Before that middle of the night, one lamp conversation with Caleb Grant in the middle of the place that was her idea of heaven on earth, Elsie hadn’t had a clue that a conversation could go as badly as hers had with Caleb. If she had been the kind of girl who had dated a whole bunch in high school and college and therefore had gone through many a vicious breakup, she would have been more prepared for the mental and emotional carnage, but that had never been her style. Elsie’s modus operandi when it came to ending things with a guy was to disappear, leaving the poor bastard confused and calling her for days or even weeks afterwards. There was no escaping this confrontation with Caleb, however, and the moment she had spoken his brother’s name, things had gone from strained to atomic.

“I’m going to stop you right there, Elsie.”

“But Caleb, it’s important that you think about what I’m saying. It’s important that you—?”

“That I what? That I listen to you? Is that what you were going to say?”

“Yes, actually, that’s exactly what I was going to say.”

“Right. That’s what I thought, and there’s no need. Marlin didn’t do it. You’re wrong.”

“But I’m not wrong, Caleb. Believe me, I wish that I was, but I’m not. All of the evidence—”

“Fuck your evidence, okay? I don’t give a good goddamn what your ‘evidence’ showed you. It’s not my brother.”

Elsie had clammed up quickly. Her entire body had become very still, and she felt like every nerve ending was on red alert. Caleb’s voice had become positively savage, a violence contained within it that she’d never heard before. It made their showdown all the more surreal, this sense of savagery, and she briefly entertained the idea that this was all a dream. It was a super-shitty dream, and when she woke up, she would never have been snooping around on Caleb’s computer to begin with. She would still be curled up beside him, safe and completely enveloped in his reassuring warmth. It was Caleb’s movement that broke that desperate fantasy, a small movement that nevertheless had made her flinch backwards as if she’d been burned. Caleb had given her a withering look then, a look that reminded her very much of the way he’d dealt with her at the beginning, back before they’d gone to Italy and become lovers. The sting of that look was so painful she felt like she couldn’t breathe, and the only desperate thought that flew through her tired, distressed mind was that she wanted to go backwards. She wanted to go backwards so that this, none of this, not a single part of it, was real. Caleb, on the other hand, had seemed to be just getting started, and the look on his face did not improve. If anything, it had gotten worse and Elsie had been forced to hold back a whimper.

“What, did you think I was going to hurt you? Did you think I was going to hit you or something? Don’t be ridiculous, Elsie. Believe it or not, I wasn’t raised by wolves.”

“Caleb—”

“No. No, I think you’ve said enough. This was a mistake.”

“Cinque Terre?” she asked stupidly, instantly hating herself for having spoken back at all.

“Yes and no. I mean Cinque Terre and all of the rest of it as well. It was a mistake to take on your services at all. I could see the first time we met that you didn’t like me, that you didn’t like people you thought of as ‘like me’ and I was right. That’s what this is. You didn’t find anything you didn’t want to find. You went looking for proof of some kind of sick scheme and when you couldn’t find it, you fabricated it.”

“No! Come on, Caleb, you can’t possibly believe that! I mean, do you? Do you really think I’m that kind of a girl? I know we haven’t known each other for that long, and you’re right, I wasn’t a fan when we met. But things can change, you know? I didn’t expect them to, but in this case they did. And anyway, even if I still hated your guts, I would never make something like this up. That would be terrible! Totally unethical.”

“You’re right,” he answered in a disturbingly calm voice while looking at his still open laptop pointedly. “It would be.”

Elsie had been at a loss. On the matter of the laptop, he had been correct and that fact alone had been enough to negate every other thing she had to say. Things had come to an abrupt standstill then, and after very little time had passed, it had been clear what had to happen. Caleb had called the pilot of his fancy private plane and informed him that he would be making an unscheduled flight back to the United States. His guest had been informed of a family emergency and would be leaving early.

“You’re not coming?” she’d asked. She sounded pitiful and knew it, but she was not able to stop it. “You’re staying here?”

“I am. I think it’s best that we part ways. You’ll still be paid for your services, whatever they may have been, and paid handsomely. It’s just that those services are no longer needed.”

And that, in the end, had been the comment that had hurt the most. More than once, while the two of them had been working together, Elsie had made it clear that she didn’t like feeling like she was some kind of strange IT-hooker hybrid. He knew how much that idea bothered her, and now, whether or not he knew he was doing it, he was making her feel exactly like the thing she most did not want to be. She’d made it onto the plane before she’d started to cry, but once she was safely belted in and out of the prying eyes of any of Caleb’s jet staff, she had lost it. She’d literally cried herself to sleep and had not woken up again until the pilot himself had gently shaken her awake to inform her that she was home. Once off of the plane, there had been no Joe waiting for her. There would never be a Joe waiting for her again, she realized, and then she promptly began crying all over again. A sorrier sight she’d never before pictured. Let alone the thought of being a tear-streaked girl, waiting for a taxi cab outside of a private airplane hangar. She’d had no plans. No work now either, as her only project had crashed and burned in such a catastrophic way, and because she could think of no other place to go, she’d had the taxi take her to her apartment.

“Home sweet home,” she murmured to herself after letting herself inside, hardly even looking at the locks that had once held such a place of prominence in her life. She was home sweet home again, alright, except that—at the moment—it wasn’t feeling all that sweet. Elsie could clearly remember a time, only a week ago, when this apartment and her own company were the only things she was really interested in having. How things could be so completely different for her in such a short amount of time was beyond her, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t true. Where she had once been happy to consider her apartment something very close to a cave, now she felt like the walls were closing in on her. The things she wanted had changed some while she wasn’t looking, and although there was much of her that was still the same Elsie she’d always been, those changes were enough to make her feel strangely hollowed out.

“Stop it, okay? Stop acting like such a brat. This isn’t a soap opera, and you aren’t some kind of reality tv show star either. Get it together. It is what it is. It just...is.”

She did her best to believe herself, but she didn’t quite manage to pull it off. She got tiredly into her shower and stood motionless under the showerhead, allowing the hot water to run over her head and her shoulders. She stood in the shower for a long, long time, hoping the water would wash away the last twenty-four hours of her life and then realizing—only once the water began to run cold—that it wasn’t going to happen. When she stepped out of the shower and looked into the mirror, the entire thing was fogged over. She looked into the mirror and in the place of her face there was just...nothing. There was nothing but a blur, and for a second, she got the funny feeling that maybe she didn’t exist. Maybe she wasn’t really there at all, just some figment of somebody else’s imagination.

“Stop it, okay?” she said in a voice that was part pleading, part angry. “Stop it now. You’re just tired. Things won’t seem like such a mess once you get some sleep.”

That much was true. She was exhausted. She couldn’t remember having ever been quite so exhausted. She hadn’t slept at all on the plane and had instead sat there feeling almost paralyzed by all of the thoughts and questions rolling through her head. Every time she attempted to close her eyes, she saw Caleb’s face; she saw it the way it had been in the room when he’d told her to go away and not to come back again. A month ago, she wouldn’t have given a shit about that, and now here she was, mooning over the fact that she had lost somebody that never really belonged to her to begin with. He had been a job and that was all. That was the thing she kept repeating to herself. And she thought that maybe if she did that enough she would start to believe it. She settled down onto her couch, flipped on the television, and waited for sleep to overtake her. It was coming, and she could feel it, still in those delicate stages when the slightest noise or maybe even an unexpected difference in temperature would have woken her right back up again. The ringing of her phone definitely woke her all of the way back up again, and she sat up with a groan, feeling sicker than ever. That feeling was only made worse when it occurred to her that she might be getting a call from Caleb. The rational part of her knew that couldn’t be true, not after the way things had gone down between the two of them. Still, that didn’t stop her from hoping, and the hoping was almost worse than having no hope left at all.

“Travis,” she sighed, feeling a flood of disappointment and relief mixed in equal parts. “Of course it’s Travis.”

“Hey, boss.”

“Jesus, Elsie, you sound awful.”

“Thanks, good to hear from you, too.”

“Sorry,” he said awkwardly, his voice cracking in a way that made him sound like a frightened teenager. “I wasn’t trying to be an asshole or anything. You just don’t really sound like yourself.”

“I’m tired, that’s all. I’ve had a lot going on lately.”

“Yeah, I guess I knew that. I’ve seen some of the pictures in the paper. Europe, huh? That’s pretty cool.”

“You didn’t call me to talk about Europe though, did you, Travis? I mean, did you?”

“No, that’s not why I called.”

“You’d better tell me why then. My guess is that if you don’t want to come right out and say it, it’s probably not very pleasant.”

“Nope, not very.”

“Then just tell me. I’ve had a pretty rough couple of days, and you might as well just put whatever you need to say right on top of the rest of it.”

“I had a talk with Caleb.”

“Sure. Of course, you did.”

“He wasn’t very happy.”

“I’m not surprised. I found the information he wanted. Turned out, he didn’t really want it after all.”

“He says he doesn’t want you working with him anymore. You’ve been let go.”

“I pretty much already knew that, so you aren’t offering up any grand revelation.”

“He said he paid you well.”

“I don’t care. I don’t want his money, Travis. Not a single cent of it.”

“I hate to tell you this, but it’s too late for that.”

“Wait, what? What are you talking about, too late? I have the right not to take his money. That’s totally my choice.”

“That’s true, except that he already put the money in the account. If you don’t want it you’ll have to decide what to do with it. That’s totally your choice, too.”

“Am I fired, Travis? Is that why you really called?”

There was a silence on the other end of the line that stretched out so long Elsie wondered if Travis was still on the other line. She felt numb, and although she knew this was something she should be invested in, something she should care enough about to fight for, she found that she couldn’t get herself worked up about anything at all. She only waited for Travis to speak, remaining silent right along with him.

“You know, Elsie, I thought about that. I thought about that for a really long time last night, after I got off the phone with Caleb.”

“And? What did you decide?”

“You’re not. I’m not going to fire you, Elsie. You don’t have to go anywhere unless you want to, and it’s occurred to me that you might want to take a break. I won’t be offended.”

“Alright…”

“Because I do have to say something to you, and I don’t think you’re going to appreciate it.”

“Lay it on me.”

“What you did...what you allowed yourself to do, that kind of thing can’t happen again.”

“I know.”

“You crossed a line, Elsie. There aren’t a whole lot of lines in our line of work, but you crossed one, and it can’t happen again.”

“I know.”

“If it does, if you ever allow a personal relationship to form and to interfere with the job, I won’t have a choice. I’ll let you go the moment I find out about it, and I won’t feel bad about it either. Because if you didn’t know before, you know now.”

“I got it, Travis. I understand.”

“So then what do you say? Are you going to stay on or go?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. Can I think about it?”

“Sure, you can do that. But don’t think for too long, Elsie. This business is all about moving forward. You know that as well as I do. I can’t just keep you on forever, even if I wanted to.”

“I know. I’ll let you know by the end of the week. Does that work?”

“Sure. And Elsie?”

“Hm?”

“Take care of yourself, okay? It’s important.”

“I will. Thanks.”

She hung up the phone and then just sat there for a minute, letting this latest strained conversation wash over her as best as she could. Under normal circumstances she would have been beyond pissed about that conversation. But today? Today she could hardly muster up the energy to be annoyed. What she wanted was to get out of her apartment, as novel a concept as that was for her, a feeling that was all at once so strong she could hardly stand it. She would go down to the little corner market and grab some groceries, that was what she would do. She grabbed her phone to check her bank account, and that was when her jaw pretty much hit the floor. Caleb had paid her, alright, and it was more money that she had ever expected to have in her entire life.

“Son of a bitch,” she cried out, her voice so loud it wouldn’t have been a surprise to find the neighbors knocking on her door and asking her to hold it down. “Is this for real? Like, seriously?”

A million dollars. When she checked her bank app, she found that her account contained just over a million dollars. She would have considered it to be an insane amount of money for any job, but for one that had lasted for right around the month-long marker? That was utterly insane. For some reason, seeing that was the thing that pulled her out of her stupor. She felt a white-hot anger flood her body, and although anger wasn’t typically something she would have been glad to feel, its revitalizing effect was most welcome. By the time she was out the door, she was absolutely fuming, and she continued to fume all of the way down the street and to the market. She had half a mind to call Caleb up and, assuming that he would take her call, tell him exactly what she thought about him. If he hadn’t planned on making her feel like a hooker, he had a funny way of showing it. She was absolutely furious, right up until the moment when she saw the story on the television playing in her neighborhood bodega. When she saw that, her anger flooded out of her fast. What it was replaced by was an overwhelming instinct to protect Caleb, as well as a desire to see his brother brought to justice. In the end, it didn’t matter if Caleb believed what she’d told him or not. Elsie had seen with her own eyes the minute little traces Marlin had left behind, traces she had been able to track back to his server with one-hundred-percent certainty.

“You date him, no? You go on plane?”

“What?” Elsie asked, drawn unwillingly out of her thoughts by the voice of the little old lady that owned the grocery store.

“Him!” The woman pointed up to the television where a picture of Caleb’s handsome, smiling face was on the screen. “You date him!”

She couldn’t answer. Instead, she watched the television in horror, as she watched the “Breaking News” about Caleb and the Grant Corporation. Apparently, a “reliable source” (and Elsie knew who that source would turn out to be if she really put her mind to tracking it down) had informed the media that there was going to be a board takeover of the corporation and that it would take place on that very day.

“They’re going to take it away from him,” she gasped. “They’re going to take it away from him when half of the things that Marlin leaked weren’t true to begin with and the other half aren’t true anymore.”

She dropped her intended groceries on the counter, prompting the little old woman to shout at her in a language she couldn’t quite determine. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered to Elsie now, nothing but getting to the Grant Corporation as soon as she possibly could. Whether Caleb liked it or not, it was time to bring Marlin Grant to justice. Things had gone too far for her not to say everything she knew. The consequences be damned.