“I don’t know,” Alex heard her cousin say. Everything was dark, but the room’s smell stung her nose with the smell of strong antiseptics and disinfectants. “No, I’m not telling you until after I speak with her.”

Speak with whom? Her eyes opened to a too bright light. She turned her head to the side and groaned.

“I got to go. We’ll talk in a little bit.” Nina hung up and took her hand. “Alex. Alex, are you okay?”

Her eyes watered, and she tried to blink them open. “Why would you ask me that? Of course, I’m okay.” When she looked up again with clear vision, her brows raised. “Why am I in the hospital?” She glanced down at herself. “What happened?”

Nina grabbed her hand. “Shh, Alex. You’re going to be fine. They brought you in only because you were unconscious. You didn’t look injured.”

Memories slowly trickled in. “I was grabbing for a tissue when the box of backordered stuff fell off my desk—”

“What backordered stuff?” Nina asked. The door opened, and two big men walked in. One wore a jacket with ATF—Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms. Oh shit.

“Ms. Berte. Glad you’re awake. We’d like to ask you a few questions.”

She swallowed, glancing at Nina. “Sure, if you’d mind telling me who ‘we’ are.”

The lead man blushed. “I apologize, Ms. Berte. I’m Detective Wallis and this is Agent Matthews with the feds.” The second man gave her a nod. “Do you have any idea who might’ve sent the box to you?”

The only box she knew of was of the ordered office items. “Whoever the supply company was? You can get that from accounting if it’s not on the address label.”

The detective asked, “Do you know anyone who works at such a company?”

She didn’t think so. She’d never done temp work for anyone like that. Why would it matter anyway? Why were they here? She hadn’t done anything wrong. “Excuse, me men. Could I have a moment with Nina?” They looked at her with narrowed eyes.

“Sure,” the detective finally said after giving her cousin the third-degree eye job.

As soon as the door closed, she turned to Nina. “What the hell is going on?”

“I didn’t have time to tell you yet. A bomb went off in your office.”

“A bomb?” she blurted, louder than she intended. “What the fuck? Who would send me a bomb?” She laid her head back. She recalled Jack saying he’d kill her if she told his secrets, which she lied about knowing. Of course, Leslie wanted to get rid of her so Andrew would be hers.

Then she recalled the box being given to her. Robert, the accounting manager. “Oh my god,” she moaned.

“What?” Nina replied.

“Robert tried to kill me.”

Nina straightened. “Robert the accounting manager? Why would he want to kill you?”

“It’s a long story,” she said. “Basically, I discovered that he’d stolen over $2 million from the company.”

“Holy shit,” Nina said. “How’d you find that?”

The door opened. “Can we come back in now?”

“Yeah.” Alex waved them in. Now she understood what they were after. “I think our accounting manager tried to kill me because I exposed his fraud to the company’s president several days ago.”

“Fraud?” the ATF asked.

“Yeah, talk to Mr. Sholes. He’ll tell you everything.”

“And why do you think the manager would kill for that?” Wallis asked.

Alex rolled her eyes. She was in the hospital, but she wasn’t stupid. “For one, the money amount was in the millions. Second, he gave the box to me.”

“He handed it to you?” the ATF asked with brows raised. She thought back to that time. It felt like minutes ago.

“No. I was stepping out of the office and had him set it on my desk. I guess he did because it was there when I got back.” She looked at her arms with a few scrapes. “It must not have been very big. I’m not hurt that bad.”

The two men glanced at each other. “Ms. Berte, if your desk hadn’t been between you and the explosive, we would’ve been picking up pieces of you from the office next door.”

She and Nina gasped. “So, if I had opened it...”

The men nodded. “Opening it would have been very different than it falling and blowing up. We wouldn’t be at the hospital if you had.” She caught his meaning. They would be at the morgue.

Cold sweat broke out on her forehead. Bile rose from her throat, choking her breath. The men stepped closer. “You okay, ma’am?”

Stupid question, but she’d answer anyway. “I’m fine. Thank you.” No need to be rude about it. Besides, these men were trying to help.

“Anything else you can tell us?” ATF said.

She ran through the scene in her head. “I don’t think so. Robert thanked me for outing him and said the box was probably backordered items purchased before I started. It had been sitting up front, he said, and brought it to me.” She snorted. “Sitting up front, my ass. More like the front seat of his car on the drive to the office.”

The detective pulled his phone as the ATF wrote in a small notepad. “Thank you, Ms. Berte. Give me a call if you remember anything else.” He handed her a card. “Do you have a place that most people don’t know about, like a cabin somewhere else or an aunt who lives out of town?”

Alex shook her head. “No.”

“We have a cabin out by the state park,” Nina said. “Why do you ask?”

The detective shrugged. “Might be good to get away for a bit. Get some rest and let our labs analyze the evidence for clues to the culprit.”

“You will go to the cabin tonight,” Nina answered with a look that said just try to tell me no.

“That decision is yours, but I think it would be wise to keep that to yourselves.” With that, the ATF and detective left.