Joel looked as sick as Billy felt. “How did he do this?” He banged on some more keys on the computer in his office. The building was silent and dark, but for the lights they’d turned on in Joel’s office.

“Can you undo it? Is there some way to delete everything? Erase . . . logs, or whatever?” Billy had dragged Joel out of bed and told him what he and Damon had done. The way they figured it, Damon had to have logged into Lyra’s computer remotely from Joel’s company computer.

Joel shook his head and waved his hands at the computer. “I don’t . . . I can’t . . . I don’t know how to do that. I mean, I can see someone logged in and accessed her home computer on days she wasn’t in the office. I can delete the logs, but the whole system is backed up to a remote backup.”

“Can’t you log into the backup?” Billy looked over Joel’s shoulder.

“I can, but there’s always some copy somewhere. The cops will be able to find the trail, and if I erase it all, they’ll see I erased it. I can’t fucking do that, Billy.”

Billy grabbed at the keyboard, sliding it his way. “We can’t let Lyra go down for this either.” He knew Joel was pissed, and more than a little hurt. Billy and Damon had done this without him, and it was big. Really big.

But they’d known Joel wouldn’t be able to keep his mouth shut. Joel was constantly trying to impress Lyra. He’d tell her in a heartbeat what they were doing, and she would have come down on Billy for it. Even before Damon’s fucked up plan to sell the information they’d collected to the highest bidder, Billy had known Lyra wouldn’t approve of what they were doing. It wasn’t like they were the ones violating non-disclosure agreements and shit, but it was sketchy. There had to be some sort of collusion charges or some shit that could be brought against them. Or maybe civil suits. They hadn’t hacked into any systems or anything.

Of course, after the shit Damon had pulled with the trains, they could no longer argue they hadn’t crossed the line into breaking the law. Billy ran a hand through his hair. Hell, for all he knew, they’d broken the law before that. He’d told himself they hadn’t, but he just didn’t know anymore.

Joel tore the keyboard back and they wrestled for a minute, but Joel shouted at him, butting through the panicked haze in Billy’s head.

“Cut it the fuck out, Billy!”

Billy released his hold on the keyboard and sank back, leaning his whole body on the wall behind him. He felt exhausted all of a sudden, like he’d run a marathon. He let his head fall back and closed his eyes, listening to ragged breaths.

“I’m sorry, man, but we can’t fix this shit from here. Not without someone who knows what the hell they’re doing. And, that’s not me. You know I’d do anything to help Lyra, but I don’t know how to fix this, dude.”

They sat in silence, Billy wishing like hell he could go back and undo the last year. Joel was the one to break the silence.

“What about going to someone in the group? You said they’re all geniuses. Aren’t some of them capable of fixing this?”

Billy swallowed and raised hopeless eyes to Joel. “Yeah. They could, but what the hell would I tell them. Hey, we lied to you, pretended to be with you in the group, were out to fuck you over and make a buck on you. You probably would have lost your job once the company found out what you did? But fuck it, help me save my sister anyway. For old times’ sake?”

Joel looked away with a small, “yeah.”

“I fucked up so bad.” Billy almost whispered the words. He didn’t think he’d ever felt so dammed helpless in his life.

“Do you think Damon will really go through with it?” Joel’s voice said he knew the answer but was hoping Billy could convince him he was wrong.

Billy met Joel’s eyes. “Yeah, I do. I think he’s changed lately. I don’t think he much cares who he hurts anymore.”

“I’m not sure he ever did,” Joel said and Billy knew he was thinking back to times when Damon had bullied other people at campus parties or cheated to make a grade he knew he couldn’t make. It wasn’t something they’d ever talked about directly, but Billy could admit now, they’d made a lot of excuses for Damon over the years.

“I’ll lose the company, won’t I?” Joel looked around the office. “You know, I haven’t had to take money from my dad to support this place in over a year.”

“Shit. I’m sorry, Joel. But I’ll tell the cops you had nothing to do with it.” He knew he needed to go to the cops. He couldn’t avoid it now.

“The publicity alone will kill us, even if they buy that I didn’t know Damon was coming in here doing this.”

“How do you think he did it?”

Joel shrugged. “He has the alarm code and it wouldn’t have been hard for him to grab my keys and get a copy made some time.”

They all had the alarm code to the building. Joel wasn’t exactly careful with it. If his hands were full or he was a little drunk when they swung by the office to grab petty cash or whatever, he’d tell them to punch in the code. As far as Billy knew, he hadn’t changed the code in three years.

Billy blew out a breath and walked back over to the computer. “All right. Let’s look at the times he logged in. See if we can figure shit out. We’ll print out the logs. Maybe at the very least, we can show you and Lyra weren’t in the building at the time.”