“Start talking,” Christopher demanded. Allison’s eyes shot to his. Was he being serious right now? She’d never heard him talk like that. Not to her. His voice had gone deep, and it sounded almost aroused. Maybe that wasn’t so surprising. After all, she knew perfectly well that he’d been turned on earlier. She had been, too.
“It’s like this,” she finally said, whispering.
Somehow, it was hard to get the words out. She didn’t think he was going to judge her, but he might be mad, and there was a part of her that didn’t really want to tell him what she’d done.
“Like what?”
“I sneaked into the file room.” Allison bit her lip. She still couldn’t really believe she’d been so...brazen.
“The file room?” Christopher raised an eyebrow.
“Yes, the file room downstairs. It’s the one in the basement.”
“We have a file room?”
“Yes! I mean, it’s mostly just for old records, but yes.”
“I didn’t know we had a file room. How did I not know this? I thought everything was digital.”
Christopher actually seemed wildly confused about this, and Allison felt a little bad for being the one to tell him. He was right, after all. It was his company, and he probably should have been in the know when it came to something like this. Apparently, he hadn’t been, though.
“Some things are,” Allison explained gently. “It’s just that not everything can be left completely digital. When you started the company, Brian wanted to make sure you had backups of the important stuff, so he keeps a file room downstairs.”
“Ah, so it’s my brother’s doing, is it?”
“Don’t get mad at him.”
“Hey,” Christopher smiled softly, “you can’t tell me what to do.”
He was right, she knew. Allison didn’t have the obligation to tell him what to do. She didn’t have permission, either. Besides, it really wasn’t her job. Her job was to make sure that everything went according to plan with the rest of the company. Her job was to make sure that Christopher’s job was easy and streamlined and that she worked all of the kinks out of their computer systems.
“Anyway,” she whispered, continuing, “he started this file room. It’s a big room, and it has documents that are usually digitized. It’s just his way of keeping a backup system in place. If there’s ever a fire or anything like that, this particular room will be protected because of the walls. I’m sure that there are probably other, off-site places where he keeps your company’s files, too.”
“That’s Brian. He’s so fucking secretive,” Christopher shook his head. He didn’t seem mad, but he did seem a bit...resigned.
“I went to the file room on a hunch.”
“A hunch?”
“You know those hacks we’ve been having?”
“Yes.”
“Well, someone keeps trying to get into personnel files. We know someone actually hacked the employment records from the last couple of months.”
“So why go to the records room?”
“Well, I figured that maybe I could compare. Maybe I could do a cross-analysis.”
“So, what, you printed off employment records from our digital files and then went downstairs to see what paper files we have?”
“Yeah, pretty much.”
“Allison, did it cross your mind that if someone is trying to destroy or investigate our digital files, that they might have gotten rid of the physical evidence, too? If someone wanted to delete an employment file, they probably knew to go to the records room and destroy the physical file, too.”
“I thought that at first,” Allison agreed, nodding.
“But?”