“I’m not surprised at all. She’s a clever one. She’s always on top of everything. You know, it was lame that you didn’t call her in the last couple of weekends.”
“I wanted her to have a life outside of the office,” Christopher was exasperated. He was tired of justifying his decision to everyone. Apparently, the entire world thought he’d done Allison wrong by excluding her, but the way he’d thought of it was giving her the gift of time.
“She’s got no life outside of the office, Christopher. You are her entire life. Can’t you see that?” Declan’s words were rough around the edges, but he was kind. Christopher knew perfectly well that his brother was being gentle with him. What he didn’t know was why. He definitely didn’t deserve all of that.
“I can see it,” Christopher finally said. He knew that Declan was right. He knew he had been wrong. Allison had already told him that she didn’t want him to exclude her, yet he’d done it again. He’d had this idea that he was protecting her, but that wasn’t quite right, was it? He wasn’t protecting her. He was protecting himself.
Allison was a big girl. She could look after herself. If she said that she didn’t want to be left out of a meeting, he needed to respect that. Besides, she was right when she said that she was an important member of the team. There were a lot of things he couldn’t do without her, and he needed to trust her. He hadn’t been showing her the most important thing a teammate could show another person: genuine trust.
Kindness.
Caring.
“So, what happened?” Declan crossed his arms over his chest. “Don’t leave me hanging.”
“Oh, someone came in.”
“Someone came in?”
“Yeah, someone came into the file room. Apparently, they shut the lights off to that part of the building, and they were carrying a flashlight. They came in and started rummaging around.”
“What were they looking for?”
“I don’t know.”
“What did they do to Allison? Did they see her?”
Yeah. They’d seen her. That was the part that worried Christopher the most. Whoever was messing with their systems knew perfectly well who she was. If they knew she was in the file room, then they knew she was onto whatever it was they were doing.
“They saw her,” he confirmed.
“Well, shit.”
“Yeah.”
“Any ideas who it might be?”
The only new employee they’d hired recently had been James. Christopher didn’t like him. He especially didn’t like that Allison had invited him to the Christmas party. That was Christopher’s Christmas party, and he’d wanted to invite her.
“Maybe James.”
“The software guy?” Declan raised an eyebrow. “Why him?”
“He’s new.”
“Being new doesn’t mean someone’s a snake,” Zoa said, tossing a pair of sweatpants out of the treehouse. They fell, landing just in front of Christopher, and he grabbed them and slipped them on.
“It could mean someone’s a snake,” Christopher countered.
“Not necessarily,” Zoa said. She was coming down the treehouse stairs. She carried two tall glasses of lemonade in her hands. When Zoa reached the bottom of the steps, she handed a glass to each of the guys.
“It could, though.”
Zoa just rolled her eyes.
“Coming from someone who was actually captured by a snake,” Zoa pointed out, “I think you’re being a bit hasty.”
“I don’t think so,” Christopher pouted.