“Employers?” Nick asked.
“People who make money when other people’s business deals go badly,” George explained casually. “Inside information is valuable. Especially when it comes to real estate development and mineral rights.”
Gina felt sick. “You’re selling client information to corporate competitors?”
“I’m facilitating information exchange,” George corrected. “Kelsey here is the one selling it.”
“Because you’re blackmailing her,” Gina said.
“No, no.” George shook his head. “I’m not blackmailing her. If you remember, I wasn’t even sure who I was supposed to meet.In fact, if things had gone as they were supposed to, we wouldn’t have met at all, would we, my dear?”
Kelsey shook her head. “I was supposed to leave the information. I don’t...” She dropped her shoulders with a loud sigh. “I don’t even know who is blackmailing me or how they got what they got, although I have my suspicions. But I’m done. This is it. The plan was for me to leave the flash drive at one of the other buildings. I did that first thing this morning.
“Then, when the storm came in and we had to come back, I checked for the drive, thinking it would’ve already been picked up. But it was still there. I was worried the weather might affect it and, honestly, figured the person who was supposed to retrieve it decided not to come up because of the weather.” She looked at George. “You were supposed to get it while I was on the trail.”
“And you were supposed to leave it in the agreed-upon location.”
“Wait.” Joe held up a hand. “Dropping a flash drive in an abandoned building over an hour from civilization sounds very...1990’s spy novel.”
Brooke shook her head. “Why not just upload the information to the cloud?”
“Can’t,” Kelsey said. “The files are too sensitive to do that. Even getting it onto a flash drive took some doing. We have all sorts of safeguards in place to prevent digital document theft.”
“So much for those,” Nick murmured.
Gina looked at Kelsey. Her eyes were glistening, and her cheeks were wet from fallen tears. A part of her wanted to feel sorry for her friend, to understand how desperation could drive someone to betray everything they believed in. But a larger part of her was furious.
“How long?” she asked. “How long have you been doing this?”
“Six months, off and on,” Kelsey whispered. “Since they first contacted me.”
“Six months.” Gina tried to process this. “You’ve been stealing from your clients for six months? Lying to all of us for six months?”
“I didn’t want to. I never wanted any of this.”
“But you did it anyway.”
Kelsey nodded miserably. “What choice did I have?”
“You could have told someone. You could have gone to the police. You could have trusted your friends to help you figure out a solution.” Gina’s voice was getting louder. “Instead, you chose to become a criminal.”
“It’s not that simple—”
“It is that simple,” Nick interrupted. “You had choices, and you chose to betray people who trusted you.”
George watched the exchange with obvious amusement. “Oh, this is rich. The moral outrage. The wounded feelings. You people have no idea how the real world works.”
“The real world doesn’t require putting your friends in danger,” Brooke said.
“Doesn’t it?” George asked. “How about you, Brooke? You’d do anything to avoid failing again, wouldn’t you? You put everyone’s life in danger by insisting on coming up here when the weather could still be brutal. What if someone offered you a guaranteed way to finish your race? What if they could eliminate your competition, give you inside information about course changes, provide you with performance-enhancing substances that couldn’t be detected?”
“I would never— ”
“Never? What if it meant dodging the sting of one more flop and proving to everyone that you’re not a failure?”
Brooke went pale, and Gina could see his words hitting their mark. The desperation that had driven Brooke’s trainingobsession, the fear of failing again—George was weaponizing her insecurities.
“That’s different,” Brooke said weakly.
