“No, I meanactuallynervous,” Tom clarifies, lowering his voice a little. “Their senior risk manager, the one who retired like over a decade ago? They apparently hauled him out of whatever beach he was wasting away on. Brought him back to audit their behavior layer. So yeah, something’s going on.”
Lincoln’s eyebrows lift at that. “That guy? Damn. Forthemto bring him back, something must be happening on their side.”
Tom nods as he zips his jacket. “Mmm exactly. So Tobias wants us to prep contingency routes for the Auralis behavioral data, in case Haffentrust pushes for shared compliance modeling—”
I clear my throat a little. “Okay, we really have to go. You have a family. And I’m exhausted. Far as I know we’re not getting paid overtime past what we agreed to work.”
“All right, all right, I’ll see you guys later,” Tom says, smiling.
Lincoln and I walk toward the elevator, and I feel this tight, prickly tension building under my skin. Something is off. Has been all day.
“So what’s going on?” I ask him.
“Nothing new. Everyone’s asshole is puckering because the economic world is shaking in their boots because of the scale of this innovation. Investors are panicking. Competitors are going to start getting aggressive. There’s always a sense of destabilization that goes on whenever someone becomes the next tech missionary.”
“Okay… I meant withyou.”
“Oh… nothing.”
I smile at him. “You have dark circles over your eyes.”
“Cuz I’m tired as shit.”
“You also need to eat something. You didn’t eat nearly enough today,” I tell him.
“Yeah, I know.”
I reach my pinky over and hook it with his right hand pinky, offering him a small, soft smile. He looks down at me, gives me this tight, almost obligatory smile… then looks straight ahead at the elevator numbers like I’m not even there.
“Why are you so stiff?”
“No reason. I’m exhausted,” he says, gently unhooking his finger from mine so he can drag both hands over his face. He looks worn. Or… no. He looks detached.Thatwas an excuse to get my hand off him.
I’m not stupid.
He folds his arms.
“Wow, if you didn’t want to hold my hand all you had to do was say so,” I snip.
“You realize there’s a camera in the elevator, right?”
“OfcourseI know there’s a camera in the elevator. But no one ever checks it. We’ve kissed in here before.”
“What are you talking about?” he asks, brows pulling together.
“Well your back was turned to it and I made sure. I mean it was pretty obvious what we were doing but you can’t actually see it.”
“You mean that? That was barely anything. We weren’t really kissing.”
“No, but we did back up on Level B,” I grin at him.
“That day lives rent free in your head,” he smirks.
“Yeah because it was the first time we ever kissed. Seems like forever ago,” I smile.
He barely responds. He’s miles away again. Something is on his damn mind.
We step out into the garage. My rental car is parked beside his since we took our own cars today. I turn to him.
