to squeeze my stress ball for a solid three minutes.
I grabbed my glass water bottle and chugged down half of it before focusing back on the footage. I rewound three minutes further back than originally and hit play.
I was in the middle of switching from one camera to another when there was a knock on the door, and I hit pause just as I called out “What?” like a fucking asshole as I rubbed at a spot between my eyebrows.
There was a pause and then, “It’s Jonah,” the deep voice answered.
Oh.
I got up, flipped the lock, and cracked it open, finding the familiar face standing right there. I grabbed him by his sweatshirt, yanked him in, and peeked back out through the crack.
Kicking the door closed, I flipped the lock and turned around to face the man standing literally inches away, a surprised but amused expression on his face. He was holding an orange smoothie in one hand. “Is there something I should worry about?”
“No.” I brushed his hip as I wedged myself by him and sat back down in the chair. “I don’t want anyone else to see me in here. I told Bianca she could tell you and Peter where I was, but that was it.”
“What are you up to in here? Spy work on the side?” He moved to my elbow, bending over at the hips to peek at the computer screen. He set the smoothie on the surface of the desk and nudged it toward me. “For you.”
I looked at him. “For me?”
Jonah nodded.
Huh.
I gave him a little smile and pulled it toward me, taking a sip. It was my favorite, Orange Sunshine. “Thanks.”
He just smiled.
I eyed him one more time then hit play. “Someone stole Bianca’s cell—that’s the girl at the front desk, the one who signed you up. I’m looking through the footage right now to find out who I’m going to have to kill for being an asshole.”
One day, years from then, I’d look back and think about how easily he’d replied with, “Oh, is that what you’re going to do?”
“Uh-huh,” I replied, staring at the screen. “Ooh, wait, wait, wait….”
I skipped forward a few seconds and squinted, watching a figure hovering by the desk before Bianca had even moved away from it. Then it happened, she ran around it, disappearing from the view of the camera I was watching on and into the view of the one I’d seen right before. I waited, four seconds went by, five, six, seven—
Warm breath hit my ear, and I held my breath as I glanced out of the corner of my eye to find Jonah’s face directly next to mine, his cheek moving into place right there….
Did his skin have to be so clear? I could tell that he’d shaved that morning, but hair had already started growing back in with a vengeance, the stubble thick and full. His lips were slightly parted.
I flicked my gaze back to the screen.
I kept my eyes on it and then leaned back two seconds later and shook my head.
“Bingo, ho,” I whispered to myself as I wrote down the shirt and hair color of the asshole. Not that I totally needed it, I had a clear view of his face. Dumbass.
Now all I needed to do was fast forward through the camera facing the doors and find out when he walked through so I could time it with when he scanned his card. Or better yet, it might be faster to just show Bianca the footage and see if she recognized him off the top of her head. Yeah, that would be better. Might as well try that first. I took a screenshot of the dumbass’s face and couldn’t help but cackle to myself. Busted.
The snort beside my ear had me glancing over to find Jonah with a big dumb grin on his face.
“What?”
His big dumb grin got even bigger. “I like it when you laugh evilly to yourself.”
I blinked. Well, that wasn’t anywhere near what I’d expected, and I couldn’t stop the way my cheek went up in a half-grin. Grandpa Gus had told me the same thing more than once before.
“What are you going to do now?”
I spun the chair around to face him fully. “I’m going to show her his picture and see if she recognizes him. If she doesn’t, I’ll look through more footage and figure out what his name is before I call the cops.”