David(18)

Ricki and I had a long, rich history, but I’m not sure she’d connected the dots just yet. If she had, last night never would have happened.

I was the reason her friend, Arabelle, was arrested five years ago. How would she look at me if she knew that?

“Donovan will stay undercover in your IT department for another week or two. We’ll reassess as we go along, see where we stand. But David’s finished with your system, so I’m taking him back to the compound when our meeting’s over, if that’s okay with you.”

Ricki nodded. “You found the breach, then?”

I watched her watching me. She was once again the cold CEO, all emotion gone from her expressive eyes.

“Whoever it was, gathered a bunch of information on your clients and stashed it in the code where it was unlikely to be found but could be easily accessed with another breach. I think whoever’s doing this was hoping for some sort of reaction from you. I’m not sure what, exactly.”

“But nothing was leaked?”

“Not that I can tell.”

“What have you done to keep that from happening?”

“I closed the backdoor where they were getting in and, to be on the safe side, I installed a security program we use on our own computers that will alert me to any attempt a hacker might make to get into the system again.”

“Alert you? Does that mean my system is still vulnerable?”

“Every system is vulnerable. You should know that better than anyone.”

She inclined her head slightly.

“But this program allows me to watch and act should someone attempt to break in again.”

“Will we be able to figure out who it is if that happens?”

“We should.”

“Good.”

She seemed satisfied by that information. She turned back to Ash, asked about Donovan again, dismissing me in a way that felt final. I turned away, rolling my chair toward the door where I parked and waited. I wasn’t sure I understood her attitude. I mean, I didn’t think last night was the beginning of some big romance, but I hadn’t expected to be dismissed so easily, either. Maybe it was my ego. I’d been the one to do the dismissing when I was healthy. When I could walk. But now…I guess this chair made me feel vulnerable in more than one way.

When their conversation was finished, we headed out without any fanfare. Ash had driven his personal car, a low Mercedes that was too much like the Mercedes I’d crashed that night in Austin for comfort. I balked as we approached it, not really in a hurry to get into it. But I wasn’t all that anxious to stay behind, either.

“I thought maybe we’d run by the doctor’s office while we’re in town.”

I turned my chair around and headed for the sidewalk.

“Where are you going?”

“I can’t imagine it would take more than four or five hours to roll myself home.”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“Don’t be patronizing.”

Ash rushed to catch up with me, stepping in front of my chair to make me stop. He grabbed the armrests and leaned down, getting as close to my face as he could. “You may like to think that the world revolves around you and your choices, but it really doesn’t. This isn’t only about you, brother.”

“Then what is it about?”

“I lost Mom and Dad, too, David.”

“But you weren’t the one driving.”

The cold truth lay between us like a block of ice. He stared at me, the same green eyes I often saw in the mirror staring down at me, filled with the same pain and hurt and grief that I saw in my own. But Ash’s grief was mixed with something else, with the disappearance of his fiancée, Alexi. He was used to losing friends over there in Afghanistan. But to lose three people to whom he was so incredibly close? Maybe I should have a little more mercy on him.

But I’d lost a lot with that accident, too.

“It was an accident, David,” Ash said softly. “You couldn’t have seen that patch of black ice.”

“No. But I should have been able to pull the car out of that spin.”

“Why? Because you’re some sort of superhero?”

I pushed at his arm, trying to force him to let me go. But it didn’t do me any good. Despite the muscles I’d built in my arms from the work this chair created, Ash had always been bigger than I. He’d always been the epitome of the big brother. I couldn’t get him to budge.

“You don’t get it, Ash. You weren’t there.”

“No, I wasn’t. And I regret that. I should have been there. But that doesn’t change the facts of the accident.”

I didn’t agree. It had never been an accident in my mind. It was negligence on my part. I should have had better control. I should have stopped him from…I should have just stopped it from happening.