It feels comfortable back in my office at work after the few days off. And I thankfully get to bury myself in numbers and figures and data. It’s my dream come true, except all my reports have been crunching away without me, and now I have mountains of results to analyze.

Today is my first day back, and when I walk into Bill’s office this morning, I expect him to chastise me for falling prey to Thomas’s charms. But he simply looks up and smiles, welcoming me back with barely a mention of the mess even though I know it left him in the lurch.

“Hey! The gauntlet outside let you through? I got screamed at. I haven’t been called so many nasty things since high school homecoming.”

“Homecoming?”

“Short version? Rivalry game, star quarterback, smack talk,” Bill says. “But seriously, you okay?”

“Once they realized who I am, it shocked the hell out of them. Some of them yelled at me for being weak, while others seem to have grabbed their ball and gone home,” I reply, shrugging. “Whatever. Just leave me alone, you know?”

Bill chuckles and stands up, offering his hand. “Welcome back then. To be honest, it’s been too damn boring around here without you. I even missed your loud music, though I’ll deny it if HR gets another complaint about the volume. Only thing I’ll say about this whole issue is that if anyone gives you any flak at all, you tell me. I’ll be the one handing out ass kickings and name takings.”

He lowers his voice, looking toward the door, “And that includes the boss man, Mia. I won’t stand for any of my people to be mistreated. He’s a lot to handle and fairly fucked in the head, judging by what I saw. You deserve better.”

I shake my head. “No, it’s not like that.”

He lifts a brow, shrugging. “If you say so.” I can tell he’s not convinced. “Anyway, back to what we do best, data analysis. Go crunch those numbers. Your machine’s been beeping like crazy.”

He’s right, and it takes me several days to get close to being caught up, and that’s mostly on the resort figures because I missed a project team meeting in my absence. Finally, I’m starting to have time to split my attentions, getting pulled back to the saboteur puzzle again and again.

But the work has been a great focal point for my days and I feel like things are getting pretty much back to normal after almost two weeks back. I mean, I’ve yet to go with Thomas upstairs to his penthouse again, but I don’t see it as our taking a step back. We’ve both acknowledged that our feelings for each other haven’t changed.

Simply put, I still love him.

And he still loves me.

We hashed that part out the first weekend after I decided to come back on one of our dates. He and I sat at one of those Brazilian steakhouses for hours, mostly because they never give you shit about not leaving, especially when Thomas plunked an extra hundred-dollar bill under his red button the second time the guy with the skewer of beef came around and saw we were talking more than eating.

But with our conversation, I’m surprised I ate even a bite.

“After my mother died . . . well, I told you how my father was,” Thomas says, looking about a thousand percent better than he did yesterday. It’s shocking what a decent night’s sleep will do for a man. “But I didn’t tell you about the voice.”

“The voice?” I ask, still at that point chewing a little bit of picanha. Maybe I’d been skipping some meals recently too.

“It first started in junior high school, but it really ramped when I left home to go to college,” Thomas says, nibbling at his own sirloin. “It’s Dennis’s voice . . . and he’s just as vicious in my head as he is in real life. Maybe even more so. A bit ironic that when I finally got out on my own, that’s when his grip got tightest and he didn’t even realize it. He’d just brainwashed me over the years to the point where I didn’t even need the real deal anymore.”

“That’s a heavy weight to carry around in your head,” I admit. “I mean, we all talk to ourselves in some way or another but . . . I’m guessing this wasn’t rare?”

Thomas shakes his head. “It’s like a constant presence on my shoulder, just instead of protecting me or encouraging me like an angel, it’s the devil telling me that I’m going to fail, that I’m going to fuck it up. So many times, when people are thinking I’m pissed at them, it’s not so much them but me getting angry at hearing my father’s voice in my head, and they’re just the unfortunate recipient of the cruelty.”

I nod and take a sip of tea. “Is that why you actually tried with that, what was her name?”

“Dr. Perry,” Thomas says, nodding. “Who, by the way, has already called me, trying to get me to go see her again.”

“And are you going to see her?” I’m not going to push him. I’ve learned my lesson painfully, but I still think a bit of guided processing wouldn’t hurt with the book of wrongs Thomas is hauling around.

“No, but I am going to see another therapist. One I can trust, and one who understands me. But I’ll find someone who can help. Someone other than you.”

“Fair enough. I’ll take those times to go hang out with the girls or something,” I tease. “Maybe I’ll join a Zumba class or hot yoga, work off some of my own stress as well.”

“You can always use my place,” Thomas offers. “It’d be nice to see someone using that gym as a joy and not a burden.”

He tells me about the night he nearly passed out under the squat bar, and that’s it for dinner for me. “Tommy . . . the voice pushes you that hard?”

He nods, rubbing at his cheeks. “There was only one thing, before you, that made me feel better. It was . . .”

His voice trails off, and he sighs. I set my drink down and reach across the table, taking his admittedly slightly sticky barbecue sauce-stained fingers. “You can tell me. I’m not going to judge anything you say. I’m here for you, and I love you.”

Thomas nods and swallows, and I wait for him to drop some awful huge bomb on me. Drugs, hookers, illegal underground fighting. Okay, that’s a reach, but . . .

He shifts in his seat, only making me more nervous. We’ve conquered so much already. He’d shared such deep things. What could make him this twitchy?

“Okay. Well, I am . . . him.”

“Him?” I ask, utterly confused, though he clearly thinks the words have meaning.

What does he mean? The man for me? Duh, I’ve kinda figured that out. But what’s the coping mechanism he’s hiding?

He nods and looks up. “I was trying to find some way to quiet the voice. It kept saying all these awful things, and one night, sitting in the dark with just my thoughts, it started in like usual. But that night, I’d been to one of those corporate gala things, just a stupid reason for rich people to get dressed up and feel like they were doing something good while eating fancy food and drinking champagne. And I’d given a check like every other bastard in the room. So when the voice started in, I talked back, like the check had been this major thing. But it helped. Even though I knew the charity probably overpaid its director, and only a portion of the funds went to those who needed them, it helped me. So I did it again.”

I nod, not quite getting it. “Okay, charitable giving is a good thing. Unless you’re giving away everything you have? Are you telling me you’ve donated so much you’re poor now? Because I’d love you even if you were penniless.”

“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that I’m him. The White Knight. Maybe I’m partially doing it for selfish reasons, but I keep telling myself that at least it’s doing some good, right?”

And everything started to make sense. Of course he is . . . he was robbed of his childhood, of attention and affection, and so he gives of himself to those who have nothing.

I hug him so hard, right there in the middle of the restaurant. “I knew you were a good man. I mean, I already knew, but this clinches it. My Ruthless Bastard. My White Knight. Why is this some huge secret though? I mean, this is a good thing.”

He smiles, looking bashful. “I know, but that’s why no one knows. I want the kids to think I’m doing it because I care about them, not some award. I have the people I help, the ones I support, but there are no PR photoshoots exploiting those in need. Just quiet, direct help.”

I smile at the memory, warm bubbles rising in my belly, and if I was one of my anime characters, I’d probably have big pink heart eyes right now. My computer dings, breaking my happy buzz.

After a spin in my chair, legs kicking wildly, I focus on the finished report. It’d occurred to me yesterday that I needed to run a specified filter on the card access and see who’d been on the twenty-fifth floor the afternoon everything had gone to shit. Someone there had filmed that video and the suspect pool has to be rather small. Honestly, I was pretty pissed at myself for not thinking of this sooner, but I’d let myself off the hook since I’d been wallowing in the pits of despair, then buried in backlogged data, neither putting me at my best analytical skill level.

I scan through the report, line by line, moving a few folks to my Look Into list and dismissing others. After more than an hour, my suspicions are narrowing down.

Uncomfortably. These are people I work with, chat with over lunch, and see on a daily basis.

I turn to my secondary monitor, looking at the list of projects I’d been concerned about before my impromptu vacation, looking for cross-references and connections. And time and time again, my list gets shorter.

Nathan Billington had been on the twenty-fifth floor, a peculiarity for him since he offices on sixteen. But the project data doesn’t pan out.

Kym Jenkins is an admin who frequently works on twenty-five, so her presence is logical, but she also served as an assistant on three of the five most suspect projects.

Randall Towlee wasn’t on twenty-five at all, but he’s been on all but one of the concerned project teams. Technically, I should mark him off the suspect list, and the rational side of my brain almost does it, but my gut roils. He doesn’t fit the parameters, but something about him just makes my Scooby senses tingle, so I go ahead and put him on the short list with an asterisk to note that he’s an outlier and an unlikely suspect.

I go through several others, and though I hate the answer, I’m pretty sure I know who is sabotaging Thomas. I double-check and then triple-check, even diving into the server files. I need to be sure because I’m about to accuse someone of some rather serious charges. Like felonious. And I don’t want to make a mistake. I need to proceed with caution.

But everything I see, it all points in one direction. I save it to my personal hard drive, eschewing the network server, and put another copy on a flash drive, not wanting to take any chances. I feel a little like Sherlock, truth be told, but where he was this fictional brilliant badass, I’m just me. And the trip to the elevator and upstairs feels riskier than ever.

My heart is racing, my faced flushed when I get out on the twenty-fifth floor. I even look up and down the hall, feeling like there are eyes on me. Truthfully, there probably have been since I haven’t been back that long, and the gossip mill is still churning inhouse, even if the media has found bigger fish to fry.

But twenty-five is its normal deserted self, and I finally get to Thomas’s office and Kerry looks up. “Mia, are you okay? You look as pale as a ghost.”

I shake my head, keeping my voice low. “No, I need to see Thomas.” I quickstep across the room, heading for his doors, but Kerry calls out.

“He’s with someone right now.”

Shit. Too late, I’ve already opened the door and interrupted. Thomas stands when he sees me, worry instantly etching his face. “Mia? What’s wrong?”