Chapter 34 #2
He came around the car, his eyes wide, the bag rustling in his hand.
God, she’d come so close. But now the handsome veneer peeled away, and she found herself face-to-face with the boy from high school all over again.
The one she’d never even liked.
“Is everything okay?” He sounded bewildered. “What happened?”
“You happened,” she snapped. “As in John, from Billings. Or should I say MontanaBirder81?”
Gallant’s jaw nearly came unhinged. He tried twice to get out words and failed.
Aubrey whirled and stalked away.
“Wait,” he managed, behind her. “Just wait.”
She kept going. John from Billings could fuck off into the sun. So could she—she couldn’t believe she’d put herself in this
position. That she’d handed over her heart in exchange for pretty words. Again. She might as well have given Gallant a knife,
then pulled her shirt aside and showed him exactly where to sink the blade.
“Aubrey, wait!”
She didn’t.
Cold, black night swirled around her. She wanted to scream.
She wanted to sob. Now that she knew, it seemed so obvious that those letters had come from Nick.
They’d taken hold of her so easily. She’d fallen in love with him all over again, maybe recognizing on some soul-deep level that all roads led back to him, that no matter what she did or said or pretended, she would never be free of him.
He would always be there, blazing inside her like a star, and yet it had only ever brought her pain, pain, pain, because he couldn’t leave this town.
And she couldn’t give up on Osos. Not without betraying everything she’d ever worked for.
She couldn’t torture herself with it anymore. She needed to go—back to New York, to anyplace that wasn’t here. She would finish
her appeal right now, send it off to Jeff, and if he wouldn’t listen, she’d—
Her phone rang. She whisked it from her pocket and lashed out a hello using the sharpest edge of her tongue. She’d only speak
to Gallant long enough to tell him to erase her number.
“Hello? Aubrey?”
She faltered, then pulled the phone away from her face. The caller ID showed a New York number. But not just any New York
number. An Osos number. “Jeff?”
“Yeah, hi. Sorry to call so late on a Friday. Is this a bad time?”
She drifted to a stop on the sidewalk. She hadn’t heard Jeff Hutton’s voice since he’d fired her two and a half months ago.
For a moment, she wondered if she’d accidentally emailed her appeal to him, still unfinished, and he’d called to tell her
not to bother. But he sounded . . . warm. Inexplicably so. She reined in her tone. “No, not at all. How are you?”
“I’m good, thanks. Look, I’m calling because I owe you an apology. For that whole debacle in September. I honestly don’t even
know where to start.”
She tried to find her voice, but it had skittered off into the shadows.
He sighed. “The thing is, David Ballard came forward a few days ago, saying you were the true author of the database program.
And the upgraded daisy chain algorithm. I’ve been on the phone with HR all week, trying to get this sorted, but the long and
short of it is that he’s gone, and we’re deeply, deeply sorry. Me especially. And we’d like you to come back. I’ve been cleared
to offer you a twenty percent raise, if you’ll consider it. And you’d receive the Innovation Cup this year.”
Aubrey clutched the phone so hard her fingers hurt. “The Cup?”
“Yep. But . . . there’s a little more to this, actually.”
The sudden tightness in his voice made her stomach flip.
“The thing is,” he started, “this new database is supposed to go live in three weeks, along with the algorithm. David assured
me it’d all be ready by then, but . . . Aubrey, now that he’s gone, I took a look, and it’s a mess. It’s nowhere even close to operational. I could probably untangle what he did to your code, given enough time, but . . . it would take months. And
you know how it is. Some of these transplant recipients don’t have months.”
Hot anger blasted through her. He had to be kidding. Not only had David stolen her program, he’d then screwed it up while
trying to integrate it with the system? “What are you saying, exactly? That it’s broken, and I’m the only one who can fix
it?”
Jeff made an uncomfortable sound, halfway between an affirmative and a clearing of his throat. “That’s pretty much what I’m
saying. Yes.”
Her teeth ground. Her life’s work. Her single greatest accomplishment, now inoperative because of a scheming man and the fragility of his ego. Not only that, David Ballard had endangered people’s lives. The same ones she’d spent the last year finding a way to save.
“Aubrey? Are you there?”
“How soon can you get me back there?” she said.
A sigh of relief gusted over the line. “If you can get me all the paperwork tonight, I’ll expedite it, get you clearance,
and get you back in the system by Monday. I won’t lie, you have your work cut out for you. The next three weeks will be rough.
But I’ll have IT work on getting a keylog, see if maybe we can pinpoint some of the changes David made, so you’ll at least
know where to start. If anyone can get that database working on time, it’s you.”
She gulped down the thickness in her throat and tipped her head back. Pinprick snowflakes floated from the abyss overhead.
Monday. A mere three days from now.
God, fuck David Ballard. Fuck Gallant Nobel, too. Fuck this whole brightly painted mess. She could just leave it all where
it had fallen, put this merciless town behind her, and go salvage the thing she’d always been meant to do.
“Great,” she said into the phone. “Monday. I’ll see you then.”