When she moves the device around, my patience snaps.
“What the hell is that thing?” I ask, motioning to the flashing device in her hand.
She looks up and rolls her eyes. “It runs interference. If anyone has bugged you. They’re getting a nice lot of static right now.”
I run a hand through my hair and sigh. “Are you being serious?”
Pen raises her eyebrows and shoots me one of her looks. One that tells me I’m the naïve one here. I’d laugh if I wasn’t so stressed.
“Fine, I’ll play along.”
I roll my shoulders, hoping to relieve the tension that’s building up. At this rate, I’m going to be suffering from a major headache.
“In all honesty, I don’t know what I suspect. When I saw Gabriel, I was in shock. The more I investigate—yes, there are discrepancies. Someone or someones have definitely been messing with code using my login, and the changes are outside our project’s scope. I was attempting to decipher the purpose of those changes when you interrupted.”
“Did you get anywhere? Find anything conclusive?”
I shake my head, happy to be back on a more realistic train of discussion.
“All the changes are time-stamped with my login, therefore easy enough to track. If you want to class that as a positive.”
I look once more at the flashing device in Pen’s hand.
“You really believe someone may have bugged my office?” I shake my head. “There’s no way, security is tight.”
Pen crosses her arms over her chest and waits.
Her note, cryptic conversation about lunch. The way she spirited me out of there before we even drank our coffee.
Shit!
“I agree.” She sighs. “But we can’t discount anything and we won’t know until it’s been swept. The problem is, if there’s a camera, then doing so, may just tip them off. They may have bugged your office to gather information. See what you know.”
I run a hand down my face, my jaw clenching. I replay yesterday’s conversations. Did I give the game away? Tip their hand?
What? Am I really jumping on board with Pen’s conspiracy delusion?
Pen squeezes my arm, capturing my attention.
“Don’t panic.” She goes into her bag and pulls out a watch. “Put this on. When you get back to your office, walk around. If it vibrates against your skin, then it’s found something.” My face must give away my disbelief because Pen shrugs. “This is a precaution. I’m sure I’m being overcautious,” she says, but something in her tone tells me she doesn’t believe she is.
I shake my head and pinch my arm, hoping I’ll wake up.
Nope, shit, looks like this is real.
Since Caleb’s wedding, Pen has haunted my dreams, but this one is exceptionally bizarre. Pen barging into my office waving spy gadgets at me, is new-level crazy even by my standards. I really am losing the plot. Maybe Todd is right. I do need a break.
“The gaming community is highly competitive. As a company, we run sweeps regularly,” she adds, patting my arm before dropping her hand.
As if that explains everything.
I pinch the bridge of my nose to stem the growing headache. My mind is all over the place, having suffered a sleepless night. I’m not sure I can deal with Pen and herconspiracy theorieson top of everything else right now.
I step around Pen and make my way back onto the main street. Needing to put some distance between us. Pen appearsnext to me, putting the device back into her pocket, still activated.
“Let’s grab some lunch,” she suggests. “I take it you forgot to eat breakfast this morning?”
My stomach growls in response, and Pen chuckles. I sometimes forget how well she knew me. Although my forgetting to eat in those days was rare.
