Page 65 of Christmas Coffee

Celyn

I’m in my SUV barreling down the Long Island Expressway, headed for Manhattan. There’s no way to explain—there’s nothing to say. I shouldn’t have pulled her report. And from the look on her face, she had no idea what was in it. She assumed the reasons were there, that I’d dug deeper than I had. Uncle baited her and she took it and ran. The look on Tinselly’s face when she realized what her sister sacrificed to keep her safe, why she went nuts that night, and never went back to that house. Tinselly had no clue what kind of danger she was in at the time, or what Nova did to keep her safe. That burden shouldn’t have been on a fourteen-year-old, but it was—and it shows. That’s the weight on her shoulders, the thing that stole her youth and tempered her into a much older mind. While her body remained young, her soul didn’t. She’d seen things a child shouldn’t see, and done things that no kid should have to do and then she condemned herself for it. Whatever transpired between Nova and Frank, Nova still blames herself. She thinks she’s the felon, the horrible person who had to do bad things. Holy fuck, I screwed this up and there’s no way fix it. The entire situation exploded and there is nothing left of us.

The darkness that threatens to consume her is always there, but it’s not pride propelling her forward. It’s her sister. It’s always been Tinselly. They’re best friends and have been since they were girls. I don’t have a brother in that sense—Quin is as close as it comes. Add in blood and the same mother, and things get a lot more complicated.

The world whizzes by in a rush of white and gray. The roads are slick and covered in slush, sand, and salt. The back of the SUV fishtails slightly when I take a ramp too fast, but I keep the vehicle under control. The night replays in my mind and sticks on what Nova said about the lethality of the drug. I can’t let my Uncle do whatever he wants, when he wants. There’s no way that people should have died. Every medication has its risks, but ours was better than the rest of the medicines on the market at the time, and without adverse side effects. Death sure as hell wasn’t one of them. After the scandal came and went, I spent hours looking at our research and still didn’t see how it happened. But the fatalities weren’t isolated incidents.

I lost my future and my fortune, and tonight I lost Nova too. I can see the number on Uncle’s legal pad in the back of my eyes. Rage makes the numbers burn and I have razor sharp focus at the moment, along with a lot of hatred that’s unspent. Uncle is sitting in my apartment with the dog, gloating. He won. He took away everything that matters to me in one night.

As I drive, dots form in my mind, tugging me toward something, but I can’t put it together. That’s always been the problem, but I’m so livid that there’s no way I’m leaving this alone. Not tonight. Not ever again. My uncle isn’t the kind man watching out for me, he never was. Everything he did was to better himself and displace me. He wanted my father’s fortune and most of it is wrapped up in Bardenbey. I suspected his intentions weren’t pure a long time ago, but after tonight it wouldn’t surprise me if he had something to do with my colossal failing. I’ve walked around with blood on my hands for years. I accepted that I was the reason those people died, that it was my foolhardiness, my stubbornness that created the mess in the first place. But what if it wasn’t me at all? How dark does that side of Uncle go? I need to find out.

I pull up Quin’s number and when he picks up, I blurt out, “Can you meet me at Bardenbey?”

“Merry Christmas Eve to you, too.” Quin mutters and then adds, “Your uncle will be there. I thought you were avoiding him so you don’t accidentally kill him for Christmas.”

“He’s not there tonight.” My throat tightens as I grip the steering wheel harder. “He’s gloating in my apartment. He was there when I brought Nova home.”

Quin chokes so hard that it sounds like he swallowed a chicken leg. When he finally stops, he manages, “Shit, man. You and Nova? Really?”

I fill him in, telling him that she’s the woman from the hotel room. She was the chick with the Chilton’s manual. Then he hired her and things happened. When I’m done, I blurt it out, not caring what he thinks, “She’s the one. I love her and I shot everything to hell. While she was telling me off she said something and I can’t let it go.”

Quin’s stunned silence speaks volumes. I’ve never told him I felt that way about anyone. When he finally talks, he asks, “And where is she now?”

“At her sister’s house.”

“Shit, man. This is bad. I can’t believe your uncle did that to her.”

“It wasn’t him. I ran the report. I did this.” I’m gripping the steering wheel so tightly that my fingers are going numb. I loosen my grip as I navigate the shiny dark roads.

“You’ll figure out how to patch things up with Nova. I’ll help you.”

* * *

Hours of riflingthrough papers has done nothing. Maybe it’s not the date after all. I’m sitting on the floor of the filing room with my head tipped back against the cabinet. It’s fucking late and the adrenaline that was flowing through me earlier is long gone.

Quin on the other hand is high on candy canes and peppermints when he bounces to another cabinet and rifles through the folders. After a second, he stops sucking the piece of candy and calls over to me. “Hey, there’s a thumb drive in here.”

“In a folder?” I rub my hands over my face and glance up at him. Quin is holding a black drive between his thumb and forefinger, lifting it up in the air.

He waggles his eyebrows. “Weird, right?”

“Yeah,” my brain wakes up a little bit and I lean forward. “Which cabinet are you in?”

Quin backs up and tips his head to the side to read the drawer label and grins. “Bardenbey Pharmaceuticals interoffice memos. That’s the biggest bunch of bullshit. There shouldn’t be a drive in here. Everything else in this drawer is paper.”

I jump up and race over to him, plucking the drive from his fingers. “Maybe they didn’t want anyone to find it.”

Quin mutters something and then heads to Perky’s computer. “Well, then let’s take a look.” Quin keys in her password.

“You know her code?” I ask, shocked since the man doesn’t know her name.

Quin shrugs. “I saw her key it in the other day. She didn’t change it from the factory settings. 1, 2, 3, 4 isn’t hard to hack.” Quin then inserts the drive.

We both watch as one folder flickers onto the screen. My stomach is swirling. I want to find something. I’ve been such a fucking moron trying to play by the rules with this man.

Quin double clicks and a file opens. He shakes his head when he’s looking at a long string of numbers and letters. “What is this?”

At first glance, I recognize it. I lean in closer to the screen to confirm it’s what I think it is. “This is the formula for the cancer drug. It looks like the patent papers.” I squint at the screen and frown. Something is different. I’ve seen this a thousand times but I can’t put my finger on what changed. After scanning the screen for a moment, I spot it, the glaring difference. I press my finger to the screen. “That’s not supposed to be there.”