“You are not a bad person,” I said.
Her tear-filled gaze whipped to mine. “I-I-I—I’ve been in all those midnight meetings, Ghost. I—I do the minutes for them. That’s—that’s all. There’s—I hear what they talk about. It’s just… financial client stuff. Sometimes they want to drop someone. End a contract early. They make me?—”
Watching her process was both heart-wrenching and weirdly amazing.
She was so much stronger than she gave herself credit for. I didn’t know much about her, but I already knew that much to be true.
She was so scared that she hurt people.
Bad people didn’t think that way.
I took her hands and cupped them in my palms. She shivered, and I didn’t like that. “Do you have any way to get your hands on those minutes? Because if they’re talking in code, we’ve got a guy, Scout, who can figure it out at the drop of a hat.”
Her lower lip quivered. “But they don’t talk about?—”
“I know,” I said, and even I heard how soft my voice was. “Stay with me for a second, Jaz. I promise, we’re almost to the part where you can fall apart. Do you have a way to get your hands on those minutes for us?”
“Ghost,” Ranger muttered, “maybe she should rest.”
We had to keep going, though.
I had to keep her talking before her emotions locked her up for good. “Jasmine.”
She shook her head softly. “Huh?”
“Please.”
The air ejected itself from the room. I wasn’t sure I’d ever said that fucking word in my life. But at that moment, I didn’t care about my dignity, or my image, or how long my brothers would tease me over it once Ranger started running his fucking mouth.
I needed this woman to talk to us.
She cleared her throat. “Um… I mean, they’re on my work laptop. Why?”
I peeked over at Ranger, who still stood on the other side of the bed, before I dragged my stare back to Jasmine. She looked so damn petrified and guilty that it made me want to raze that entire firm to the ground just for making a sweet little thing like her complicit in all this.
Jesus fuck, for all we knew, she was who they meant to pin this all on if it went south.
It wouldn’t be the first time an innocent little bystander in a company took the fall for some shit like this.
“If they’re letting you take minutes of the meeting, then the meetings are very much in code. Do you video or voice record the meetings as well?” I asked.
She swallowed hard and nodded. “Both. It’s required by the firm. But I don’t have access to those without going to mydesk. The minutes are on my laptop, but the audio and visual recordings are housed on a?—”
When she paused, her eyes grew glassy.
“Oh fuck,” she whispered softly.
“What?” I asked, squeezing her hand softly to remind her that I was there. “What is it, Jasmine?”
Her lower lip quivered, and it broke something inside of me as her watery gaze returned. “They’re housed on a server that’s kept on the top floor where I work.”
That would make sense as to why the security presence there responded so fucking quickly to the cameras going down on the top floor.
“My work laptop is still at my apartment,” Jasmine whispered.
I nodded. “I know, we’ll make sure you get it. Ranger?”
“Yeah?”
