14

ALLIE TOOK A SIP OF HER FOUR-SHOT VENTI WHITE CHOCOLATE LATTE AND tried again to focus on the spreadsheet on her monitor. She needed to reconcile it against a stack of customer files but was making slow progress. She had done about ten minutes’ worth of work in the hour she’d been in the office.

A bartender had once explained to Allie that pure tequila wouldn’t cause a hangover the next day because of the chemical structure of the sugars in the liquor. Based on extensive experience since then, Allie had concluded that the bartender was a liar trying to sell her pure tequila, which was a lot more expensive than the mixto stuff bars ordinarily use. Either that or lime juice caused pounding hangovers.

Whatever caused her hangover, the result was impressive. It hurt to stand up, it hurt to sit down, it hurt to think, and it hurt to talk. It even hurt to blink.

“Allie, please come with me,” said a woman’s voice behind her.

Allie jumped and turned to see her supervisor, a large and open-faced Hispanic woman named Sabrina.

“Hi, Sabrina. You startled me.” She pointed at the screen and smiled, trying hard not to wince. “These spreadsheets are a little too interesting, I guess.” Lame, but it never hurt to make sure her temporary employers knew they’d caught her working when they surprised her. They’d be less likely to keep a close eye on her in the future.

Sabrina didn’t smile back. “Uh-huh.”

They know! Panic shot through Allie, cutting straight through the hangover fog. She froze. Had she copied any hard files? No. Had she downloaded any of the screwed up on-line files she found? No. Had she accessed any locked files? No, but she had started looking for them. She’d had that secure server up on her computer screen last night—had she left it on? She couldn’t quite remember. Think! Think! Think!

“Allie?” prompted Sabrina.

“Yes?”

“Could you come with me, please?”

“Oh, uh, okay. Just let me close out of this and I’ll be right there.”

“Don’t worry about it. You can finish what you’re doing later.”

“Um, all right.”

Allie stood slowly and followed Sabrina down the hall, several sets of eyes following her as she went. At least there were witnesses in case she never came back. She caught herself and smiled. Maybe she was being just a touch melodramatic.

Then she remembered that she had indeed turned off her computer last night. Her smile widened and the lump of ice in her stomach began to melt. She hadn’t done anything remotely suspicious. Maybe this was nothing. In fact, it almost had to be.

She had mostly relaxed by the time Sabrina stopped at a conference room, gave a tight smile, and motioned for her to go in.

Allie returned her smile and walked in. Two men sat at a medium-sized oak table. One was Sanford “Sandy” Allen, one of the founders of Blue Sea. He had thick white hair and a wide, lined face that had made Allie think “grandfather” the first time she met him. Her only interaction with him had been on her first morning at Blue Sea. Sandy had greeted her and the other new temps and told them a few funny but pointless stories before turning them over to Sabrina.

He looked more like a prison warden than a grandfather today, and he frowned as she entered. The other man in the room was a younger, but equally grim, Asian with a crew cut. Allie didn’t think she’d met him before.

She heard the door shut behind her and Mr. Allen said. “Have a seat, Miss Whitman.”

Allie picked a chair near the door and perched on its edge, the ice refreezing in her gut. “Why are you here?” asked crew cut man without bothering to introduce himself.

“Um, what do you mean?”

He glared at her. “You know what I mean. Why are you at this company? You’re clearly overqualified for the work you’re doing.”

“Oh, well, I like the flexibility of temping and if I took a permanent job, I couldn’t—”

He snorted. “Couldn’t make nearly as much because you’d only have one company to sue, isn’t that right?”

Her heart stopped and she gaped at him soundlessly.

Mr. Allen’s frown deepened, turning the lines on his cheeks and forehead into shadowed crevices. Crew cut man’s mouth twisted into a confident, predatory smile as he continued his cross-examination. “Yesterday, you were running searches for words like ‘state,’ ‘federal’ and ‘government’ in our customer files. Why?”

“You’re—Blue Sea is trying to get a federal contract, so I—I figured that I’d see what your government contract files looked like.”

Crew cut man waved his hand dismissively. “You’re doing this after hours, with no one asking you to? That’s an awful lot of initiative for a temp, but it makes perfect sense for a whistle-blower hunting for her next lawsuit, don’t you think?”

“I—”

“And before you deny it,” he said, raising his voice to talk over her, “think about whether you’ll also deny working for every company ever sued by Devil to Pay.”

She opened her mouth, but before she could speak, he added, “Oh, and I’m also interested to hear you explain how you afford that apartment and all those Tahoe and Vail trips on your temp earnings.”

Her ears roared and she felt dizzy. “I don’t understand. Why did you bring me in here and make all these… these accusations?”

Crew cut man leaned back and Mr. Allen leaned forward. His grandfather face was back, but it was somehow worse than crew cut man’s open malice. “Oh, we’re not making accusations, just—” he paused and rubbed his jaw. “Just observations. That’s all. Now, we could share those observations publicly. We’d be very popular with a lot of our business partners if we did. And you’d never blow another whistle.”

She struggled to ignore the adrenaline shouting in her brain. “But you haven’t.”

Mr. Allen smiled and nodded. “That’s right. We haven’t. We’re the only ones who know about you, and we’re willing to keep it that way.”

“What do you want me to do?”

“Just keep doing what you’re doing, but not here.”

Now she saw where this was going. “And where do you want me to do it?”

Mr. Allen chuckled warmly and shook his head. “You’re a clever young woman. Our main competitor is a company called Deep Seven. We’re convinced that they’re cheating the government, and we’d like you to go put a stop to it.”

“Um, okay. No problem. What evidence do you have?”

Mr. Allen’s smile faded and he raised his eyebrows, sending a network of wrinkles up into his snowy hair. “Finding evidence is your job, isn’t it?”

She paused. “Are you saying you don’t have any evidence?”

Crew cut man scowled and opened his mouth, but Mr. Allen raised his hand. “I’m saying that we’re quite certain that Deep Seven is defrauding the government and that you can catch them.”

She twisted sweaty hands below the table. She wanted to ask what would happen if she couldn’t find evidence of fraud at Deep Seven, but she was afraid of what the answer would be. Better to leave it alone and cross that bridge if she came to it. She looked down at the highly polished table, avoiding her own reflected gaze.

“Do we understand each other, Ms. Whitman?”

She took a deep breath and looked up. “We understand each other, Mr. Allen.”

He smiled with every part of his face except his eyes. “Please, call me Sandy.”