Waiting For It - Allyson Lindt Page 0,36

us to work. He’d convinced our vendor to accept our new deadlines and requirements, and was off to try to sign someone new while he was in town.

I only had a few hours left, to keep Billie from being fired. She probably had no idea—at least I hoped she didn’t. My mind was clearer than it had been since we arrived, and now was the perfect time to go back over all the information I had.

Big problem was, I didn’t have any more idea of where to look than yesterday. I stared at the source control, willing it to give me answers. All those files, ones Billie should be working on, checked in at seven. Eight, Mountain Time, since that was what my computer was set to, and those times made sense. We’d all been working late hours, and checking a file in at seven at night was nothing, comparatively speaking.

My brain clicked, whirred, backed up, and replayed what I was looking at.

Those were morning timestamps. “When did the leak happen? What time?” I asked Luke.

He half glanced at me. “We were on the plane, so... between eight and nine?”

“Our time.”

He nodded.

“You ever talk to Billie before ten?” Now I had his full attention.

“Mandatory meetings, but no, not really.”

It couldn’t be this easy.

Why would someone do that? I’d asked Zane.

Because they either wanted you to know it was them...

Or were arrogant and didn’t think they’d be caught. Not what Zane had said, but I could see it. I dialed him on the speaker phone between us.

“This is Zane.”

“It’s Anne. I need some information.”

Luke was ignoring his laptop and watching me with curiosity.

“Shoot,” Zane said.

This wasn’t going to pan out. I’d need to go a different direction. “Who was in the office before eight—seven local time—Tuesday morning?”

“Mike Mejia, Jon Shepherd, Greg D’Angelo.”

Not a long list, but I didn’t expect it to be. “Dropping a list of dates in messenger. Looking for a common name among them.” I gave him ten dates that fell before we had big code breaks, including the major one that first delayed our launch, months ago.

While Zane typed, I forced myself to breathe. I didn’t dare look at Luke. I didn’t need another layer of stress added to this.

“Mike.” Zane spoke with certainty.

“Thanks. I’ll keep you posted.” I hung up.

I finally turned to Luke again when he sighed. “What are we looking at?”

It was too obvious. Too easy. Why hadn’t we seen it before? Because we didn’t want to think one of our own would turn on us. This project meant everything to all of us.

“Mike is behind a lot more than a leaked ending,” Luke said.

Maybe. “It’s all circumstantial, and we’d have to do an audit on the code, to see if there’s more to it than meets the eye. But the leak... signs point to him. What next?” I’d been taking stabs in the dark to get this far. “You can’t just fire him, any more than you fired Billie.”

“True, but I can talk to him. Do you want to be there?”

“Do you think I should be?”

“I think I’d like your opinion on the matter, but ultimately it’s up to how comfortable you are with the whole thing.”

I didn’t want to look Mike—or anyone—in the eye and ask if they were involved in trying to destroy our project. But I had to know. If one of them was responsible, I had to ask him why.

“I’ll be here.” However, I would let Luke do most of the talking. I needed to absorb. Take my cues from him. Make sure my shitty instinct didn’t speak out of turn.

Luke called Mike in first. If we felt like he was okay, he’d be involved in our conversations with the two people on his team. My gut told me he was where we needed to start, and that made me nervous.

“Hey.” Mike smiled when he walked in the room. He settled into a seat a few down from Luke and never looked at me. “Manager pow-wow? We gonna discuss before Ms. Fortier pulls another power play, like yesterday?”

“Something like that.” I couldn’t hide the sarcasm in a retort I didn’t mean to say out loud.

Mike didn’t so much as flick a glance at me. “I understand that someone without a lot of experience makes bad calls sometimes. It’s not her fault. But yesterday’s stunt is going to cost us days of sifting through the fallout. Days we don’t have.”

Fury mingled with doubt. I hadn’t fucked up, but that didn’t stop