Sam

One Week Later

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I SAT IN THE WASHROOM office keeping tabs on the building. Derek was working late, so I was working late. This was how he was going to get around what I had said about keeping my distance at night and all. He was a stubborn fuck, I would give him that. I had relegated myself to only guarding him at his office, so he was staying at his office.

I shook my head as my eyes darted from television to television.

Things had been quiet for the past week, and that made me nervous. When there were attacks and letters, we could use them to carve out a trail, but when there was nothing to follow, trails went cold. Questions went unanswered.

Suspects started falling off the list.

Lance kept me updated on what Derek’s past security crew was doing. Griggs had moved onto a new client and had been talking about how generous his past employer was. He was getting his men to take part-time jobs until he could secure them a decent job working full-time for someone else. From the sounds of it, he was doing exactly what he was told, downplaying the break from Derek and not giving away what was really happening.

The problem? His disposition and constant work schedule made Griggs less of a suspect.

The list of employees Lance ran suggested more than a few disgruntled employees had left Derek’s company over the last couple of years. But all the evidence I chased down while being holed up in his office pointed to someone who was currently working for the company and still had access to the company.

None of the disgruntled employees’ information still worked in the system, and none of the employees boasted of any technological skills to get in and mess with things.

Hell, none of the employees fired over the past two or so years had even been from the IT department.

It was frustrating. I was missing something obvious. With all the suspects that had dropped off the list, another move would help point me in the right direction. Another letter or another plausible attack. I had men in place in areas no one could see, so I was no longer concerned with anyone getting hurt.

Any sort of move would push us in the direction we needed to go so I could unload this case and get the fuck out of here.

Derek was hunched over his desk, filling out paperwork or something. The office was completely silent. No one was coming or going, and the security guards were getting boring to watch. I got up from my seat and pushed my way into Derek’s office, his eyes darting over toward me as I closed the washroom door.

I was going to see if he wanted to order a late dinner since neither of us had eaten.

However, when I turned back around, I saw something curious. I saw someone creeping around outside of Derek’s office door. I slipped over into the shadows as Derek looked up at me, a curious look on his face.

I put my finger to my lips to shush him as the doorknob of the door started to turn.

I pressed myself against the wall, the shadows of his office encasing me as Derek stood to his feet. I moved my hand to my gun and felt nothing there.

Fuck. I had left my firearm in the washroom.

“Jacob,” Derek said. “I didn’t know you were still here. It’s almost ten o’clock. What are you doing here so late?”

I stared at Jacob from the shadows as I studied him, his stance tall and his eyes piercing. The look of joviality he usually had on his features had been buried by something else.

Something that sent shivers down my spine.

“Did you know my father was a janitor?” Jacob said.

“No, I didn’t,” Derek said. “You don’t talk about your family much.”

“I know. It’s hard to talk about my family when I’m surrounded by people who come from successful families.”

It was the bite in his voice that caused me to slowly stack the missing pieces together.

“What do you mean?” Derek asked.

“Like you, for instance. You came from wealth, and you shouldn’t be ashamed of that. All the investors on our board came from wealth too. But not me. I’m a self-made man, born to a janitor and a mother who worked in a call center all her life.”

“Those are honorable jobs. We need people like them to do what we do,” Derek said.

“I didn’t go to college on Mom and Dad’s dime. I had to work hard in school and learn shit I didn’t want to know. Grab at every academic scholarship I could obtain in order to prove myself worthy of an Ivy League education.”

Derek looked at me quickly before he trained his eyes back on Jacob. It was all slowly beginning to make sense. The email Gretchen talked about coming from within the company. The random tip that Derek was in Vegas. The way it was so easy for the perpetrator to get onto Derek’s property.

It wasn’t because someone was sneaking onto the property.

It was fucking because the security guards knew who was coming through the gate.

“What you did was incredible, Jacob. I know how hard you worked to get into Cornell, the things you sacrificed and the things you went without in order to get your education. You’re a good man for it. You’re a role model for men like me,” Derek said.

“I am. At least, I should be. I could be a greater role model, though, if I had the seat you did.”

I saw the understanding I was beginning to come to slap Derek across the face. He went from opening his body to his friend to closing himself off. He crossed his arms over his chest and walked out from behind his desk, and I cursed every movement he made.

His desk was the only protection he had until I could get to him, and I wasn’t ready to give away our only surprise just yet.

“You’re just a rich boy who had everything handed to you, Derek. You’re a billionaire born to a millionaire of a man. Your greatest complaint is that your father wanted you to take over his business, and you didn’t want to. That’s it. That’s all. Nothing else,” Jacob said.

“Jacob, where is this all coming from?” Derek asked.

“At thirty, you make more money than you would never need, and I’m still stuck working my ass off behind spoiled rich boys.”

I watched Jacob slide his hand into his pocket before he pulled a gun from it. Derek’s eyes were wide, and my heart was beginning to slam in my chest. All of it was falling into place. The wink in the hallway after Emma’s office. The fire alarm being pulled. The way he had cozied up to me and how he watched me whenever I was around.

Holy shit. Jacob Carl was the man harassing Derek.

“You should have taken the warnings, Derek,” Jacob said as he raised his gun. “You should have listened to the eye in the sky.”

I raced from the shadows as I watched the gun being leveled at Derek’s chest. I saw his eyes grow wide as he whipped his gaze over to my body. I stepped up onto the coffee table, launching myself into the air as Jacob squeezed his weapon. The loud crack of the gun reverberated off the corners of the room, startling Derek as he yelled at me to stop.

I could see the bullet traveling, piercing the air and making its way for Derek’s body. Time itself halted in its tracks as I went flying through the air, doing the only thing I knew I could. My feet touched down onto the ground, and I lunged, throwing myself between Derek’s body and the bullet. His arms were reaching out for me, trying to get me to stop as his body moved away from the bullet.

Jacob’s eyes were wild as he stood there, watching me fly through the air as I tried to make my way to Derek.

Tears crested my eyes as I thought about what could’ve happened had I not come out of the washroom. I saw Derek’s body plummeting to the floor as I screamed. I saw myself hunched over his dead body as I cradled him against me. I saw the floor stained with blood, and it coated my fingers and stained my jeans, the blood of a man who made me feel things I’d never experienced in the all my life.

“No, Sam! Don’t!”

“You don’t deserve that chair! But I do!”

The crack of the gun was thunderous as I landed on Derek’s desk. I rolled off the side and onto the ground as the entire world went silent. I could feel someone’s hands on me. My ears began to ring, silencing the room around me as the floor thundered below my back. Feet were shuffling, and my chest was panting. I slipped my hand into my pocket and withdrew my pocket knife as I felt something warm dripping onto my skin.

I saw Derek’s face hovering over mine, his eyes full of fear, wide with terror. I assumed the worst as I rose up to take stock of his body, hoping and praying I’d pushed him out of the way in time. Tears that were cresting my eyes now poured down my cheeks as an urgency flooded my veins. I felt the need to rise, defend what was mine, and protect what had been so violently mutilated.

But not before I heard a voice pierce the silence my ears had forced me into.

“Fine. If that’s how it’s going to be, then the both of you can go.”

Jacob.

The man trying to kill Derek was his friggin’ best friend.

THE END