Sabrina
It was all hands on deck for the Maplewood Games. We had three days to put together a proposal and strong-arm Brooks Bramble-Rutledge into approving it.
Meg had already begun a search for weaknesses we could exploit. “He owns the general store; he would benefit from more tourism. This seems like a no-brainer,” she said.
“Then you don’t understand small towns,” I told her. “His wife is a dictator wannabe with an undiagnosed personality disorder.”
She sighed, making the line between us crackle. “I’ll do what I can. But do you want my other intel now?”
“Hit me.” I uncapped a dry erase marker with my teeth. I was alone in the war room for the time being. Harper was in French class and Nina had nail clients. Mom was working, and I’d sent Marigold to attend chair yoga at the senior center to work on galvanizing the support from her peers.
“Canada,” Meg said. “Arcadian lawsuits.”
“Yes. I got the emails. I think Will knew.”
“He might have,” she said. “But you need to hear the next part.”
I braced myself, marker held aloft.
“I did some digging in a local network, some files from a processing plant. Most of it’s been professionally scrubbed.”
“Of course it has.”
“But you know me. I can find things stuck in cracks.”
My pulse quickened. “Yes. What did you find? A file?”
“Not much, but I got a name. BGX9.field.data.final.”
I gasped and a jolt of excitement hit me. “Field data? As in actual results? Not marketing bullshit?”
“Actual science,” she confirmed. “But it’s gone. Someone made sure that the data no longer exists. I ran other searches, poked around Sugar Moon, but nothing.”
My shoulders sank. “Fuck.”
“But…”
I held my breath, waiting.
“Will was a subcontractor for Sugar Moon, but he did have a company email address. The metadata indicates that he sent this file.”
“Where?”
“No clue. Scrubbed, remember? But we can at least confirm he saw this data. And that supports the whistleblower theory. He was poking around.”
I exhaled loudly. “Poor kid.”
“This is not confirmation, and you know my, um, methods won’t hold up in court. But at least the theory holds.”
I closed my eyes. I wanted to help Nina so badly. To give her hope. And free Caleb Dunne in the process. But these fuckers were really good at covering their tracks.
A crashing noise echoed behind her. “I gotta go. But remember one thing.”
“What?”
“This was done by professionals. Arcadian spent a lot of money making all of this disappear. And you and I both know that snakes like this don’t appreciate it when problems resurface.”
I closed my eyes. She was right. Problems like this had to disappear permanently. “Caleb didn’t do this,” I said.
She hummed. “Probably not.”
Fuck. I pinched the bridge of my nose. Fucking Gabe. Interrupting my dinner with Ethan like a drunk caveman. I needed information, dammit.
“What else can we do?”
“Get the proposal finished. Save the town. You know me. I like to unravel threads. I’ll keep tugging.”
“Mama!” a toddler screamed.
“Okay, go,” I said, looking at my whiteboard. I had three days to pull this off.
By the time the rest of the team had arrived, I was delirious and starving. But progress had been made. My mom took me to the break room to feed me while Harper cleaned up my wild notes and Nina added talking points about the economic data Meg had found about Timbersport events.
“This handwriting is terrifying,” Harper said, squinting at my wildly scribbled notes.
“Serial killer–esque,” Nina added, cracking open an energy drink.
“It’s strategy. And I was just trying to get all my ideas down,” I said, eating another granola bar. Damn, I was really hungry.
“You underlined the word tourism seven times,” Harper said.
Nina peered over Harper’s shoulder, frowning at my work. “And you drew an… alien?”
“It’s a bear,” I said with a sigh. “A potential mascot concept.”
“Is that a knife in its paw?” My mom asked, getting in on it.
“It’s supposed to be a musket. You know, Revolutionary War history and all?”
Harper burst out laughing. “We could do a town wide self-defense initiative.”
“I’d buy the T-shirt,” Nina deadpanned, sitting in her rolling chair.
“We need to get focused,” I said between giggles. The war room was a mess, with coffee cups, various tangled chargers, and dry erase markers everywhere.
And people. My people. The ones who’d shown up for me day after day. Because we were building something together.
And now I was getting teary. “Thank you so much,” I said with a sniffle.
Mom slid a box of tissues to me. “Hormones,” she said.
Harper looked at me in horror.
“I just”—sniff—“appreciate”—sniff—“you all so much.” As the last word left me, big, fat tears started rolling down my cheeks.
“You’re all awesome.” I plucked a tissue from the box on the table and blew my nose ungracefully.
“Harper is skipping lunch periods to build social media campaigns. And Nina, you’re gathering economic data between gel manis. ”
“We believe in this,” Harper told me soberly.
“And in you,” my mom added, which only made me sob harder.
“You know I’d commit all kinds of felonies for you,” Meg piped in from the speaker phone. “I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again.”
After working with twelve-hundred-dollar-an-hour consultants who didn’t give a shit for years, this change felt revolutionary.
My phone buzzed on the table, and another message from Gabe appeared. Just seeing his name made me smile. It should have been irritating, but instead, it might have been the most comforting sensation I’d ever experienced. These fucking hormones were clearly changing my neurons.
“Just check it,” Nina said, flipping through my pages of wild notes. “We know you want to talk to him.”
Harper snorted without looking up or slowing her typing.
Gabe:
How’s the proposal coming?
Sabrina:
Good. May have actually created a bear militia?
Gabe:
That feels on brand for you
I smiled, my eyes still teary. I’d spent years cultivating a persona based on competence, self-control, and extreme emotional detachment. And somehow a flannel-wearing small-town mayor had reduced me to staring at text messages like a lovesick teenager.
Get a grip, Monroe.
The phone buzzed again.
Gabe:
You’re gonna pull this off.
His encouragement making my heart clench. Looking around the room at the amazing people by my side, I believed him. We would pull this off. Because I wasn’t carrying the weight of Maplewood on my own. I had a kick-ass team.
And that was the real miracle.
“All right,” I said, handing a whiteboard marker to my mom to take notes. “Let’s write one hell of a proposal.”