the lift, then immediately looks back down at his computer.
As he should.
“Where’s Sterling?” I ask.
He gestures to his office, still not looking my way.
Fuck me.
You be rude to a man one time, and now, he refuses to treat you like a person.
Bastard.
I stride towards Sterling’s office and knock on the doorway before letting myself in. The door is open, and weirdly, nobody else is in here, leaving the immaculate leather chairs opposite his desk empty.
Sterling’s office is normally the main meeting place for the rest of his pack.
He spots me immediately, and his grin disappears.
“What are you doing interrupting my day?”
“I need your help.”
He straightens at once. “What happened?”
I give him the condensed version of what’s happened and explain why I’m worried it’ll be easy for them to blame Cassidy.
Sterling lets out a hiss, his sharp hazel eyes narrowing as he pushes back from his desk.
“The incompetence of this fucking place,” he snaps.
He yanks the top drawer of his desk open, his signet ring flashing against the metal handle, and tosses me an aerosol can.
“What’s this for?” I ask, looking at the scent neutraliser.
“Use that. Oscar won’t let us in without it,” he mutters, immediately covering himself with another one.
I don’t bother asking any more questions. At this point, if Sterling tells me the answer lives in the basement guarded by dragons, I’d find myself a sword so I can get past them.
Right now, I don’t care how we get there. I just need to find the bastard who thought they could use my mate and get away with it.
Sterling leads me down another corridor, through a security door I’m ninety percent certain I’ve never been through before.
“This way,” he says.
“Where exactly are we going?” I ask, staring blankly at the corridor ahead.
“IT.”
I blink in surprise. That’s a surprisingly obvious solution.
“What happened to visiting Oscar?” I ask.
“He’s down here today.” Sterling rolls his eyes. “You’d be amazed how often people forget the people who keep the company running.”
Fair.
He pushes open another door, revealing an office filled with monitors, tangled cables, and enough blinking lights to make my head hurt.
Warm air hums from the equipment, carrying the faint smell of dust and overheated plastic. It’s absolutely awful in here.
Why the fuck is Oscar willingly choosing to work here?
Sterling immediately cups his hands around his mouth and shouts, “Oscar?”
The alpha stands up, tall and lean enough that his precisely trimmed dark-blond hair appears over one of the desks near the back of the room.
He’s got three monitors in front of him, a tablet in one long-fingered hand, and the sleeves of his rumpled suit pushed unevenly towards his elbows.
Fuck me.
He squints at us, then points towards me.
“You used the neutraliser?”
Sterling nods. “I made him bathe in it, don’t worry.”
Oscar sniffs once, apparently satisfied, before gesturing for us to come forward.
“What have you broken?” he demands.
“Nothing. Fuck me, can’t I just come see my brother-by-mating?” I ask.
Oscar shakes his head, his expression not changing. “Not me. I think the likelihood of you seeking me out just to chat is around eleven percent.”
Eleven percent seems a little high, but I won’t argue with him over the maths.
“It’s Cassidy,” Sterling says, cutting straight to the point. “The leak that’s happened with the Aurelion campaign looks like she’s the one who did it.”
Oscar frowns. “There’s a three percent chance she did that accidentally.”
“And a fucking zero percent chance that she did it on purpose,” I tell him, trying not to berate him, even though I want to.
Oscar puts his tablet down. “What do you need from me?”
I glance at Sterling, who shrugs.
“I’ll be able to gather physical evidence of whether anyone else has accessed her office, but that’s it,” Sterling says. “And it won’t be a quick job.”
“Well, that’s true,” Oscar says. “It’d be better passed on to some interns than waste your time.”
Fuck me, Oscar’s got no tact.
As if doing something for Cassie could ever be classed as a waste of time.
“Harlan’s got copies of leaked documents from Visaro. One of them is Cassidy’s draft, complete with her annotations,” I tell him. “Can you track whether anyone else accessed the copy she scanned into the system? Or check the other files and see whether anyone accessed them who shouldn’t have?”
Oscar nods once before folding himself back into his chair at an awkward angle, grey eyes already returning to the monitors. “Okay.”
Nothing else, just okay.
As long as it gets the answers we need, that’ll do.
I pull my phone out and send a message into the group chat, wanting to keep everyone up to date.
Evander
I’m with Sterling and Oscar going through computer logs.
Silas
If you find anything, let me know.
Isaac
Cassie’s not noticed anything amiss and is currently having food.
Evander
Good, let’s keep it that way.
Evander
I don’t want anything touching her today.
Silas
It won’t. She deserves to celebrate this.
Isaac
Everyone is very happy down here, so it’ll be easy enough to keep her distracted.
“Everything okay?” Sterling asks, and I nod.
I rub the back of my neck and let out a sigh. “I’m pissed off. She has this mental fucking image of herself that I just want to murder because it’s an entirely different fucking person.”
Sterling nods. “I’ve noticed. I’ve already told you how shocked I was at my aunt and uncles, but no fucking wonder she’s terrified of breathing wrong.”
I cross my arms in front of my chest, leaning back in the chair. “That’s not even the fucking half of it. I don’t know how I restrained myself, never mind Harlan. He was ready to cut them all out of her life.”
Sterling grins, but it quickly fades. “We know she didn’t do this. Uri and Pax are at home with Em, since she was adamant about coming here for the launch.”
I grimace. “Maybe we need to pass a law to be allowed to lock our omegas up when they’re being unreasonable.”
Sterling laughs. “As long as it also allows us to lock up the alphas when they’re being unreasonable, I’m happy.”
I flip him off, and he laughs.
Oscar’s long fingers are flying across the keyboard so quickly I can’t even tell what he’s doing, and I don’t try. Almond and nutmeg linger faintly beneath the chemical bite of the neutraliser. The more windows that appear and disappear on the monitors, the more agitated I become.
Time’s passing far too fucking fast for how little information he’s gathering. Doesn’t he understand what’s riding on this?
Sterling wanders over to the coffee machine tucked into the corner as though we’ve come here for a casual catch-up.
“You want one?” he asks.
I stare at him, unsure if he’s being fucking serious.
“No.”
He shrugs. “Suit yourself. Staring Oscar down won’t make him type faster, though.”
“It does, actually,” Oscar says. “It improves my typing speed by four words per minute. My accuracy decreases, though.”
I grimace and look away from the alpha, watching instead as Sterling makes himself a coffee.
I take up pacing along the back wall of the office, peering over Oscar’s shoulder every time I pass.
I can’t understand what he’s doing, though. I just want something to magically make sense.
Fuck, I feel so useless. I’m doing nothing to help her right now. The pressure in my chest is building, the unease hard to ignore.
The computers are humming loudly, and Oscar’s typing could maybe be described as soothing, if it weren’t for the fact that I’m planning at least six different ways to murder someone.
The moment we catch the person who did this, I’ll be able to handle it. Only then will I manage to sleep tonight.
We’re in here for a solid forty-five minutes before Oscar finally stops typing.
He looks between Sterling and me. “I don’t have enough yet, but I’ve found a couple of red flags.”
“A couple?” I ask.
Sterling leans forward. “Tell us.”
“I’ve found the specific document from the email,” Oscar says. “It was created by Cassidy Hargrove. Edited exclusively by Cassidy Hargrove. The document has been shared with Harlan Mercer only, and he’s the only person other than her to access it.”
Well, fuck.
“But what’s interesting is what happened to it next.”