Chapter Thirteen
Thirteen hours of sleep—helped along greatly by a bottle of Merlot—started to repair my frayed nerves and I woke up Saturday afternoon feeling a little better. Free, almost. Sure, it sucked that I now had no source of income, but the knot in my stomach feeling that used to hit me every morning before leaving for work was gone. I rolled over in bed and snuggled up closer to the fuzzy ball of Sam next to me. He started purring and I smiled. It was a simple smile but it felt so good. It was the first time I’d felt relaxed in weeks. Just content to be.
My happy bubble popped a few hours later when I finally got out of bed and went into the kitchen to get some breakfast. I was met by the stack of unopened envelopes I had shoved into the corner of my old school, roll top desk. I had repainted it a few years back to match my shabby chic décor. It turned out really nice, but was covered by so much junk mail and scrap papers that you couldn’t really tell anymore.
I ignored it for the time being and grabbed a bagel out of my pantry, and after properly dressing it up with a glob of vegan cream cheese, I parked my ass in front of my laptop to start looking for new jobs. I first went to my email and saw the statement from my final paycheck.
“Ouch,” I said out loud, looking at the small bump it made in my checking account. I had already been overdrawn, so a partial check wasn’t enough to make much difference. I slowly exhaled and clicked out of the website.
Sam came over and hopped into the chair next to me. I reached out my free hand and scratched the top of his head. “Don’t worry, we can still afford kibble.”
He meowed at me in understanding.
I clicked around, browsing a few popular job search websites. Nothing really stuck out and I started to feel defeated before even really getting started. The only thing on my resume was my coffee shop job, which was great, if that is what I wanted to do. But I knew I wanted more. The opportunity with Spotlight had been a total lucky strike, simply by meeting Bryce and building a friendship over time. I knew that most people wouldn’t take a chance on someone like me, not for something real and important, with skills but no experience.
I remembered Cooper’s job offer. I had been tempted to call him last night. To tell him about the horrible meeting with Rita, and getting fired. I had come close to a good, old-fashioned drunk dial, but had resisted. Or maybe that was around the time I passed out. Either way, I was just glad I hadn’t gone through with it. Although, I had to admit, I was curious at what kind of job he would offer me. Brighton Enterprises was a huge company with branches in all kinds of industries. The possibilities would be endless and there was a good chance I could get stuck in some obscure department with little to no contact with him. Surely he didn’t make the rounds on a daily basis. Then again, I wasn’t really sure what he did all day.
I started to wonder what he was doing right now. I wondered if he slept in on the weekends or if he just worked right through, not stopping to rest. Did he play golf with his richy-rich buddies? Did he cook himself breakfast? Order out for every meal? Have a hot maid catering to his every need?
My mind flooded with images of him, imagining all the scenarios as they popped into my head, adding myself into whatever the situation was. There was no denying that with a man like that—life could become quite the adventure. Traveling, fancy parties, anything and everything you wanted right at your fingertips.
I shook my head. “Stop obsessing,” I ordered myself.
I forced myself to return my attention back to the computer screen and continue to live in reality, where I needed a new job if I wanted to buy groceries and pay rent. I couldn’t keep visiting fantasy land where I was a billionaire’s mistress, living in a dream world.
In the middle of my job hunt, I got distracted by a nagging thought in the back of my head. A memory. I kept replaying the image of Rita handing me the print-out in her office last night. Something about it was catching in my mind. My fingernails tapped along the keyboard as I tried to sort it out.
I couldn’t shake the voodoo, déjà vu feeling. “They were emails! Someone emailed the pictures to her. I need to see those messages,” I said to Sam.
I figured that my company login would be restricted by now, but I pulled up the website to log in for employees and tried it anyway. The cursor spun for a few seconds and I waited for it to kick back, but to my surprise, it popped open my inbox and everything was there, just as it had been the day before.
“Bunch of genius’s they have running that show,” I said, laughing to myself. I mean really…isn’t that Firing 101? Change logins, change security codes, take back keys.
With this new piece of information, my brain began to formulate a plan. My fingers followed along, dancing across the keyboard at a rapid-fire pace, digging deeper and deeper into the company website infrastructure. Eventually I hit a wall, where my login was not high enough clearance to get me in. I felt a little guilty, but I decided the next login I needed would be Bryce’s, and since I knew him the best I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to hack his account.
Sure enough, his password was easy to unlock—his dog’s name and birthday, which I only knew because he showed me pictures of her now and again back when we knew each other at the coffee shop—and I suddenly had access to everything. As a manager, his login worked to get me into the main database that contained all of the clients’ information and logs and logs of data.
“Jackpot!” I pumped my fist when the screen loaded and I could see the list of every employee and their personal files. I quickly scanned to Rita’s, working as if someone was going to bust down my door any moment, and I scribbled her login down on a napkin, just in case I got locked out before I finished gathering all the information. “God she makes bank. No wonder she’s such a bitch,” I mumbled to Sam who was now on my lap.
From there, I went back to the company email portal, plugged in her login details, and BAM. All of Rita’s emails loaded on my screen.
I chuckled loudly, thoroughly impressed with my efforts. Sam leapt off my lap and hightailed for the bedroom.
It was hard to hold back my giddy energy, but I slowed down and focused on each subject, scanning for anything fishy-looking.
A few threads were between Rita and Bryce. My curiosity got the better of me and I pulled open the conversation and began to read. Apparently, Rita had been skeptical of me from the beginning and her messages got downright hostile, dating back to the day I met Cooper.
“…inexperience, naïve, uneducated girl who is in way over her head,” and “I don’t know what you were thinking with this one,” and “if I didn’t know better, I would have thought she slept with you to even get this job in the first place,” were among the highlights, as I read Rita’s side of the conversation. Bryce tirelessly defended me and constantly reassured Rita that I would find my place and that I would do great things with the company.
My heart warmed at his championing efforts. I made a mental note to text him later and make sure everything was okay after my departure, praying that he hadn’t been caught in Rita’s warpath.
Tired of the virtual assault of my character, I clicked off that set of emails and moved on. The next batch of emails was between the design team and Rita. I pulled up the first one in the series and the whole screen filled with the final product ad I had collaborated to design. The image flashed in my mind the way it had looked on the huge screen the night of the product line launch party. The first night Cooper had touched me. Kissed me. Claimed me.
My eyes closed as I remembered every sensation, movement, flash of heat between us, pressed up against the wall, his kisses on my bare skin, his hands on my waist, his lips on my ear.
“Ugh!” I forced my eyes open and back on the screen in front of me. My new unemployed status allowed me oodles of spare time. However, if there was one thing I did not have time for, it was sitting around playing the “what if” game over Cooper Brighton.
I went back through the general inbox but couldn’t find anything else that pertained to me. I sat back in my chair and my fingers went back to tapping the keys as my mind turned over the possibilities. I thought the pictures she’d printed out had to be from an email. They weren’t high quality enough to have been from a photographer or a PI. Ironic they weren’t printed on better paper, considering they were likely printed by an ad agency exec.
Off topic, I reminded myself.
As my mind wandered I saw a list of folders on the left side of the screen. It took a little more thought and a lot more creative hacks, but after a few minutes I was into the one labeled Internal Affairs. I had to laugh a little at the title. “She sure takes herself seriously, doesn’t she?” I asked aloud.
I clicked on the first set of emails in this new folder and sure enough, an email popped up with a bunch of attachments.
“Finally,” I whispered under my breath, assuming they were the pictures.
For whatever reason, my finger hesitated over the track pad, waiting just a beat before clicking down.
The download window popped open and the photos loaded one at a time, cascading down the page. Oddly enough, seeing the photos didn’t fill me with the same heat and longing that I’d had moments before when replaying the night in my mind. I saw the images as an outsider, someone who wasn’t a part of that moment, and it felt extremely creepy.
I closed the window and went on a new search to track down the identity of the person responsible for sending the images in the first place. Maybe I could sue them for spying. Or at least turn them in to the cops. I’d hate to see me and Cooper all over the internet. Just the fact that someone was stalking me and taking pictures gave me the chills. I glanced at the front door, making sure it was locked. I didn’t want some crazy stalker bitch to come flying through the door.
The email address was very non-descript and didn’t give any clues to who it belonged to, or where it originated. I copied it down and then went on the hunt, putting my hacker brain to the test as I flew through different search engines, gleaning and gathering information bit by bit, putting together the pieces of this puzzle.
Whoever had set up this email account had known what they were doing as far as covering their tracks. I hopped into a popular underground forum and posted the information, sending out a plea for help from my fellow hackers.
By the time I refilled my coffee cup, I had a reply:
Here’s the info you wanted…
A link followed, lit up in blue. I clicked on it without hesitation this time, desperate to put this mystery together.
The page opened and revealed a database of email addresses and their account details.
I scanned through the list at a rapid pace, desperate to know who would have hired a photographer to stalk me at the party, who would send those pictures to Rita, knowing it would cost me my job. Who would care enough to try and wreck my life?
I slowed when I started seeing similar addresses. My eyes zeroed in, reading each thing, not wanting to miss it.
There it was…
My breath caught in my chest and a sick clenching gripped my stomach, making it hard to exhale when I read the name attached to the account I had been searching for:
Cooper H. Brighton – Brighton Enterprises
The story continues in Plush Book 2!