Hate You Not

“So?”

Gabe rolls his eyes. I roll mine.

“Fuck you too, dude,” he says. “I was just trying to offer my condolences.”

I fix him with a death stare, and he walks back to his desk with his shoulders slumping. Guilt spills through me, hot and prickling.

“Sorry, man. I’m really low on sleep.”

“Same here.” His voice has got an edge now. “Three nights working on this fucking crash shit.”

“Damn.” I don’t know a lot about what happened—presumably no one wanted to bother me with the details when they assumed I’d be taking time off work to mourn—so I ask, and he explains what happened with a facet of the beta app.

“I know how to fix it, but I haven’t slept in three nights.” He sighs. “Cara and the baby will be back this afternoon from her mom’s.”

Now that I look at him, Gabe does look like shit. The “baby” is turning one next month, but the little fucker doesn’t like to sleep, and Gabe’s a decent guy who takes turns doing bottle feeds at night. I turn toward the door so I can’t see his face when I say, “Get a nap, man. I’ll work on it for a while. Screen share it.”

I shut his door behind me and pass the next three—all closed, thankfully—with no encounters. My door is on the back right. It leads into a space where Molly, my assistant, has a desk beside a giant potted tree with weird, wide, oval leaves. There’s a wall of windows in front of her desk, so investors dropping by to chat with me can see the San Francisco Bay.

Molly is okay, but I don’t want to do the awkward shit, so I lift my phone to my ear and walk through the door to our shared space with a look that’s supposed to say “annoyed and distracted.” I hold up my free hand in a half-assed sort of a wave, and then I step into my office.

Whew.

I shut my eyes, and when I open them, I stare at my desk for a long moment. There’s a picture of us in a small, round frame. When Asher came by one time, he noticed the place was empty, so he mailed one to me. I swallow, thinking of how he had to mail it to me. I was always so damn busy.

I step over to the desk and put the frame in a drawer. Then I fire up my computer. I close my eyes again and inhale. This place always smells like hot computer parts and new carpet. I touch my wireless mouse and lean back in my old, familiar leather office chair.

When the computer powers on, I find the screen is all clear.

I jab Gabe’s extension. “Seriously, man. Share the fucking screen and go to sleep.”

“You’re such a dick.” But I can hear him chuckle.

My screen is filled with his work just a second later.

“Get some sleep, pal.”

He hangs up on me.

Two hours later, and I’m relieved no one’s knocked on my door. I think Zephyr’s out. It’s Wednesday morning, when the fucker goes for breakfast with his mother. I shut off Gabe’s stuff—figured it out in forty minutes; he’d done almost all the work already—and stand up. I stretch, wipe some dust off the potted plant behind my desk, and rub my temples.

Better get it over with. I unlock my door, crack it open, and step slowly out into Molly’s space.

She looks up from her desk with a smile. “Hi, Burke.”

I nod. “Molly.”

“It’s so nice to have you back.”

I snort. “Oh yeah?”

She nods, sincere as always. “It was quiet without you.”

Molly’s young, and here on a worker’s visa from China. Sometimes when I rag on her, it makes her face turn red—and anyway, I don’t feel like teasing her today. So I just say, “Yeah.”

“I wanted to offer my condolences.”

I tip my head a little, try to keep my mouth from tugging downward. “Thank you.”

“Also, I should let you know…you got a call from Mr. Gurung,” she adds.

“Did I?”

She nods, her short black hair bobbing around her chin. “It was very early this morning.”

Well, shit. Maybe now that our mountain adventure is over, fucker finally decided to invest. “What did he say?”

“He asked that you return his phone call.”

The dull throb at my temples flares. “Okay. Thanks.”

“Of course.”

“Oh—Molly?” I step closer to her desk and reach into my pocket. “Before I go—”

Her eyebrows arch.

“If I pay you some extra…” I hold out the five hundred-dollar bills to show her what I mean. “Can you take on a side project?”

She blinks discreetly at the money and then meets my eyes. “Of course. What do you need?”

I hand her the cash. “I need you to research someone. Do a background check. Find whatever you can.”

“Okay.” She nods.

“We’ll start the mentorship stuff back tomorrow—you can shadow me the first two hours, like we had been doing—but you could work on this in any spare time you have in the next few days. You can have up to a week to gather information. But anyway. Look up June Francis Lawler. Lives in Heat Springs, Georgia. Parents Hubert and Patti. Also look up Lawler Farms. Find out everything you can about it, them, and her.”