Heart So Hollow (Dire Wolves Book 1), page 66
Colson furrows his brow, scanning the screen, “I can’t find you.”
Without looking up, he grabs the phone across the desk and dials a number. As if the past 24 hours haven’t already been a complete shit show, add technological issues to the mix.
“Dave,” Colson keeps clicking around on the monitor, “Brett’s badge doesn’t work and I can’t find her in the system.” I recognize the familiar cadence of Dave’s voice over the phone, and after a few seconds, Colson raises his eyes and looks at me over the counter, “He says you don’t work here anymore.”
I just stare at Colson in bewilderment, unable to comprehend what he just said. I try to think back to yesterday, only 24 hours ago, and remember whether anything out of the ordinary happened with Dave.
Finally, I lean over the counter and grab the phone from Colson, “I thought you said you weren’t going to fire me!” I cry into the mouthpiece.
The meeting. That goddamn meeting where I got called into Dave’s office thinking I was getting fired for letting Colson have fun with his knife…
“Brett—hi!” Dave sounds caught off-guard by my sudden interruption, “I got your email early this morning, so I went ahead and started the off-boarding process. Did you mean to give two-weeks-notice of your departure instead of effective immediately?”
“Email?” I shriek, “What email?”
There’s a pause on Dave’s end, “The one where you told me you wrote a novel, signed with a publisher, and you’ve decided to pursue writing full-time.” He doesn’t seem to notice my pregnant pause and subsequent lack of response, “That’s exciting! Kind of sudden—we would’ve gotten you a cake if you’d said something sooner. That’s why I didn’t miss you today.”
A tingle runs down my neck and over my back. I whip out my phone and, with shaking hands, pull up Outlook and start scrolling through my work emails. At least it seems that I haven’t been kicked off the server yet. I keep scrolling, searching for the email he’s referring to, but there’s nothing.
“I didn’t send you an email, Dave!”
“Hold on…” he sighs and presumably turns to his computer, humming to himself as he types and clicks in the background.
Why doesn’t he sound more concerned about this?
“OK,” Dave pops back on the line, “I forwarded it to you. Did you get it?”
When I open the email, all I can do is exhale a haggard groan and stare at it in disbelief. Dave did receive an email last night, exactly like he said.
From: Sorensen, Brett (US)
To: Sedgewick, David (US)
Subject: Resignation
Dave,
I have good news. I wrote a novel and it’s been picked up by a publisher. Therefore, I’ve decided to resign, effective immediately, to focus on writing full-time. It’s been a pleasure to work with you.
Brett
It’s my resignation, but the problem is that I didn’t write it. It doesn’t even sound like an email I would write, devoid of salutations and exclamations and tiny details that indicate I’m a human rather than a dot matrix printer.
No sooner do I finish scanning the thread than the desk phone falls from my hand onto the counter. I run my hand over my heart, kneading my shirt as a sickening realization floods my stomach. Colson picks up the phone and turns away from me as he starts speaking to Dave. I don’t hear what he says. All I can hear is a rush in my ears, like I’m underwater, and everything seems to slow down.
I don’t know how long Colson is on the phone, but when he hangs up, sound slowly starts to return and I hear him speaking, but not to me. Alex has emerged from the back office. He and Colson are talking in hushed tones to one another, glancing at me periodically, but I don’t know what they’re talking about.
Finally, I snap out of it when Colson slams his phone face down on the copy machine glass and smashes the green button with his thumb. Once the machine spits out a sheet of paper, he rips it from the tray and scrawls a few words across the bottom in Sharpie before holding it up in front of Alex.
It’s a picture of Bowen, pulled from social media, with the make and model of his truck written under it.
Alex takes it from him and then, a second later, jerks his head up, “What is this? What the fuck happened?” he barks, jolting me out of my daze.
“Change of plan,” Colson replies, “he’s off the rails.”
My eyes dart between them as they argue, tossing vague terms back and forth to one another.
“What does that mean?” Alex demands, casting me a brief glance, “Why am I posting his face at our gate?”
I think this is the most animated I’ve ever seen Alex. He’s usually so calm, like he’s just absorbing everything around him. I can barely tell what he thinks about anything.
Colson looks at Alex gravely and lowers his voice, “Because he almost did it again…”
“I fff—” Alex presses his mouth together with a frustrated growl, “this is why I was trying to find you. This is why we needed you back,” he fluctuates between whispers and shouts, “because he was already coming at your other sister before I showed up. We should’ve ended this a long time ago.”
“Is that what Dallas would say?” Colson counters.
Alex lunges at Colson and grabs the top of his vest, backing him into the wall, “You don’t know the half of why Dallas is doing what she’s doing,” he snarls, “and she wouldn’t need to if you or I had been here instead of thousands of miles away. This has always been our problem and our responsibility and I’ll die before I let her spend the rest of her life worrying that Bowen fucking Garrison is lurking in the shadows.”
“Don’t let your emotions overwhelm intelligence,” Colson glares at Alex with his piercing eyes, “don’t forget, we’re not the only ones with a stake in this.”
I stare at them, wide-eyed, neither of them taking notice of me with my jaw hanging down to the floor. I don’t know half of what they’re talking about, but I’m starting to get lightheaded again.
Alex casts me a brief glance and then loosens his hold on Colson.
“Let me figure this out,” Colson nods to me, “and then we figure it out.”
Alex doesn’t take his eyes off Colson, and after a moment he finally nods and turns to head back to the desk. “He won’t get past the gate,” Alex barks over his shoulder, “and if I see him first, he’s dead.”
●●●
My back and shoulders are so tense, they feel like they’re made of marble, but my legs feel like pure Jell-O. Colson’s stride is so long that I have to jog to keep up with him through the lobby toward the long hallway of offices off to the right. When I glance up at his body armor, fastened back into place, I have the sickening realization that Colson is now my escort through the building rather than my coworker.
My Tahoe remains outside the front gate, parked next to the security building after Colson ordered me to get my work bag and meet him at his car.
“What’d you say to Dave?” I ask as I try to organize my thoughts, “What’s going on?”
“I took care of it,” he states plainly.
“How? I’ve been fired—quit—whatever…” I don’t even know how to explain what’s happening.
“No, you haven’t,” Colson leads me through the vast corridor of offices to the back of the building, “I told him you didn’t send the email and then told him what’s going on.”
My eyes round, “What did you tell him?”
“Only that your safety’s been compromised,” Colson looks over his shoulder at me, “so, you still have your job if you want it.”
He comes to a halt at the last office at the end of the hall and Dallas’s face lights up as soon as she sees us in her doorway. Standing behind Colson, I can’t see his face, but her wide, crimson smile fades the longer she looks at him.
He sits down in one of the black chairs in front of her desk and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees, “Can you find spyware on a phone?”
Dallas stares at him blankly for a good five seconds, then cracks a smile, “Can I find spyware on a phone?” she repeats in a mocking tone, “Did you click on another link to a celebrity sex tape by accident?”
Colson stifles a smile and nods to me, “It’s for Brett—someone got into her emails.”
“Oh, no!” Dallas furrows her brow in concern and thrusts her hand over the desk, “I can take a look.”
I dig my phone back out, unlock the screen, and hand it over. She starts swiping and tapping, pausing periodically to respond to her own texts and IMs.
“Why are we looking for spyware?” I murmur to Colson.
He swivels his head, speaking in a soft tone, “Do you leave your email open on your phone?”
I shake my head, “Not my work email.”
“Someone sent that email to Dave, so they had to know how to get in.”
I know what Colson is implying, and I know he’s probably right, but I don’t want to come right out and say it yet. But the longer I watch Dallas swipe her manicured black spiderweb nails over my phone, the more I think about the letter from Emily Fox tucked in my bag at my feet.
Colson peers at me out of the corner of his eye, “Did someone really pick up your book?” he whispers.
I’m dreading the answer, so I continue focusing on Dallas and her bright blue eyes framed by a pair of thick-rimmed purple glasses. Her dramatic makeup is always immaculate and she has one of those faces overflowing with feverish enthusiasm. It’s like nothing ever bothers her, like she’s too busy to be inconvenienced by turmoil. But she’s a Lutz, so she’s no stranger to turmoil.
“Yes,” heat rushes into my cheeks and I can’t even turn to face Colson, “Jada wanted to, but before I could send it to her, it disappeared.”
“What do you mean disappeared?”
“It’s gone,” I rasp, “when I went to send it, I couldn’t find it. It’s not on my hard drive or the cloud.” I give a curt shake of my head, having finally accepted the defeat. “It’s just gone.”
Colson is silent, shifting his gaze around the room pensively.
“Aha!” Dallas exclaims, “There you are,” she jeers and holds the speaker to her mouth, “I found youuuu…” she sings into the phone with a devilish giggle.
I can’t help but smile, “What are you doing?” I ask with confusion.
“See that blue basketball icon?” She rotates my phone and holds it up, “It looks like the usual pre-installed bloatware, so you’d probably never open it anyway. But this one is spy software disguised as a default sports app. It’s super common.”
I peer at the unassuming icon, “What does it do?”
“A few things,” she explains, “whoever installed it can access any password-protected apps you have, which is pretty standard, but this one also listens. Maybe voice-activated? It doesn’t copy everything you do on your phone like some spyware, otherwise you probably would’ve noticed some major lag or your phone would stop working because it’s a mega drain on your data. But yeah, I Googled it and it’s like starting a tape recorder whenever it detects a voice in certain proximity.”
“So…” I trail off for a moment, the sinking feeling coming back, “someone can listen to everything I’m saying?”
“It’s only as good as your speaker is,” Dallas continues, “so, if it’s in your pocket or a bag, it’ll pick up less. But I wouldn’t consider that any comfort. I mean,” she grabs her own phone to show me, “I have my phone out all the time.”
Right then, everything makes sense.
I know where you go, I know who you talk to, I know what you do when you don’t think anyone is paying attention…
It’s why everything is happening. It’s how he knows everything.
I glance briefly at Colson. He looks calm—unbothered—and I have no idea how. Then I look at my phone, staring at it with dread. Every interaction I’ve had with Colson since he set foot in this building flashes through my mind. Every word, every sound—all captured by the small device sitting no more than 10 feet away at any given time.
“How do I get rid of it?” I ask as I fight a wave of nausea rising in my throat.
Dallas swipes her finger around the screen a few times and then hands the phone back to me, “There, it’s gone.”
My eyes dart between her and my phone, “That’s it?”
She smiles with a shrug, “It’s just an app.”
“Oh.” For some reason, I thought it would be far more complicated than that. But it was simple, effective, and served its purpose.
Dallas sets my phone on the edge of the desk, “If I were you, I’d change all your passwords, like, yesterday, and check your bank account just in case. Depending on who put it there and why, better safe than sorry.”
I slide my phone off the desk, turning it over in my hands. Bowen has to know I’m gone by now. I’m sure Hannah ran off and told him after gathering up the remaining pieces of his macabre souvenirs and disposing of them somewhere.
Of course, he knows. He’s probably been listening to it in real-time until 10 seconds ago when Dallas pulled the plug.
But regardless of who knows what, landing a few good fists to Hannah’s head felt pretty good…
Colson motions to my bag on the floor, “If it’s still there, she’ll find it.”
I hesitate, and then reach down to pull my personal laptop out of the bag, “Can you help me find a file on my laptop?” I reach across Dallas’s desk and gently set it down in front of her.
“Of course!” she chirps as she opens it. “Do you want to come around and enter your password?”
“No, it’s OK,” I give a weary sigh and lower my eyes to the floor, “I can just tell you. It’s beeswax.”
Colson slowly tilts his head, peering at me so that his aquamarine irises look fluorescent.
“Why’s your password beeswax?” Dallas asks with a chuckle.
Then it dawns on me why Colson is staring at me. I hold his gaze as a slight smile creeps across my face, “Because it’s none of yours.”
Dallas lets out a cackle as her fingers fly over the keyboard. Colson eyes me for a few more seconds before pressing his mouth together and leaning back in his chair. I’ll let him think what he wants, let him think we’re connected on some higher plane of existence that manifests through silly puns and Microsoft passwords.
After I give Dallas the file name for my book, I wait for another minute while she swipes and clicks and types, her hands moving at the speed of light, “Is it a corrupted file or is it totally gone?”
“Totally gone.”
“Did you save it to the cloud?”
“Yes, my desktop and the cloud.”
Dallas furrows her brow, “Both places?”
“Yeah,” I exhale, letting my eyes wander again.
“That’s…” she pauses for a moment, “weird.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re two different processes. You back up to the cloud in case something happens to your computer. It’s not like if you delete one, the other disappears, too.” Dallas squints up at me, “I’m surprised it’s not still in your recycling bin. Did you empty it before realizing it was gone?”
I shake my head. I didn’t do anything with my files after hearing from Jada.
Dallas stares at the screen pensively, tapping a spiderweb nail on the keyboard, “This might be an awkward question,” she glances over top of the screen, “but does anyone else have access to your computer? And, if so, is there any reason they’d be messing with this file?”
When I open my mouth, I mean to answer her, but nothing comes out except a long breath as the sinking feeling in my gut grows stronger and stronger.
“I only ask because…” Dallas leans back in her chair and scrunches up her nose sympathetically, “it’s gone,” she states bluntly, “and you didn’t do it by accident. It was deleted by someone who knew what they were doing.” She turns my laptop around so I can see the screen and points to a line on a list of dates and times, “This is when it was deleted. It was executed on your machine, so no one hacked into it. Do you remember what you were doing?”
Four days ago, June 21 at 2:43 AM.
The longer I stare at the time, the louder my pulse gets in my ear and all other sounds melt away, “Asleep,” I murmur, feeling my chest tighten, “I was asleep.”
And before I can say another word, I pitch forward and stumble out of my chair, doubling over as I start heaving into Dallas’s trash can.
CHAPTER SIXTY-EIGHT
Colson
One Year Ago
17 minutes. That’s how much time passed between when Brett walked through her front door last night to when Bowen strolled back into the living room like nothing ever happened.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve watched that 17 minutes on loop, thinking about what went on inside that house, thinking about how many times he’s done something like that, and to who.
Part of me thinks I could’ve stopped it. If I’d told Brett about him sooner, maybe she would’ve believed me. But then I remember I don’t deal in hypotheticals. I know people don’t want to believe that those they love can do such horrific things to one another.
I know this better than anyone.
Maybe Brett only survived the night because I didn’t tell her the truth about Bowen, because I didn’t give her enough to really start questioning him. That was my original plan, to get in her head and let her find out who he is on her own, while I watched her the entire time—while I watch him the entire time.
This is what I should’ve done back then, from the moment Evie told me Bowen asked her to race with him to when she told me she was meeting him at the skate park. Maybe I could’ve made more of a difference. But that’s what hypotheticals do; they drive you crazy. That’s why, when Dallas sent me that picture of Bowen sitting with Brett and Barrett at Calhoun’s last year, I realized I was out of time. I decided Brett wouldn’t end up like Evie.
Or like Emily.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Emily’s no longer alive. A 7th-grader with a smart phone could tell you that. Hacking into someone’s social media to make it look like they’re still active isn’t that difficult, especially if you’re their abusive boyfriend and you want people to believe they’re still alive. Granted, it also helps if you discover that your best friend inadvertently married into Emily’s estranged family, and one of them holds a grudge…
