Not if I could give Mr.Harvey the answer he needed and stop him from thinking his career was over.
“Here,” I said, finding the footage and opening it up.There was no need to announce what I was doing.Within a second, the audio from the nightclub started blaring out through my speakers.
Mr.Harvey sat up straighter in his seat.Ace sat up, too, almost tipping his own chair over in his haste.He scrambled over to me like he was going to slam the lid of my laptop shut to save me – but I held it firmly open.There was no going back now.Mr.Harvey had heard what he had heard.
He walked slowly behind me and stopped, bending low over my head to look at the screen.The feeling of him right there behind me made a shiver run minutely down my spine.We were so close that he only needed to breathe deeply and we might touch.
“I knew it!”I hissed, tapping the spacebar to pause the playback and pointing at my screen.“I knew I’d seen him somewhere before!”
Because there, on the screen, in a shot captured through the curtains of the VIP area, was an unmistakable face.
Brody Driver.
Now that I knew who he was, it was obviously him.He was dressed in his usual dark leather jacket and a white shirt with black jeans, totally different from the suit I’d seen him wearing in the lobby that first time.But seeing him punch Ace – and be lifted into the air by Mr.Harvey – was the kind of thing that cemented a face in my memory.
It was him.
“Play the footage,” Mr.Harvey said.There was a dangerous note in his voice, but I couldn’t think about that right now.Not if this was going to solve everything.
I hit the spacebar again and all three of us sat, watching.
There were long periods of time when nothing happened.Well, not nothing – people walked in front of the lens, songs changed over the crackly audio my phone’s microphone had managed to record, and other players walked up to the VIP lounge and walked right in.Some left.Women, in twos and threes, moved in and out of the area as well – all of them young and thin and wearing very tight, small dresses.
Occasionally, someone else would emerge or enter: people who looked less like they had a reason to be there.Secretaries, assistants, managers – they had to be.It was easy to guess which bracket someone fell into based on how expensive their clothes looked.
And then Brody appeared in the shot again, obscuring the view of Ridley – who had just walked by and sat down in a chair visible from the doorway.I remembered my own frustration at not being able to see the man I was actually there to film.Ironic, now.
Brody looked left and right and apparently saw someone he recognized.His mouth thinned out into a straight, tense line.He tapped the bouncer outside the VIP rope on the shoulder and leaned over to shake his hand.I wasn’t an expert in looking for these things, but even I could tell he was trying to subtly slip the man some money.
The bouncer nodded, lifted the rope, and a woman stepped through it.She was wearing a finely tailored coat and silver hair was piled on top of her head.
My breath caught in my throat.
She turned to the side just slightly – just enough to show her profile – and my suspicions were confirmed.
Helen Alcori.
Mr.Harvey’s old secretary.The one who had been so eager to get her job back, she had come over here to intimidate me in person.
She stepped beyond the rope and stood talking to Brody in clear view of the doorway, neither of them moving more than a couple of steps away from Ridley.I watched with wide eyes as he put his drink down on the table beside him for a second and turned to talk to someone in the other direction –
As Brody glanced down at it and then up at Helen –
As she casually took her hand out of her pocket and made a quick gesture in the air above the table –
And then walked away, right back out of the VIP section with her hand poised in the air above the purse on her elbow, carefully placed steps making her sashay across the club and right out of frame.
Brody paused only to watch Ridley pick his drink back up and take a long sip before he turned and left the VIP area as well.
“They did it,” I said, my voice coming out barely above a whisper.It was such a small movement that you wouldn’t know what you were looking at unless you already suspected.I hadn’t noticed it when I was there in person.It looked like a casual gesture as part of a conversation.I hadn’t even been watching them, with my attention fully on Ridley.“They spiked his drink.”
Guilt surged through me.If only I had watched the footage earlier.I had been prioritizing everything else, trying to avoid the unavoidable fact that my motivations for coming here had been far from innocent.The deeper I fell for my boss, the less I wanted to acknowledge the truth.Now, Ridley had paid for it – and Ace and I had paid for it in the hours we’d spent researching this case with no results, and Mr.Harvey had paid for it in the countless hours of worry and extra meetings and rushing around.
If only I had watched the footage as soon as I knew that Ridley was drugged.
“Youdid it,” Mr.Harvey said.His hand landed on my shoulder.For a second I had a horrible vision of him marching me out of the doors of the company and throwing me into the street, but then his fingers squeezed and I realized he was congratulating me.“You caught them.This is the evidence we need.Get a copy of this sent to both of us over email.We need to start disseminating it to the press.”
The touch of his hand on my shoulder sent a warmth that spread outwards from that spot like it was going to reach down and warm my soul.My heart.Everything.My hand twitched.I wanted to reach up and place it on top of his, stop him from ever moving away.
