Chapter 32
CHAPTER
When I wake, Sebastien is hugging my back and one of his legs is draped over mine.
His arm is a warm band around my body. I stroke the soft hairs on his forearm, follow a path to his wrist and place my hand over his.
Sebastien is careful. Caring. I’m in love with him.
I could even be possessive like he is. The bathroom door, open a crack, casts a sliver of light across the bed.
It must be close to three. I stroke his forearm again, trail a path along the inside of his arm and find his pulse. A steady rhythm. A sweet one.
His hand drifts down my side. He nuzzles my neck. ‘Good morning.’
I turn and face him. ‘How long have you been awake?’
After settling me on his shoulder, he smooths my hair across his chest. Nuzzles my neck. ‘Twenty minutes.’
‘What time is it?’
‘Two forty-five.’
‘Is it a video call with Nate? Should I get dressed?’
‘No, and definitely not.’
I miss his warmth when he rolls out from under me, sits on the bed and pulls the doona up over my shoulders. ‘Try to sleep.’
When I move to his side of the bed, his pillow smells of him and my heart rate increases. Does telling me not to get dressed mean he’s coming back? Will we have sex again? Should I get up and clean my teeth like he’s doing now and—
His phone rings out before ringing again.
Firm steps across the floor. ‘You’re early.’ Sebastien’s voice is sharp.
‘You’re five hours late!’ Nate isn’t on speaker, but I hear every word as, doona bunched around me, I shift on the bed. Sebastien is fully dressed like he was last night. He’s in profile; his fringe falls onto his forehead.
‘What the hell were you thinking?’ Nate says. ‘I told you I—’
‘I have to set up.’ Sebastien looks my way and mouths, ‘Sorry.’ He’s unplugging a charger when Nate speaks again.
‘Is Flick still there? She is, isn’t she? Get your earpods.’
‘Don’t—’
‘You need to hear what you should’ve heard last night.’
Sebastien sits in the chair at the desk, frowning as he listens to Nate. A minute passes, maybe two, when, besides cursing a lot, Sebastien says nothing.
Then, ‘How long?’
Silence.
‘What?’
Nate speaks again.
‘Fuck!’ Sebastien stares out of the window even though it’s dark and there’s nothing to see. ‘Fuck.’
I’m not sure when exactly I work out they’re talking about me.
When Sebastien, still at the desk and cursing under his breath, flicks through files?
When he gets up so quickly the chair teeters on two legs before crashing backwards to the floor?
When, hands clenched to his sides, he walks to the foot of the bed?
When I scramble to sit and he pins me to the wall with a glare?
I bunch the doona over my breasts as Sebastien, in monosyllables and quick fire sentences, continues to respond to questions I can’t hear. He curses again.
‘Why would I do that?’
I don’t hear Nate’s reply, but Sebastien takes out his earpods and stabs at his phone before speaking to me. ‘You’re on speaker.’
‘Why?’ I croak the word.
‘You lied. You’ve been lying for—’
‘Morning, Flick,’ Nate interrupts. ‘How’re you doing out there in the sub-Antarctic? What do you think of it?’
Polite conversation? I feel sick. My hands shake. I bend my knees and wrap my arms around them.
‘What were you and Sebastien talking about?’
‘Before we get to that, do you mind if I clarify something?’ Nate says. ‘Am I right to assume you had a sleepover?’
‘Fuck off,’ Sebastien growls.
‘It’s relevant!’
‘I’ll deal with it.’
‘You can’t do that if you’re sleeping with her!’
Sebastien’s jaw works overtime. ‘I said—’
‘This is different to Natasha, Allie and all the others, Seb. This is way out of the box.’
‘Shut up!’
‘You told me you’d contained the situation.’
‘I told Flick to step back.’
‘Well, buddy, it looks to me like that didn’t happen.’
I’m hot then cold. I wish I were dressed. I wish I was at the door. Even better, on the other side of the door. I wish I were anywhere but here.
‘How am I different from Natasha and Allie and all the others?’ My voice goes up and down a scale. ‘What did you mean by containing “the situation”?’
‘Dougie Gabot.’ Sebastien’s smile goes nowhere near his eyes. ‘Tell us about him.’
‘Are you talking about the journals, the spreadsheets?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was going to tell you last night.’
‘You didn’t.’ Sebastien speaks through his teeth.
‘How did you work it out?’
‘I finally got around to doing what I should have done at the start,’ Nate drawls, ‘looking at the detail in those spreadsheets. When I compared them to the work you did before Dougie took over, it was clear they were written by you.’
‘Why didn’t you look at the spreadsheets earlier?’
When Sebastien curses, Nate talks over him. ‘We had other things on our minds.’
After yanking the sheet free of the bed, I wrap it around me and put my feet on the floor. Carpet on a concrete slab. Firm. Reliable. It will hold me up.
‘I want to get dressed.’
My clothes were strewn all over the floor last night; Sebastien must have draped them over a chair when he got up.
He opens his mouth to speak, but I turn my back and, vision blurred, walk carefully to the bathroom with my clothes.
After dressing, I brush my teeth with a finger and Sebastien’s toothpaste, splash my face and tie my hair in a knot at the back of my neck.
Are there really sixteen freckles on my face?
My eyes sting and I swipe my sleeve across them. I press a towel against my face.
Do. Not. Cry.
When I come back into the room, Sebastien is standing near the desk. His skin is white around the mouth; his arms are crossed.
I lift my chin. ‘What do you want to know about Dougie?’
‘Did he do any of the work?’
‘I put the data into the spreadsheets. He did the executive summaries.’
‘You’ve deceived me for weeks!’
‘Whoa, there, buddy.’ I imagine Nate holding out a hand. ‘Flick. We need to know about your interactions with Dougie.’
‘I don’t understand your interest, or Sebastien’s, in what I’ve been doing so long as the work was done. Why the focus on Dougie? Why give the work back to him when you knew I’d do a better job?’
Sebastien mutters something under his breath, then says, ‘I asked you to trust me.’
‘You didn’t trust me!’
‘For good reason!’
‘That’ll do.’ Nate again. ‘Seb and I are the good guys, Flick, it’s important you know that.’
‘I need more.’
‘In that case, how about we both put our cards on the table?’
‘You go first.’
‘If you answer our questions, if you can confirm what we’re pretty sure we already know, then we’ll explain.’
‘Sebastien likes yes and no answers. Is that what you want too?’
Sebastien’s eyes narrow. ‘Lisse …’
‘Have we got a deal?’ Nate asks.
‘Yes.’
Sebastien’s computer emits a series of beeps. He leans over the monitor before straightening and facing me again.
‘In what circumstances did Dougie give you the work?’ he asks.
‘I didn’t trust him to accurately record the information from the journals, so I offered to continue to do them.’
‘You approached him?’ Sebastien holds back a curse. ‘When?’
‘Late October, the day after you told me you were taking the work away.’
Another glare. ‘The day before we talked in the hut.’
You gave me a blanket. You told me what happened after you ejected from the plane. I kissed you. We talked about trust. You held my hand and asked what I was hiding. I’m certain he’s thinking all those things too.
‘Let’s get back on point,’ Nate says.
‘It is on point.’ Sebastien’s eyes are fixed firmly on me. ‘Isn’t it?’
‘You refused to explain!’
Nate clears his throat. ‘You did the work for Dougie with no acknowledgement because you wanted it done properly. Am I right about that?’
‘As we agreed he could do the summaries, he was also contributing.’
‘His substandard summaries hid your involvement,’ Sebastien says.
‘The spreadsheets weren’t substandard.’
‘Short term, your data isn’t important.’
‘We’ll get back to that,’ Nate says. ‘How did it go, this arrangement you had going with Dougie? Any bumps in the road?’
‘When I worked out Dougie had no interest in what I was doing, that, at best, he skimmed the information, it made me uncomfortable. More recently, he’s been hanging around the professor’s office, waiting for me to finish. He’s been jumpy, irritable.’
‘You’ve continued to work with him,’ Sebastien says.
‘I wanted the data to be accurate. That’s my priority.’ I sit on the bed, cross my feet at the ankles. ‘You said my content, short term, isn’t important. What did you mean by that?’
‘You use Excel,’ Nate says. ‘You’re familiar with it, right? Ever come across lock and hide?’
‘It’s a function you use to hide cells in a spreadsheet. It’s useful when you’re drafting or want to make comparisons. When you unhide the cells, they’ll appear in the spreadsheet again.’
‘Hiding data can get way more secure,’ Nate says. ‘For example, you can put information in a spreadsheet that can’t be seen by anybody who doesn’t have a password. Even if someone knew the data was there, without that password, they couldn’t access it.’
‘Are you saying Dougie was doing that? I never saw anything to suggest it.’
‘That’s the idea.’
‘Why would he hide information?’
‘The spreadsheets are like …’ Nate puffs out a breath. ‘Let’s say, a Trojan horse. Dougie uses them to relay information.’
‘Information about what? Relay it to whom?’
‘You don’t need to know that.’ Sebastien again.
My nails dig into my palms. ‘You said you’d explain.’
‘We’ve got to give her something,’ Nate says.
I clear my throat. ‘Is it about spy ships?’
‘We have global positioning systems that mostly take care of those,’ Nate says. ‘The spreadsheets were used as a cover. Hidden cells held sensitive information that was sent to people with no right to it.’
‘Did Dougie give them the passwords? Do you have the passwords?’
‘Yes, to the first question,’ Nate says. ‘As to the second, let’s just say we worked our way around Dougie’s security.’
‘Because you’re a spy.’