Hello, Sunshine

I turned back to the computer. I clicked on Danny and my bank account, and it was all still there, safe and untouched.

She was right. Louis would cool down. I would reach out when he’d had a moment to process, and convince him there was a way for us to come out the other end of this. He could publish a different kind of cookbook, with a tinge of true history. Something about how I’d gotten here.

“Should I call the production assistants back in here, get them packing up again?”

I shook my head. “I have a couple of emails to send first.”

“Okay, what should I do?”

“Figure out who did this in the next five minutes,” I said.

She laughed, but I was completely serious. I knew if we could figure the hacker out, we could figure out how to turn the story. So I was something other than the villain.

“I was able to do a little recon on the aintnosunshine emails,” she said. “They definitely originated in the New York area. So it’s a New Yorker.”

“Great work . . . you narrowed the hacker down to nine million people?”

“At least I narrowed it down!”

I didn’t have time for her irritation, or her hurt feelings, so I blew through them. “So you’ve been trying to figure it out via the tech, right?”

She took a seat, dropping her files on the countertop. “Right.”

“Let’s go at it another way. Likely offenders.”

She nodded. “So . . . like . . . who wants to take you down a peg or two?” she said.

“I think the question is who has the ability.”

Something flicked across her face. I hadn’t been accusing her. But it was like suddenly she was worried I would put certain pieces together.

I started doing the math. Who had access to all this stuff? Violet and Ryan. And Violet had everything to gain. She wanted her own show. And now, wouldn’t there be a hole in the YouTube culinary universe? A hole just right for a five-foot-eleven redheaded vegan to jump in and fill?

She tilted her head. “Why are you looking at me like that?”

“When did Ryan tell you they did a flash poll?”

“Excuse me?” she said.

“You said they ran a flash poll. Ryan would be the only one that could have told you about that.”

She paused. “After your kerfuffle, he said he was cooking something up and offered me a job.”

“And what did you say?”

She laughed awkwardly. “I said yes. Which is why I’m here now, in your studio, helping clean up files.”

“Violet, did you do this?”

“Hack you? I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” she said.

“You know that’s not an answer, right? Are you going to work for Ryan?”

“This is unbelievable,” she said. “I was going to give you a week. Help you, I don’t know, figure out who was behind this, find a place to hide out for a while. Like Tulsa! But I don’t need this shit. I’m so out of here.”

She reached for the file box.

“So you are going to work for Ryan.”