Chapter 15
Chapter Fifteen
SAM
Every hair on the back of my neck stood up.
My instincts—the same ones that made me good at research, at organizing, at analyzing—screamed that something was definitely wrong with this picture. This wasn’t paranoia. This was pattern recognition, and the pattern made a trifecta of red flags.
First, there was Cassandra, the little girl who couldn’t keep her sob story straight as she sat on my lap. She’d stumbled over basic details of her life like a terrible actress who could not remember her lines during a movie shoot.
Next, there was Beverly, whose perfume I recognized the second she stepped onto the stage.
There was no doubt she was the one who broke into the library and tried to access my computer.
And the way she just tried to work me with her calculated charm and fake tears told me she was a professional.
Professional what, though? Private investigator? Reporter? Thief? Federal agent?
Calling the police wasn’t even an option. The last thing I needed was law enforcement poking around my life, turning over rocks better left unturned. For now, Beverly got to walk away clean, but I needed to watch out for her, no doubt.
And finally, we had Rose, the woman who’d magically appeared in my life out of nowhere. Who knew exactly how to deflect, distract, and redirect every time I got too close to an actual answer. And now, apparently, she thought nothing of stealing contact forms and stuffing them down her shirt.
At that very moment, all I wanted was for Beverly to disappear. The woman was like a rash that would not go away—the thousandth iteration of her woes hitting my ears like white noise.
Luckily, my prayers were answered.
She finally extracted herself from my personal space, clutched Cassandra by the hand, and walked toward the exit.
The moment she was gone, Rose approached with that expression I recognized: fear wrapped in determination, served with a side order of guilt. Rose was as complex as they came, but I could not get enough of her.
“That went very well,” I said casually. “No mishaps, which is a first for you. Congratulations.” I forced a chuckle, even though humor was the last thing I felt.
Rose’s laugh came out just as strained. “The day isn’t over yet. Give it a little more time.”
“Right.” I held out my hand, treading carefully through the minefield of whatever was happening. “I’ll take those.”
She handed over the clipboard.
I flipped through the stack of contact forms slowly, making a show of reading some of them, nodding along as if everything was perfectly normal. Then I stopped.
“That’s odd.” I looked up, meeting her eyes. “I don’t see Beverly’s form here.”
“Oh …” Rose’s face was the picture of innocent confusion, and if I hadn’t watched her shove that paper down her top, I might have believed it. “It should be there.”
“Should be,” I agreed. “I watched her fill it out.”
Silence.
Rose’s guilty expression intensified.
Her eyes darted away.
The quiet between us stretched like a rubber band pulled to its limit as I waited to see who would break first. When Rose didn’t budge, I detonated the bomb myself.
“Do you think it’s the one you stuffed down your top?” I asked, needing to know the truth.
Was she with Beverly or was she with me?
Could I trust Rose, or was she the best actress ever?
The shock that flashed across her face would have been comical under different circumstances. Her mouth opened, then closed. She looked like she was mentally cycling through a dozen different responses, discarding each one. My heart started racing in anticipation of how she would respond.
“Sam,” she said at last, “I can explain.”
“I’m sure you can.”
The words came out sharper than I intended, but I was tense. A lot was at stake, and I couldn’t let my guard down.
My pulse was hammering—not just from shock, but from something worse.
Disappointment. Because part of me had wanted to be wrong about her.
Part of me had been rooting for Rose to be exactly who she seemed to be: a smart, down-to-earth, slightly awkward person with a clumsy streak that was connected to baggage from her past.
I took a breath, trying to maintain composure. “Go ahead then. I’m listening.”
“I was just protecting you,” she simply said.
“Protecting me from what? Who is Beverly? You know each other. No more lies, please.”
Rose hesitated, and in that pause, I felt something shift. We’d crossed into fresh territory now, somewhere beyond flirtation and banter and the careful dance around the truth we’d been doing.
“I can’t say,” she said.
“You can’t say,” I repeated, my voice flat.
“No.”
“You don’t want to say anything at all?”
“No.”
“You’ve got a lot of secrets, Rose.”
Her eyes flashed. “And you don’t?”
The deflection caught me off guard.
“Sorry,” she quickly added. “That wasn’t fair. I mean, I believe you have secrets, but this isn’t about you.”
“What makes you think I have secrets?” I asked.
Rose held my gaze, and for a split second, something flickered there—knowledge, maybe, or suspicion.
Wait a minute …
Every muscle in my body tensed.
Did she know about Good Sam?
My mind raced through the interactions we’d had, conversations, searching for a crack in my cover.
Had I slipped? Said something? Did I leave evidence on my computer?
But no—I’d been careful. Obsessively careful.
I kept the Good Sam files encrypted and backed up in the cloud.
The library computers were clean. There was no way she could have known.
Unless ...
No, I was spiraling.
This was paranoia talking, the same paranoia that had me seeing threats in every shadow lately. Rose couldn’t know about Good Sam. She was talking about something else. She had to be.
I forced myself to breathe, to let it go, and wait.
Her expression shuttered closed again.
“Everyone has secrets, Sam,” Rose said quietly. “Some of us just have better reasons for keeping them.”
“Like breaking into libraries and computers?” The words escaped before I could stop them.
She went still. “What do you mean?”
“The perfume,” I said, wanting to see how she would respond after finding out I knew.
“Beverly was wearing the same perfume as the person who broke in this morning. You recognized it too—that’s why you suddenly sprayed my air freshener, to cover it up, then you took her contact form.
I just don’t know who you’re protecting. ”
“I can’t say,” Rose repeated.
“Of course not.”
She was still watching me with those eyes that had gotten under my skin from day one. She reached out like she wanted to say something more, then dropped her hand.
“Well, good night.” She turned to leave.
I cleared my throat. “Rose. I need that contact form.”
She stopped, shoulders tensing, as she turned back around. “It’s better if you don’t have it. Really.”
“Because you’re protecting me,” I said.
“Yes.”
“I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself.”
“Sam …”
I held out my hand and waited.
Rose hesitated, then, with a resigned sigh, she reached down the front of her top. She pulled out the form, unfolded it, and then held it out to me without a word.
I glanced at Beverly’s contact info, then at the bottom of the page, where she had checked the box requesting more info for financial assistance. She claimed she was recently divorced and had lost everything. She sounded desperate.
Too desperate.
Her words practically dripped with manufactured vulnerability, each phrase calibrated for maximum sympathy. It was a performance, just like everything else about Beverly had been.
Was it a scam? A setup?
I wasn’t ready to give up just yet.
I needed to do more digging.
“At least tell me how you know Beverly,” I said.
“You’re assuming I do,” Rose replied.
“You know what? I’ve had enough lies for one evening,” I said, tiring of going around in circles with her, feeling my frustration climb and my hopes sink. “Let’s call it a night, shall we?” I turned to walk off the stage and—
“Wait,” Rose said, grabbing my arm. “Okay—we know each other. From Boston University.”
“You told me you went to MIT,” I said, turning back to her, more confused than ever. “Just like Eleanor.”
“It’s true. I went to MIT, but I did my graduate studies at B.U.”
And just like that, my thoughts spiraled right back to my suspicions, right back to wondering if she was who she claimed to be.
MIT and Boston University. Two different schools, both conveniently in the same city, but thousands of miles from Seattle and Leavenworth.
It would be easy to blur the lines, to mix up the details if you were building a cover story.
Or maybe it was actually true. Maybe she really had gone to both.
The problem was I didn’t know what to believe anymore.
And that was the part that pained me the most. Not that she might be lying—but that I’d let myself care enough for the lies to matter.
I needed answers. Real ones. Not the carefully curated responses Rose kept feeding me.
I could confront her directly, but that would only make her even more defensive, more guarded.
She’d already proven she was an expert at deflection.
I could follow her, see where she went, who she talked to—but that felt too invasive, too much like becoming the very thing I was trying to protect myself from.
No, I needed something concrete.
Something Rose couldn’t spin or explain away.
Luckily, an idea formed in my head. I knew exactly what I was going to do to get to the bottom of everything.
“Well, let’s forget about this for now. I’m exhausted and just want to go home and relax,” I said. “Thanks again for your help.”
“Anytime,” she said.
“I assume you’ll be coming into the library tomorrow.”
Rose nodded. “Of course. I wouldn’t miss it.”
“Good. Because I’ve actually got a new project for you,” I said. “Something I want to tackle.”
“Great!” Relief flickered across her face since I had changed the subject. “What kind of project?”
“We don’t need to get into it now, but I’m sure you’re going to like it,” I said, keeping my tone casual.
“I need to reroute some infrastructure and upgrade the security on the library computers tomorrow, so I’ll be working from my laptop most of the day.
I was hoping you brought a laptop with you on vacation, so you could do the same. ”
“Yup—I always travel with my laptop,” Rose said.
Of course, she did. The same woman who carried a professional-grade flash drive and had the perfect explanation for it, even though hardly anyone used them anymore.
“Please bring it with you to the library tomorrow, if you don’t mind,” I said.
“We can still access files in the cloud, so you can work on a task while I handle my network and other things. I’ll set us up in the conference room, so we can work without interruptions.
I can even order lunch for us. Lots to do, but I could really use your help. ”
“Sounds like a plan,” she said.
“I appreciate it,” I said, even though my conflicted feelings were messing with my head.
I was standing next to someone I genuinely enjoyed—someone intelligent, beautiful, unpredictable, charming, and real in ways that kept catching me off guard.
But I was also standing in front of someone who was hiding something big.
The evidence pointed in multiple directions, and I couldn’t tell which interpretation was correct.
I had let my feelings blur my intellect, and that was dangerous.
I would find out the truth soon enough, though.
Tomorrow, while Rose worked on my project in the conference room, I was going to hack into her laptop. Finally, I would know the authentic version of the person I had feelings for. I just hoped and prayed that I was wrong about her. And when I found out who she was, I hoped she would forgive me.
Because when I cracked open her digital life, I’d either find proof Rose was everything I feared—or I’d find something that explained all of this in a way that let me keep her in my life.
Either way, I’d have to live with what I discovered.