“Linda. Linda, are you at your desk?”
He waited a few seconds, then called for her again. She usually told him if she had to step away for something. He got up and opened his office door to find her desk empty.
“Anyone seen Linda?” he asked the room at large.
“Saw her head towards the stairs a while ago,” Bill said from his cubicle right across the aisle.
“Hmm, thanks.” He went behind her desk and sat down, looking for some paper to leave her a note. He bumped her mouse and her screen popped back up. The picture she had as her desktop made him laugh. New Year’s Eve, Ben and she kissing as champagne exploded around them. It was a great night… Riley’s eyes narrowed. “Locked file? What is that?”
She never had locked files on her desktop. There was no need. She rarely, if ever, handled sensitive files for Riley. So why was it locked? He looked up, but she was nowhere in sight yet, so he clicked on it. A window asking for credentials popped up and he entered his own. They were denied.
“What? Seriously?”
He was about to try again when he heard a door open and someone said hello to Linda. He quickly exited out of the box and scrounged around for paper and pen. He was just finishing his note when she appeared at her desk.
“Riley? What are you doing,” she asked, sounding a bit more snappish than usual.
“Sorry, wanted to leave you a note. Not a problem, is it?”
“What—no,” she said as he caught her eyes darting to her desktop. “You could’ve just e-mailed me like usual.”
“Well, I wanted to make sure you saw this one when you got back.” He finished the note and set it on her desk. “There, all done. Is everything okay?” he asked as he stood and pointed towards the cell in her hand.
“Uh? Oh, yeah, just…family. You know how that drama goes.”
“Not really, but I’ll take your word for it.” He headed back to his office. When he reached the doorway, he looked back and watched her read the note, then immediately get on the computer and start opening files. Her monitor was angled just enough that he could see her checking that locked file. “What are you up to?” He muttered the question, suspicion gnawing uncomfortably in his gut.
Ben was out of the office at a client meeting. He’d have to talk to his friend the second he got back about what his girlfriend had been up to as of late. Riley didn’t want to think Linda would be involved. She started the same time Ben did. Maybe the whole situation was just making him paranoid. Yeah, that was it. He would forget about what he saw. For all he knew, Linda just wanted to make sure the files on her computer were secure in case someone like Diane came poking around again.
Riley closed his office door and went back to spinning in circles, closing his eyes, and seeing nothing but green ones staring back at him.
***
It was nearly time to leave when Ben made an appearance in Riley’s office. His face was drawn and his hands shook as he sat down in front of his friend’s desk. “I have some news for you.”
“Are you okay?”
Ben shrugged. “Linda and I have been fighting lately. She’s acting weird.”
Riley thought about the locked file he’d seen on her desktop. “Like secretive weird?”
“Yeah, why? Did she say something to you?”
“No, but I saw something on her computer. She wasn’t too happy to find me sitting at her desk.”
“What was the file?”
“No idea. It was locked,” Riley said, leaning back in his chair. “Things just aren’t adding up.”
Ben waved the files in his hands at Riley before he tossed them on his desk. “Speaking of which, some things didn’t add up about Phoebe, so I did some digging.”
Riley flinched to hear her name. “What…why?”
“Because since your fight with her, you’ve barely slept, you drink every night, and you’re not getting anything done. You miss her,” Ben said. “I wanted to see what was really going on. Maybe there was a reason for what she did.”
“And? What did you find?” Riley asked, trying not to sound bitter.
“Her mom is actually in the hospital, most likely dying,” he said. “And you yelled at her that she was lying.”
“I thought…no, is she?” Riley ripped open the file and glanced at the medical paperwork. “How did you even get your hands on these?”
“That’s not the point, and you know it.”