Think Outside the Boss - Olivia Hayle Page 0,74

snaps into competence. “Okay. What makes you think that?”

I pace the tiny space of my apartment. “He knew. He asked me if you hurt me.”

“He asked what?”

“He asked it twice.”

Tristan’s shock on the other end of the line is profound. Mine, however, isn’t. I can’t keep silent as the suspicions bubble out of me. “Are you sure he’s not the mole?”

“Of course I’m sure,” is the response, but something about it sounds reflexive. Rehearsed.

“He’s been asking Toby, one of my co-workers, for information. Information about projects that Toby doesn’t usually report to him about. That last time I heard, it was regarding the Stanton case.”

“Ah.”

“And remember that meeting, over a month ago, where he couldn’t make it? You went in his stead.”

“I remember.” A hard note creeps into Tristan’s voice. “Yes, the pattern matches up. He was away that day for personal reasons, and a week later we found out that… Well. He could have been selling the strategy you pitched to our competitors.”

“So you believe me?”

“It’s plausible.” A rough sigh, and it’s everything I feel too. It’s a sigh of I can’t take any more of this shit. “Clive was with me from the very beginning. He was my right-hand man when I took over, the one person who seemed to welcome it when Acture Capital bought the company from the old management.”

“Maybe he wasn’t so welcoming after all.”

“No, maybe he wasn’t.”

“But, Tristan, he knows. About us.” My voice grows feverish. “He might use it somehow. It could cause some really bad publicity for you.”

“He won’t use it.”

“How do we know that? Can we stop him?”

“We will,” Tristan repeats, and this time there’s no mistaking the steel in his voice. It’s unbending. “If he’s the mole, the things this company can do… I’ll take care of him. No one will find out about us, Freddie. Your reputation is safe.”

“Okay.” I sink down on the edge of my bed. “But how?”

As far as days go, this one has been too intense for my liking. If I slept for a week, I doubt it would be enough.

“I’ll tell him you were my eyes and ears in Strategy. Give him one truth to keep his eyes off the other.”

I nod slowly. “Okay.”

“I’ll handle it, Freddie. Go to your family,” Tristan says. “I’ll keep you informed if anything happens, but it shouldn’t. Not after I’m done with him.” Perhaps the calm ruthlessness beneath his voice should scare me, the mixture of threat and reassurance. But I know him, and I know his values, and it leaves me with a sense of peace.

“Thank you,” I breathe.

“Are you in your apartment?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Thanks for calling me,” Tristan murmurs. “I understand that it was… difficult. I appreciate it.”

“Of course. You did ask me to find your mole, you know.”

His voice softens. “So I did.”

“And I always deliver.”

“You always do,” he agrees. “Sleep tight, Freddie.”

“I will, thanks.”

“And Freddie?”

“Yes?”

“Merry Christmas.”

I open my mouth to wish him and Joshua the same, but by the time the words emerge, he’s already hung up. So I close my eyes and lean back on my bed, the fixed heater humming loudly beside me, and let the tears flow.

25

Tristan

Fish in vivid colors swirl beneath me on the dock, dancing in the crystalline waters like they’re performing a ballet recital to music only they can hear. Like so much on Tahiti, they’re beautiful. We couldn’t have asked for a better seaside bungalow, built right on the shoreline.

The place is a marvel in the Pacific, an untouched paradise, and I’ve already promised Joshua we’d start donating to marine conservation as soon as we get home to preserve pristine places like this.

And yet.

Because isn’t there always a but?

The phone in my hand lies cold, empty and near signal-less. I’d had to walk to the hilltop in the small settlement to get enough signal to call Freddie on New Year’s Eve.

But she hadn’t responded. Hadn’t called or texted back, either.

So I hadn’t tried to reach her again, instead keeping my promise to avoid making this harder for her. Even if the idea of her moving away feels like a splinter, burrowing deeper every day. In the short months I’d known Frederica, she’d wormed her way under my skin in a way no one else had. No woman, none since my ex, and that was before Joshua. Years ago.

I open the emails on my phone. I haven’t looked at them in days, and only then in the evenings, when Joshua has already gone to bed. But now he’s resting