Page 80 of Big & Bossy
The hot shower was enough to make me feel slightly human again, even if I spent the majority of it thinking about ways I could try to fix things between me and Mandy. I wasn’t sure if there was one, I’d come up empty every time.
The least I could do if things were truly over between us was get to the bottom of the threat and squash it. If Mandy genuinely didn’t want me in her life, and it was looking more and more like that was the case, I could at least get whoever this was off of her back. That way I could scale back my security and she could really be done, even if the thought of it made my skin crawl. I could accept it. I would have to. But the idea of never seeing her again made me want to find the nearest bridge.
If I could just talk to her… I didn’t expect her to forgive me, not after what I’d done. But every part of me couldn’t begin to cope without knowing she’d heard me out in my entirety, heard every angle, heard how much I loved her.
My phone lit up with a text as I toweled myself off. Samantha from PR. Meeting in ten with security.
My muscles stiffened as my eyes scanned it over and over again. They found something. They had to. Every part of my mind was screaming at me to just call them now, but clearly, they had to pull some things together first if they needed me to wait ten minutes.
I didn’t know if I was patient enough for that.
I pulled on a pair of shorts and a plain white shirt as I stumbled down my hallway, toward my home office. I sat down in my chair, eyes fixed on the computer screen, anxiously waiting for the video call.
Ten minutes felt like a lifetime, long enough for me to dive far too deep into my own thoughts. Things could have gotten worse, we could have received another threat, we still had no information and they were trying to find a gentle way to tell me. It was possible—if whoever it was knew their way around a computer like I did, they could disappear without a trace. They could have masked their IP to look like the library but could’ve actually been somewhere else. They could be anywhere in the world by now, but something in my gut told me they were still in Boulder, still too close to Mandy.
The video call rang out from my speakers. I answered it in less than a millisecond.
The camera was stationed at the end of a circular table, four people in suits sitting around it and two more behind them, standing up. “What’s happened?” I asked, glancing between them, looking for a familiar face.
“We’ve received the CCTV footage,” one of them said.
The breath I took was shaky. “Okay.”
“We’ve sent it to you. We’re working on facial ID, but please let us know if you recognize anyone. They’ve sent us the entire days’ worth of video but we’ve timestamped the period of time the email could have been sent in.”
“Okay,” I repeated, my thoughts too jumbled to make a coherent sentence.
“Let us know if you need anything.”
I ended the call with my trembling hand as I pulled up the video.
————
Three hours later, I’d seen absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. I’d gone to the campus, half of my shit not even moved in yet, but I needed a change of scenery. There was only an hour left of the footage, and I was rapidly approaching the end of the timestamp. My eyes were tired, but I couldn’t look away. Not when we had it. Not when I could fix everything with this one video, not when I could at least protect Mandy.
I took a short break to grab myself a coffee from the cart downstairs. Gears turned as I walked, ordered, and carried two cups back toward the elevator. I had to figure this out but literally nothing had stood out the entirety of the three hours of video so far, and it was almost over.
Angela sat behind her brand-new, state-of-the-art circular desk. She hated it, hated that she was more available than ever now, hated that she couldn’t hide behind the counter like she had at the old office.
I set down her cup in front of her.
She looked from me to the cup before her face scrunched up. “What the hell is this?”
“A drink,” I deadpanned.
“It says tea. Is this supposed to be for me?”
“I thought maybe you were onto tea now,” I shrugged, the idea suddenly striking me as absolutely ludicrous instead of another nice gesture.
“Do I look like a sad, tired, old British woman?” She hissed. She lifted the lid, recoiling when her eyes caught the bag floating at the top of it. “You didn’t even put milk in it. I’m positive milk is supposed to go in tea, Jack.”
“I put sugar in it,” I sighed.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I must have missed the memo that milk is now sugar.”
“Jesus, Angela, just say thank you,” I bit out, the frustration of the lack of anything worthwhile in the video beginning to hit. “Do you want mine instead?”
“What did you get?” She asked, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms. She spun gently back and forth.
