“What the fuck just happened?” Sebastian Reid snapped as he stepped into the hallway, his attention already on his phone.
“It’s just this floor,” Ethan Cross, the Chief Operations Officer, answered while Hale yelled at someone on the phone.
Reid’s eyes met mine, his black scruff-covered jaw tightening as his steel gray eye swept down, then back up. Stan stepped out of the conference room, clearly pissed, and when he saw me, I could almost see the moment he put two and two together. They’d been set to sign off on a major contract, one that would bring in a new client and require the analyst division’s full support. Stan was there to pitch how our team would handle the integration. How it would benefit all of us. But in truth, it wouldn’t. That’s what Reid needed to see before it was too late.
Stan stormed toward me. “What the hell did you do?”
“Mr. Reid, check your email,” I hollered right before Stan’s hand clamped around my arm.
“What the hell did you do?” Stan asked again, and his fingers dug into my arm hard enough to bruise. Pain shotthrough my arm, but I refused to give him the satisfaction of a sound or flinch.
“Mr. Reid—check your email!” I shouted again, twisting in Stan’s grip. This was going to be all for naught if Reid didn’t look at that damn email.
“I told you to leave it alone,” Stan hissed, yanking me toward the elevator, reaching for my tablet as he did so.
“Stop.”
One word. Low. Commanding. Dominant. Reid hadn’t raised his voice, but everyone nearby froze. Reid had that effect on people. Every nerve in my body snapped to attention.
Victor lowered his phone, and they all stared at me while Mr. Reid flipped through the email I’d sent him outlining enough to get his attention with the fact that I could back everything up. It was bullet points of a much larger problem.
My heart raced, but I took advantage of everyone’s focus being off of me to undo what I’d done, and in seconds, the lights came on and the buzz of computers and systems rebooting filled the floor. I’d done what I’d come here to do. There was nothing left for me.
It was up to the trio now.
Reid handed his phone off to Cross, whose blood drained from his face as he flipped through it.
“Reid?” He turned to him, brow raised, looking like he wanted to be sick.
“I know.” Reid’s growl reverberated down the hall. He made a sharp gesture toward the conference room. “Meeting’s over. Everyone back to their goddamn jobs.”
His hand twitched, forming a fist and then releasing it for a split second before he turned on his heel. “Cross, Hale, my office, now.”
They both looked at me. Cross nodded toward the elevator.
“Stan, a minute?” He stepped closer to Stan, and I used the distraction to escape the floor, sliding into the stairwell, not willing to wait for the elevator and return to the sanctuary of the fifth-floor analysts’ cubicles. For all of five minutes, anyway. Stan found me soon after that. Maybe I should have packed up and left. I knew that was where I was headed, anyway.
“You did what?” Micah’s voice pulled me out of my head and back to our conversation.
“I hacked into Sentinel’s system and pulled the plug. Right in the middle of Reid’s meeting.”
For a long beat, Micah was silent. Then he exhaled slowly, shaking his head. “That’s… bold.”
“It was stupid.” My voice cracked. “The way Reid looked at me. Cross and Hale too. I was sure the floor was going to open up and swallow me whole. HR wants to see me first thing Monday. Which means I’m fired.” I’d received the email before I left the office.
“Or it means you saved the company,” he said evenly. “Both can be true.”
I let out a shaky laugh. “So what? I’m a hero and unemployed at the same time?”
“Maybe. But you did the right thing.”
I stared down at my hands, wishing I believed him. Wishing I hadn’t been running everything over my head, wondering if there had been another way to handle it, but I’d come up empty. If only Reid had opened the email earlier, but I knew the minute Stan had gotten onto the elevator time was up.
Micah leaned back. “Look, you’ve been living in your own head for too long. You need a break. Clear some of that noise.”
I groaned. “If you say tequila—” Not only did I not like the taste, it did bad things. Terrible things.
“Not tequila. There’s an event at the club tonight.” His gaze met mine, a smirk on his lips. “Come with me.”
