May is grinning up at me as I ascend the stairs sideways. “You know, how they plant acorns and seed stuff with their butts?”
I roll my eyes. “Oh, ha, ha.” I lean down and whisper at her with as much threat in my voice as possible. “Don’t you dare tell anybody about my Animal Planet obsession.”
“I can be bribed.”
“Want to come to the mall with me? I have a gift certificate to spend.” I wiggle my eyebrows at her.
“Animal Planet? Who watches that dumb show? Not my sister.” She grins. “I’m there. Lunch hour?”
I nod. We’re at the top of the stairs now, and Toni is pressing in the code that will give us entry to the sword room. She pushes the door in hard enough to let it swing open for all of us, but she doesn’t bother holding it.
In any other circumstance I might consider this person rude, but being forewarned by May makes me a more charitable person today. Plus, I can’t afford to make any of these people into bad guys in my mind. What if they offer me a job? What will I say? Will I chicken out because I’m worried there’s a mean girl in our midst? I hope I’m not that person, so easily frightened away.
The dogs run past me, almost knocking me over in their enthusiasm to get back into the meeting area. “Damn,” I shout, trying to catch myself before I fall, grabbing the door handle for all I’m worth. My briefcase swings around and whacks me in the stomach. “Holy hell, someone’s in a hurry.” I stand there in a hunched-over position catching my breath, praying no one saw me. When I look up, I notice Toni looking at me strangely. Great.
“Somebody needs to train those dogs,” May says grumpily.
I bug my eyes out at her. “Yeah, somebody needs to.”
“Oh look! Swords!” May says. Clearly this is a distraction designed to keep me off the dog-training subject, but I go ahead and look at the swords anyway. They are impressive, even though I’ve already seen them a couple times. And Dev owns them. What I wouldn’t give to watch him swinging one of those around . . .
Voices from the other room stop me from commenting or going any further on that train of thought. May’s silliness had helped me to relax a little, but now that I hear the men, I’m back to being nervous again. Will I ever feel comfortable here?
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
May gives me a gentle shove on the back. “Hurry up. I don’t want to be late.”
I walk in and nod at Lucky from across the room. He gestures at the empty seat next to him. There’s also an extra seat next to Dev, whose back is to us, but I’m not brave enough to take that one. I head over to the other side of the table to sit next to my partner in crime, fellow computer-cloner Lucky. As I take my seat, Dev looks up at me and smiles, his warm gaze soothing my nerves in an instant.
Ozzie speaks and all the voices quiet down to listen. “Looks like everybody’s here now, so we can get started.”
I surreptitiously check my watch, making sure I’m not late. I’m relieved to see that it’s exactly eleven-thirty.
“I’d like to begin with Blue Marine.” Ozzie looks at Lucky and me.
Thankfully, Lucky takes the lead. “As you all know, Jenny and I headed over to Blue Marine Wednesday night and cloned all their computers and got access to their server. I’ve analyzed some of the data that we found, but I’m pretty sure Jenny has more detail for you.” He swivels his chair to face mine.
I try to sound normal when I respond, but I have to clear my throat twice to get my voice to work properly, my first two attempts at speaking sounding more frog than human.
“Yes, so, as Lucky said, we did some work on Wednesday night. We had a schematic of the office and the various computer systems that were in place, and cloned everything. I spent quite a bit of time on the cloned systems to see what I could find, and there was one station in particular that caught my attention.”
I reach into my file folder and pull out the report that I typed up, embarrassed that I only have three copies. I hand one to Lucky and the other to Ozzie, using the third one as a reference for myself. “I’m sorry I didn’t make copies for everyone.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Thibault says. “Just give us the highlights. We can look over a more detailed report later if we need to.”
Thank God for Thibault. He has a special knack for making me feel more relaxed. I can’t even look at Dev right now, though; I’ll probably forget how to speak English if I see that dimple.
“Okay. So, like I said, there was one station that caught my attention. I detailed it in the first paragraph there.” I glance at Ozzie and Lucky, verifying that they’re looking very intently at what I wrote for them in the report. So far I don’t see any funny expressions, so I think I’m good with the first paragraph. Yay for me.
“The employee who works at this spot is named Anita.”
Lucky looks up at that moment with a sharp hiss of breath.