Chapter 14 #2
“Sounds like a plan, Sparky.” Alex crossed to her clothes and passed them over. “Now, you can have these.”
“I suppose I’m out, huh?” Chris asked.
Ava arched an eyebrow.
“Well, Alex says I’m not welcome at his house anymore.” Chris waved a hand at Alex, a disgusted expression on his features.
“I told you unless Ava said it was okay.”
“Do you promise to behave?”
Chris pressed his lips into a thin line.
“I mean both of you. You’re both arguing all the time. Please try to get along.”
“Fine,” Alex answered. “Mi casa, su casa, Architechto.”
“Can you please stop calling me those ridiculous names? I have a name. It’s Chris.”
Alex sucked in a breath, his eyes growing wider. “Sorry, Chris.”
“Thank you. I appreciate that.”
“If we’re ditching nicknames, maybe you could actually use my name…Alex. Instead of Geek Squad or Nerd Alert.”
“You sure you don’t prefer Ace?”
“Only from Ava,” he answered.
The tension between the two men hadn’t lessened at all despite the polite show.
“Okay, this is a good first step,” Ava said with a tentative smile. Would the two most important men in her life finally get along? Time would tell.
She shimmied into her pants despite not having received the all clear yet. With the IV poking from her arm, though she wouldn’t be able to get her shirt on. She frowned down at it.
“Just wait for the nurse,” Chris said.
She squashed her eyebrows together before she ripped out the IV.
“Ava!” Chris shouted. “Why would you do that?”
“I don’t need it,” she answered. “I want to go home.”
She looped the shirt around her neck before tugging it below her gown, then shedding the shift.
A nurse shuffled back into the room, arching an eyebrow at her. “Well, I see we’ve taken care of the IV ourselves.”
“Sorry,” Ava said. “I’m anxious to go. I’m feeling much better.”
“Well, lucky for you, the doctors agree. You’re heading home. Just a few instructions. Rest, plenty of fluids, any headaches, slurred speech, that sort of thing, come back to the hospital.”
“We’ll take good care of her,” Alex said.
“All right. You’re out of here.” The nurse grinned at her as Ava rose from the bed.
She swayed on her feet for a second as Alex rushed to her to steady her. “Easy, Avs. Do you need me to carry you?”
“Need a wheelchair?”
“No,” Ava said with a shake of her head. “And I don’t need to be carried. I’m fine. Let’s go.”
They made their way out of the hospital into the bright sunshine. After making the short drive to Alex’s house, everyone headed inside.
Alex raced around bringing Ava everything she needed to settle into bed after she’d changed into a comfy track suit. Chris shifted his weight from foot to foot while he watched from the bottom of the bed.
He had never been good in a crisis like this, Ava recalled.
“If you want to pick up your stuff, feel free to go now. I’ll just be sitting here resting.”
“Yeah, maybe I’ll head over and grab my stuff. You sure you’re okay?”
“I’m fine. Alex is here. I’ll be fine.”
He slid his eyes sideways toward Alex who fiddled with the remote control for her television. “Yeah, I won’t leave her side.”
“Okay,” Chris agreed. “See you soon then.”
He left the room as Alex queued up a movie on the screen. “Hey, why don’t we watch one of those sappy romances that you love?”
A smile spread across her face as she patted the bed next to her. He threw himself into the pillows with a grin.
“Thanks, Ace,” she whispered as the movie started to play, and she leaned closer to him.
It was so much like what they’d done in the past. Fond memories of cuddling together at Christmas-time for movie marathons eased the tension in her shoulders.
After a few moments, though, it returned. “Hey, there are like tons of things we haven’t followed up on, Ace. My little car accident and the subsequent fallout have really ruined things.”
“Yeah, what a drag you’ve been, Sparky.”
“I know, right?” She grinned at him again before she shifted away from him. “I’m serious, though. You were about to tell me something.”
Alex shifted, an emotion she couldn’t read flickering across his eyes. “Uh, yeah, it’s not…important. We can wait until you’re feeling better.”
She creased her forehead. “Of course, it’s important, Ace. You’re important to me. And if you had something you wanted to tell me, I want to hear it.”
He threaded his fingers through hers. “And you will…when you are feeling better.”
She heaved a sigh. “I don’t like being sidelined.”
“Okay, then help me with these files. Unless you think Cranky Chris will come back and catch us.” He swiped the folder from the nightstand near him.
She chuckled as she snatched the folder. “I don’t care. I want to make some progress. And I thought you agreed to no nicknames?”
“To his face,” Alex said as he shifted to peer over her shoulder at the list.
“You said these were all old files?”
“Yeah.” He held up a finger before he grabbed his laptop. “I started to look at these, but then…stuff happened.”
“Stuff that’s not going to happen again, right?”
“Huh? I’m not going to argue with Chris.” His fingers flew across the keyboard as he accessed the files.
“That’s not what I meant. You are not slinking off to meet with Miranda again, right?”
He glanced at her, doing a double take. “No.”
“Promise?”
“I promise. I’m not…she’s just playing me. She’s never going to give me information.”
“No, she’s not.” Ava tapped her lips as she stared into space, the movie droning on behind them.
“Ava, I’m not going to trust her.”
She shifted her gaze to him. “I know. I just…what is she up to? Why continue with this?”
“She’s trying to separate us. She doesn’t like you,” Alex answered, his brow furrowing as he continued to clack on the keys.
“Why would she not like me? She doesn’t know me.”
“You’re ruining her plan. I’m certain she was trying to cozy up to me from the start. Then my wife showed up. It ruined everything. She kept…making eyes at me the first time we met.”
Ava arched an eyebrow at him.
“Avs, I’m not stupid. I may not be good with people, but I knew what she was doing. I just…figured it was because she wanted my money, not because she was part of a massively evil organization.”
Ava giggled at the words. “Well, she can’t have you no matter what reason she wants you for.”
He grinned at that, his eyes still fixed on the screen. But then he leaned closer, his brows furrowing. “Wait…”
“What is it? What did you find?” Ava leaned closer, her pulse quickening.
“Every file that I’ve checked has been modified as of yesterday.”
“What were the modifications?”
He held a finger up as he opened a code window and typed. “We’ll find out in just a second. I’m writing a program to compare the file versions.”
She rubbed his shoulders as he worked, her stomach knotting as she waited to see what this showed them, if anything.
“Okay, done,” Alex said with an emphatic slap of his enter key. “Just let it run for a second here.”
“This is more than a second,” she said. “You’re slipping.”
“Oh, am I?” He shot her a playful glance. “It’s a good thing you’re on the mend or I would let you have it.”
She stuck her tongue out at him as his program chimed completion.
“There,” he said, “happy now?”
“Very. What are the differences in the files?”
“Letters,” he answered. “Each one is off by a single letter.”
They stared at the alphabet soup on the screen.
“A single letter?” Ava’s brows furrowed. “Wait, are these in order?”
“Like alphabetically? I had them pulled from the files in alphabetical order.”
She leaned over the laptop, her finger tracing the data. “Change it to date. Pull them from the files oldest to newest.”
He bobbed his head, and turned back to his screen, his fingers flying across the keys to modify his program. He set it running, and they waited for the results.
“Uh-oh, your gal’s starting to fall for her fake husband.” He poked a finger at the screen.
“I know. It’s so sweet. Because they were meant to be.” She grinned at the couple before she twisted to find him smiling at her.
The chime of his laptop drew their attention toward it.
“This is something,” Ava said, her heart speeding. “Look. Look at the first letters.”
She traced a finger across his screen. “Tread.”
“Yeah. Just a second. I’ll write a program to make breaks where it sees words.” Alex toggled into his program and typed away.
“Faster, Ace, faster.”
“No pressure, huh, Sparky?”
She grinned at his concentration face as he pounded on the keys.
“Done,” he said with a big inhale. “And…here are the results.”
They leaned closer to the screen, both of them reading the words together. “Tread carefully. The Board is everywhere. Trust no one. Watch for signs of the falcon. It’s their next move.”
“What is this?” Alex asked when they’d finished.
“Looks like a clue. But to what? How can we use this to ferret out and stop The Board?”
Ava slouched into the pillows. They’d found something, but it made no sense. How could they ever move forward?