“Cee you’re being—”
I held up a hand. “No. Save your shit. You wanted me to be mad, now I’m pissed. And Ihaveto lock the doors now, Connor. So,let’s go.”
He looked at me with his miserable-boy look, like someone had stepped in his ice cream. But eventually he straightened up. “Where are we going?”
I looked at him from the corner of my eyes, deciding right then what to do. “I’m going home.”
“To mine?”
“To mine,” I said. The implication loud and clear. I was going homealone. “Bring me my fucking cat.”
Chapter Twenty-eight
CONNOR
When I was fourteen I grew six inches in one summer. I had already been in the high five feet by then and that summer was a blur of always being hungry and my joints always aching mysteriously. But by the time it was over a few things had happened. I had shot up past my older brother, who was the tallest in the family until then, and those two idiots started pulling their punches with me.
By the time I’d turned sixteen, unless they wanted to get dropped, they didn’t come at me at all. Which is why I was a little bit taken aback by the hard knock to the chest I received on entry to my brother’s office.
Clint hadn’t quite punched me, but he did shove papers into my body with so much force, I had to take a deep breath to return the air there.
Giving him a long look, and not liking what I found, I gathered up the papers, but my eyes stayed on him. On the outside he looked about the same. Same tailored suit, hair lined to perfection, curls short but not faded, face clean shaven, and expression dull. But there was something about the look in his eye. Something wild and agitated and not at all grounded like my brother always was. It worried me.
“Clint?”
“The papers, Connor. Read them,” he said, controlled but not in the way he usually was. He was usually effortlessly controlled, while right now it looked like he was fighting to keep it tooth and nail.
I looked down at the papers in my hands and blood drained from my face. “H-how—”
A finger came down on the text as my brother pointed at the document, “It says it right there. Tampering with financial records, falsifying federal taxes and embezzlement.”
“A charge?” I asked.
“An investigation,” he said, those fingers going to find the bridge of his nose. More testimony to him freaking out. Normally he would have said something else by now. Usually explaining away the next “action steps” and “probable outcomes” at length. But now, he was silent.
Shit.
I guess I would be freaking out too if the company I was in charge of was apparently about to be audited in the investigation of multiple white-collar crimes that I didn’t commit.
Inside I was already freaking out because, holy shit. I didn’t want my brother to go to jail! Especially not because some bullshit hacker with an obvious vendetta was out to get Ferguson Enterprises.
I guess now we knew what the hacker wanted.
“When did you get this notice?” I asked, looking down at the papers again.
“I got it on my desk this morning, but legal has had it for a week…” he said. “There was apparently an anonymous tip.”
“To the authorities?”
“Yes.”
“And now we’re being—
“I don’t know what you’re not getting out of this Connor. We’re fucked. We’re being fucked.”
I blinked.Okay, he was pissed.
“None of it’s true, though. And it’s all old, like years old. I checked. Whoever it is, they weren’t able to access any of the recent reports or records. Not since I took over more than four years ago. Everything they’ve got is ancient history now…right?”
