No photos except her employee badge, where she looked serious and focused, hair pulled back just like last night. Just like this morning, when she’d looked at me like I was something she’d scraped off her shoe.
I scrolled further. No patents in her name, despite the fact that the SEAS technology was clearly her creation. Richard had filed everything under HydroCore. Ten years of her life, and she didn’t even legally own her own work.
A brilliant woman kept small. Whether she knew it or not, Richard Sterling had been stealing from her for a decade.
Her salary was competitive—HydroCore paid well for senior engineers. But her address was a one-bedroom in a neighborhood that didn’t match the income, and the car registration on file was a 2006 Corolla with ninety-three thousand miles. I almost scrolled past it. Then I went back.
People who made her salary and drove that car were either very careful with money or sending it somewhere. I filed it without knowing why.
My phone buzzed. Mike.
“You need to see something.” He didn’t bother with hello. “I’m pulling the security footage from HydroCore’s parking garage. The stuff from the last two weeks, before the takeover.”
“Why?”
“Because somebody was interested in Charlie Winters’s car. Last night—Tuesday—someone spent about ten minutes around her Corolla. After midnight. Didn’t take anything, didn’t damage it. Just ... looked.”
A cold feeling settled in my chest. The night I’d met her at the bar. The night she’d driven home alone in that unreliable piece of shit car.
“Anything else?”
“Two other incidents in the last month. Same pattern—someone near her vehicle after hours. Different person, or the same one in different clothes. Camera angle’s bad, I can’t get a clear face. Could be Richard’s people. Could be something else.”
“Flag it. Get someone on it. I want to know who and why.”
“Already on it.” A pause. “Ash. She doesn’t know about this.”
“I know.” And I couldn’t tell her. Not now. Not after this morning, when she’d looked at me and said “You knew” like it was the worst thing anyone had ever done to her. If I told her someone was surveilling her car, she’d think it was me. Or she’d think I was using it to manipulate her into trusting me.
“Keep it between us for now,” I said. “But I want eyes on that parking garage every night.”
“Copy that.”
I hung up and sat in the dark for a long time.
The dinner reservation was still on the books. Eight o’clock at Nobu, a table I’d had Cheryl secure that morning before everything went sideways. Before Charlie Winters had stood in a boardroom and looked at me like I’d betrayed her.
Because I had.
I picked up the phone and called the restaurant. Canceled the reservation. The hostess was polite about it. These things happen, she said.
Yes. They do.
I closed the laptop and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. The suite was exactly as beautiful as it had been last night—the white furniture, the view, the Cristal on ice that Cheryl always arranged. All that luxury, and no one to enjoy it with.
The same thought I’d had on the plane. But tonight it hit differently. Tonight, there had been someone. For about twelve hours, there had been a dinner on the books and a woman with green eyes who’d agreed to meet me.
And I’d blown it. Not because I’d wanted to, but because I’d chosen the company over the connection. The same choice I always made. The same pattern.
Whatever was happening between Charlie Winters and me needed to be shut down before it even began.
I finished the bourbon, turned off the lights, and didn’t sleep.
6
CHARLIE
The door closed behind me with a quiet click that belied the storm raging in my gut. I kept my spine straight, my pace measured as I walked down the hallway away from the boardroom, past curious eyes and whispered conversations.
