Calculated Risk (Blackbridge Security 5)

“I see.”

“Are you going to jump my ass for it?”

“Class is over, Quinten. You’re free to do as you wish. Do you think she’s going to turn into a woman scorned and leave a bad Yelp review?”

I huff a laugh until I see that he didn’t ask the question with humor.

“Really?”

He shrugs. “BBS is a business like any other. We were trending online for the better part of a month. Hordes of people have contacted us because of that popularity, but there are also people out there that want to see us fail. I’m just wondering if there’s going to be backlash if she’s unhappy when it ends.”

“Ends? It hasn’t even begun yet.”

“Oh. I assumed… You know what? It doesn’t matter. You’re a grown man. It’s none of my business.” He looks down at his watch. “My wife is heading home, so I’m going to get out of here. Have a good night.”

“You too,” I mutter with a heavy sigh when my office phone rings. I notice it’s an internal call. “What?”

“You seem chipper,” Wren drawls through the phone. “I need to see you.”

He hangs up before I have the chance to tell him he can walk his ass down here. Of course, he doesn’t answer his damn phone when I dial him back to do just that.

I wave at Jude, Kit, Finnegan, and Brooks in the breakroom as I walk through.

“Busted, you creep!” is what I’m met with when I open Wren’s office door.

I don’t even spare the bird a glance, but Wren is typing away like a maniac on his keyboard, and it takes several minutes before he deems me worthy of his attention. I wait like I always do because we all seem to be on Wren’s schedule and not our own.

“Look,” he says when he finally spins around. He clasps his hands in a steeple and presses his fingers under his chin. “I get the appeal. I really do.”

“It’s late, Wren. I don’t have time for games.”

“As I was saying, I get it. I really do, but Whitney was into this shit.”

“I have no interest in hearing about the freaky shit you guys are into.”

Wren shakes his head. “If you don’t stop, you could end up in jail.”

I cock an eyebrow at him. I’ve done nothing to land me in jail, but he’s piqued my interest. “Is that so? Please, by all means. Go on.”

“I helped because I thought you were genuinely concerned. I wouldn’t have gotten involved had I known this is what you had in mind.”

“It’s just fucking creepy!” the bird squawks.

“When I did it, I only used external cameras.”

My blood pressure starts to rise, and not because he’s accusing me of something I didn’t do. I think I know where this is going, and it’s starting to make me very uneasy.

“Spit it out,” I hiss.

“If you’re accessing the cameras outside to make sure things are okay, that’s one thing. Watching her in the privacy of her own home is not only illegal, it’s something I never thought you’d—”

“I haven’t accessed anything, so you need to start explaining. I assume you’re talking about the system you installed at Hayden’s house.”

“What? You haven’t?”

“Wren,” I growl in warning. “Of course, I haven’t. I don’t have the login information for that, and you specifically set it up where she had to approve access.”

“I have access, and before you rip my head off, I haven’t looked at a single thing. I haven’t logged in, but as the admin I could if I wanted to. No one else should have access, and they wouldn’t even be able to unless they had control of her Wi-Fi.”

“What are you telling me?”

“There’s interference in the system I installed. Most people probably wouldn’t notice it, but the program runs diagnostics every two days just to make sure things are working properly. There’s a mild lag in the reception of data on my end.”

I scrub my hand over my face. “Break that down for me. I don’t speak nerd.”

“Someone else has tapped in. The information my system requests is being channeled through another system. It shouldn’t be like that.”

“You’re telling me someone else is keeping tabs on my—on Hayden Prescott.”

“That’s the way it’s looking. I have diagnostics running, but so far it’s only bouncing from tower to tower. Whoever it is, is sophisticated because they’re giving my system a run for its money.”

“Find them!” I snap before turning around and leaving his office.

I don’t bother speaking to any of the guys in the breakroom as I haul ass out of the office. Fear is gripping me, making me wonder how long someone has been keeping tabs on her. It makes the burglary in her otherwise quiet neighborhood even more suspicious.

I feel like a complete asshole, because she voiced her fear of being there, and I chalked it up to that one incident and her living alone.