cold and unfeeling. MaeBe had been doing her job, but it felt personal.
MaeBe’s eyes widened, and Noelle realized she wasn’t wearing her normal makeup. She wasn’t wearing any at all, and her eyes were slightly puffy. Had she cried it off? “I absolutely care. I’ve been worried about you and Kyle.”
“Then perhaps you should have given me a heads-up that I was about to get arrested,” Kyle replied, his voice cold as ice. “Instead, you calmly saved your boy and let Noelle and I give him cover.”
“That’s not what happened. When that woman broke in and she used Noelle’s keycard, I thought my heart was going to stop. I haven’t been calm since the moment I realized the whole thing had gone to hell.” MaeBe’s face had flushed.
The door came open and Big Tag and Hutch walked through.
“What woman?” Noelle had stuck on that part of MaeBe’s story. “I thought Hutch had taken my keycard.”
Hutch’s nose was slightly swollen, but it oddly didn’t make him any less attractive. “I don’t need your keycard, Noelle. I wouldn’t have done that because that would have left a footprint in the logs. Which is exactly what the woman who did use your card wanted.”
“What woman?” Was there something more here? It wouldn’t change the fact that he’d lied to her and taken away her options, but she wanted to know what was happening.
“I didn’t see a woman,” Kyle admitted. “I only saw Hutch slinking out of the server room when he told me he was going to the bathroom.”
“And from what I understand, you snuck through his security system last night when you were supposed to be on duty.” Big Tag sent Kyle a glare that could have frozen fire. “I am going to assume you have an explanation and that you want me to believe you.”
Kyle’s jaw tightened, but he sat back as though letting the matter rest for now.
Why would Kyle have slipped out of the house?
Hutch took a deep breath and sank down into his chair. “Noelle, I was arrested this morning, and in this case it was Cara and Chris.”
“We thought it was odd that a McKay-Taggart employee moved in with a person of interest,” Cara explained. “But he’s cybersecurity, so we both bet that he was hired to figure out who had accessed your computer. That was me, of course. I did that. When Hutch showed up at your apartment, I made the decision at the time to not approach. Your father has ties to McKay-Taggart. I assumed they were with you out of an abundance of caution because of the break-in on the floor below you.”
“We realized you were going to fuck up everything when you caught us together the night before and then took off. You were careful about not saying anything that would give away what you were truly doing. We couldn’t risk you actually taking Noelle out of the city,” Chris admitted. “We needed Noelle in the Genedyne building.”
“Because they were going to ask you to do what I did this evening,” Hutch pointed out. “They were going to offer you a deal. Your cooperation in exchange for a promise of no prosecution.”
“What would I have been prosecuted for? What is Jessica doing? And was the break-in below about me?” She had a million questions, and she wanted the answers to all of them. Because she worried if she didn’t have them, she might allow herself to believe anything Hutch told her. He was close, and she wanted the comfort of his hand in hers, but she couldn’t be that woman. He’d ruined her life and hadn’t even brought her into the discussion of it. He was supposed to protect her, not make decisions for her.
“I’ll take the easy one,” Chris offered. “I don’t make decisions on who to prosecute or not. I was the one who broke in the floor below. I did it because it was the only way to access your apartment’s hub without anyone knowing.”
“You hacked her smart system from the direct line,” Hutch explained. “It’s why it didn’t show up in the logs. Did the resident come home while you were doing it?”
Chris nodded. “Yeah, this has been a clusterfuck of an assignment the whole time. The resident brought a date home, and I had to make it look good. I quickly hid her laptop and trashed the place a little and told her I’d gotten a call that someone had entered the apartment. She bought it.”