“You’ve got time until dinner before I consider whether I’d rather try my luck as a hitchhiker toward Turkey,” I mutter darkly.
The fact that I’m planning my escape after being here for not even five minutes should be telling.
“Why Turkey?” August asks, smiling. His eyebrows raise in his infuriatingly calm way.
“I heard they have Twizzlers.” In my hasty departure, I forgot to pack some and regret it already.
He laughs heartily, but as we climb the stairs, each step feels like I’m ascending to my own personal purgatory, and I’m not sure I have the strength to face whatever awaits me at the top.
Morgan bursts through the door,her breath ragged and her red hair a fiery halo around her face. She’s holding her phone to her ear, her eyes darting between us. “I’m there now,” she says as she puts the call on speaker.
“Good,” Grandpa’s familiar voice crackles through, calm but heavy with concern.
“Thank you for coming,” I tell her, and she gives me a small smile. “Did you check the bookstore downtown on your way over?”
“I did,” Morgan responds, her voice tinged with frustration. “But she wasn’t there. I don’t know where else to look. Do you have any other ideas? Anything at all?”
“Maybe she’s at Denny Park, by the piano?” Grandpa suggests. “She mentioned she sometimes played there, right?”
Grey grunts from his perch at the kitchen island, not bothering to look up from his laptop. “Already checked there,” he mutters, his scowl deepening. “No sign of her.”
“Has anyone considered she might have gone back to London?” Grandpa asks, his voice carrying a note of hesitation.
My heart plummets, a cold dread seeping through my veins. I shake my head vehemently, even though Grandpa can’t see me. “No, I don’t think so. Her family… they’re awful. She wouldn’t go back willingly.”
“Why is she even gone? You said something happened, but what exactly? Did you have a fight?” Morgan looks between us, confusion etched on her face. “Knowing what I do of her temperament, what would make her leave this soon after being robbed? Wouldn’t she want to stay close?”
I exchange guilty glances with Grey and Misha, the weight of our secret hanging heavy in the room.
The moment of truth has come.
I knew it would someday, but I hoped it would be far in the future when we could laugh about it. Taking a deep breath, I start to explain, “We… a few weeks ago, we asked the Smart Home Development Department to beta test our AI. We thought Amelia’s boss would handle it, but he assigned the job to her. Somehow… something went wrong. Jamie got into her system,accessing her cameras and everything she had set up for her own project. Unknowingly giving us access to basically her entire life.”
“What exactly are you saying?” Grandpa’s voice is tight with controlled anger.
“We had access to her cameras, her systems, her data.Everything.”
Misha jumps in, his face strained. “She didn’t know…we didn’t tell herwe’d be watching the AI beta live for data collection. It was a stupid mistake at first.”
“At first?” Morgan’s voice is incredulous, her eyes blazing as she storms across the room, her hands flying up in frustration. “At first?”
My shoulders sag in defeat. This is so much worse. Maybe if we’d had a chance to explain. Maybe if we’d been upfront with her from the start…
“And when we started watching her,” Grey continues, his eyes finally leaving his laptop screen to meet Morgan’s. “We couldn’t stop. It was like an addiction. But if I’m honest, I am only upset with how she found?—”
Morgan’s eyes widen, shock transforming into outrage as she cuts him off. “You’re serious right now? You’ve been fuckingstalkingher? All of you?” She flails her arms in an erratic, uncontrolled gesture at the three of us, almost hitting Misha. Then she shakes her head and huffs, her face flushed as she continues pacing.
I nod, shame washing over me in waves. “We all… we all fell in love with her. But we just couldn’t stop watching. It was wrong. We know that now, but at the time…”
“We think she found out,” Misha adds, all confidence evaporated.
“Of course she found out,” Grey snaps, slamming his fist on the counter.
Silence follows before Morgan explodes, her face flushing as red as her hair. “Are you fucking kidding me? That’s not just wrong. It’s illegal! You’re stalkers! And terrible ones at that! You watch her apartment all day long, and still, you let her get robbed, let the guy who hurt her get away, and then not even tell her what you did but let her find out by herself? How could you do this to her?”
Grandpa’s voice cuts through Morgan’s tirade. “Boys, I’m deeply disappointed. This is a gross violation of trust and privacy. I thought I raised you better than this, Grey. And Oliver, Misha, I expected more from you.”
“We didn’t mean to…” I start, but the words taste like ash in my mouth as I realize just how far we’ve gone.
