“I don’t know. Someone came into the office. I had to shut it down. I didn’t want...I didn’t want anyone to know.”
Charlie rolled her eyes and started reviewing at the highest speed possible, but something skipped by in the frame and she had to cut back almost immediately. Keith had left her apartment only two minutes after entering. “Two minutes,” she said, playing it back again. She shot a glare at Dawn. “Even a little hussy like me isn’t that good. Unless there’s something disappointing about Keith you’d like to tell me.”
“There’s no need to be crude!” she snapped.
“Are you sure? I feel like yelling a whole lot of crude things right now. Your husband was in my apartment without my permission!”
“He’s... I’m sure... If...” A hundred different things seemed to be spinning through the woman’s eyes. She closed them for a moment, then nodded. “He’s technically your landlord. I’m sure there was some problem he needed to address.”
Charlie let her head drop into her hands. “Are there any ca
meras in my apartment?”
“What? Of course not! What are you talking about?”
“Just go,” Charlie whispered. “Leave me alone. Please.”
For once in her life, Dawn seemed to decide that staying quiet was her best course. She stood there for one long moment and then she thankfully, mercifully, left Charlie alone.
Charlie kept her eyes closed. This place was a madhouse. That bastard had gone into her rooms, violated her space. For what?
She opened her eyes and looked at the monitor. Two minutes. What had he done? Put in a listening device? That seemed a little extreme even for her paranoia. Sure, she’d considered it, but was that really a possibility?
Two minutes. Had he been looking for something? She looked at the time code again. It was after she’d called her brother. After she’d left a frantic message for him. He must have called Keith. And Keith had dropped by to look for damning evidence. For her computer.
Movement caught her eye, and Charlie looked up at the monitor to see Keith’s car pulling into the employee parking lot. She jumped to her feet and raced to her office. The computer was still there. She locked her office door and started backing everything up to her personal online account.
Screw these people. She was getting out of here.
She watched the upload marker tick up too slowly. She didn’t even know if anything important was in those files; she only knew that Nicole had said they’d planned to blame her if anything went wrong. What could they pin on her?
A knock interrupted her thoughts. She glanced at the computer. It was only 60 percent backed up. If Keith opened the door right now... But no. It had only been three minutes since he’d pulled up. Unless he’d raced up the stairs at superspeed, it was someone else. “Who is it?” she rasped.
“Eli, ma’am.” She had a few minutes yet. She slumped and told Eli she’d find him later.
Then her mind kicked into high gear.
By the time Keith unlocked her office door five minutes later, she was ready.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
CHARLIE KNEW HER hands were shaking, but there was nothing she could do to stop them. Her only option was to hide them beneath her desk as Keith took a seat in one of her chairs.
“I was worried about you, Charlotte. So was your brother. Where have you been?”
“For two people who were so worried, it’s odd neither of you tried to call and talk to me.”
He smoothed down his slightly mussed hair. “Well, I was wrapped up in a few things and—”
“I can’t work for you anymore,” she interrupted, not feeling one bit of worry as she said it. It was the absolute truth.
“Of course you can.” She saw it then, finally. The cold, hard stone of the man beneath the layers of innocuous warmth. The core that had made him so successful by forty-five. “I spoke with Nicole. She seems to be confused about a few things. She drinks. She gets reckless. She’s hot-tempered. She says things she doesn’t mean.”
“Like that you and my loving brother are using me to embezzle money out of your own resort?”
Keith offered an easy smile. “There’s your answer right there. Why would I embezzle money from my own place?”
“You have investors. And when Brad’s wife filed for divorce, she really screwed up that little deal you made with Nicole. You both needed the money, so Brad brought me in.”