Working Stiff(110)

Casimir frowned. “That’s unlikely.”

“Statistically impossible,” she agreed.

“Can’t the document security system tell us who checked things out?”

“Yeah, I think it can.” Rox tapped a bunch of keys, searching the list.

There should have been a list of people who had dropped the contract in the cloud, but that list was empty except for Rox’s name. A hot flash of panic puffed over her at seeing only her own name, even though she knew that she hadn’t done anything wrong.

And of course her name was on that list. She had dropped it into the cloud so that they could work on it at Cash’s house.

However, there was a list of people who had accessed the contract from inside the office, too.

The first name on the list was Wren Sishi.

Wren’s name peppered the list. Weird. She must have been getting someone other than Rox to log her on.

Even the last name on the list was Wren Sishi, and she had supposedly edited it at six o’clock that morning.

Wren? At the office at six o’clock in the godforsaken morning?

Unlikely.

Rox pointed to Wren’s name on the screen. “That can’t be right. Wren is never here that early. She’s never anywhere that early. She rushes in late at nine-thirty every day.”

“Maybe if someone paid her well enough,” Casimir said.

“And she’s hopeless at using the tokens to log onto the system. She always needs help. You remember a couple months ago when I got an emergency text in the meeting with Lourde Clinchy’s people? Wren was freaking because she couldn’t log onto the system, and she was too embarrassed to tell anyone else. I had to leave the meeting to help her.”

“Maybe it was a ruse to make people think that it wasn’t her.”

“Then it was a very long and embarrassing and perfectly consistent ruse.” A ruse. Man, he sounded British sometimes.

Cash’s breath was warm on her neck. Casimir’s breath. He said, “Good. We need to talk to her. Tell her that we have a few questions about some other contract and bring her in.”

He pushed himself away from the desk so that Rox could leave, but she was sure that his hand grazed her hip, his fingers lingering on her skirt.

Rox wanted to turn and grab him, hold him and hear him whisper in her ear again, but she swallowed hard and walked out of his office door.

She trotted through the cubicle farm to Wren’s desk. “Hey, can you come talk with us for a sec?”

“Yeah, sure.” Wren followed her, but she kept looking around nervously, her blond hair swishing around her shoulders as she walked.

Back in the office, the three of them sat down on the couches around the coffee table. Cash’s law school diploma hung high on the wall above them.

Cash was leaning back, his arms resting on the back of the couch. Rox sat on the opposite end of the couch from him, trying to make it look like they weren’t screwing around.

Wren was hunched forward, her arms crossed and her elbows resting on her knees. “Val and Josie called us all into a meeting first thing this morning. They said that some irregularities have been found in the contracts, and they’re bringing in an outside firm to investigate what has been going on. So, you must have told them what you found?”

“In a manner of speaking,” Cash said.

“What time was the meeting?” Rox asked.

Wren rolled her eyes. “Right at nine.”

“Did you make it in time?”

Wren laughed, but the harsh sound was more like a nervous cackle. “I skated in and stood in the back for part of it.”

So Wren couldn’t have opened the DiCaprio contract at six in the morning in the office, assuming that she was telling the truth about when she had dragged herself into the office.

“You sure about the time?” Rox asked her.

Wren squinted at her. “Yeah. I had trouble catching on to what they were talking about. Something about the security system and how no one knows what’s been checked out or hasn’t been or what’s going on.”

“Well, we know what’s been going on,” Rox said, crossing her knees. “We just don’t know how.”

“Or why,” Cash said. “The studios’ motivation is obviously money, but I am shocked that Val would be a part of this.”

Wren shook her head. “But Val wouldn’t have done it. She just wouldn’t have. Do you think it could be Josie?”

“Why do you think Val didn’t do it?” Cash asked.

“I just can’t imagine her doing anything like that. She’s always been so strict about everything ethical.”

Rox shrugged. “Might be Val. Might be Josie. Might be both of them.”