Page 50 of The System

“Yes, and it was funny and totally deserved. You were never this jealous when we were together, so I can only assume that it’s not real jealousy. It’s you thinking I’m moving on, which means there’s a time limit on this living arrangement.”

“There always was. I told you I’d move out. I just need a little more time, Carina.”

“You’ve had over three months. If I keep giving you another month after another, you’ll just stay forever, and one day, I will bring a woman home, Tin, and I’ll want to be able to be myself and for her to feel comfortable and not see you walking around in your workout clothes or just after a shower, wondering why you still live with me when we’re no longer together.”

“I’m looking for places,” Tinley argued. “I went to see one this morning, in fact. They just wanted a security deposit, and I can’t afford that now that I’ve had to pay off these tickets.”

“Tinley, you have friends. You can technically ask your parents. I’m sure they’ll help in some way, at least. Sleep in a friend’s guest room or on their sofa.”

“A sofa?”

“You’re taking advantage of me, Tinley, and that’s over now.”

“One night with Kelly, and you’re suddenly feeling like I’m taking advantage of you?”

“Make arrangements,” Carina insisted. “Find a sofa to sleep on or an apartment, but you need to move out now.”

“Fine.” Tinley stood and dropped her turkey sandwich on Carina’s desk. “Keep the damn sandwich, and I’ll figure it out.”

“And, Tinley? Her name is Kieran, not Kelly. Remember that.”

CHAPTER 16

“No, this is great, Kieran. Everything made it through QA, and no issues in deploy so far,” her boss said while he clearly paid attention to something on his other monitor and wasn’t staring directly at her, which was preferred, if Kieran was being honest.

“Great. Sorry, it took me an extra day, but that issue I found was a tricky one to fix. The product manager wanted something that was supposed to go into the next release to go out now, and she had that engineering team working on that one and me working on my thing, so we all rushed to finish, and I was worried there would be some issues, but seems like we got it.”

“You did.” He turned to her with a smile. “So, how’s the other thing going?”

“Oh,” she said. “The same, really. I promise, I had no idea any of this would happen right when I started this job.”

“I imagine that’s the case since it was our free DNA kit that put you in this mess,” her boss replied.

“Yeah, well, it’s about the same for now. I still try to visit her when I can. She’ll be transferred out of the county jail here soon, which means it’ll be harder to get to her.”

“Why don’t you take a long lunch or stop early today so that you can do that?”

“I really couldn’t do that. I feel like I’ve been late on just about everything since I started, and that’s not fair to you or the team.”

“Life comes first,” he told her. “Just because we’re code monkeys, doesn’t mean we have to be glued to our computers all day, every day, when life is going on around us. Just remember, we hired you because you’re good, but we don’t expect you to be a robot for us.”

“Thank you,” Kieran replied.

Her new boss turned out to be an actual human who understood that what was going on with Kieran right now wasn’t something she could control or just not worry about until it went away eventually. They wrapped up by talking about the other things on their list, and after she exited the video conferencing software, she went to get another cup of coffee.

She hadn’t slept much last night. They were still waiting for the footage of the number twelve bus and the bus stop Marin said she might have used, and Diego had been reminding her that Marin should strongly consider the deal that Kieran didn’t want her to consider at all until they knew if she had an alibi. Kieran was no lawyer herself, but even if Carina suggested that Marin paid someone or otherwise got them to kill Nick while she had that alibi, the deal would still change. Instead of ten years, out in five on good behavior, it might be five years and out in two and a half on good behavior, and that would be much better than doing ten years or even five, if Kieran could help it.

She poured her second cup of the day so far and doctored it. The other reason she hadn’t slept well was that she’d been up until two trying to finish this thing for work since it was already a little late due to the other engineer doing something wrong. She didn’t tell her boss about that, but she’d already talked to that engineer, who had been apologetic and had also stayed up just as late to fix it with Kieran, so she hadn’t seen the point in getting them in trouble. Besides, it had given her a chance to get to know them and their tendencies so that she could help prevent these kinds of mistakes in the future.

When her phone rang, Kieran rolled her eyes at the screen because Kenna had called one other time after their initial conversation, so Kieran had put her number into her phone and screened the call. Kenna had left her a voicemail saying that she wanted to schedule some time to talk.

“Just talk,” she said when Kieran asked her what she wanted this time. “Like I said in my message, to just talk. Nothing we talk about will be used in the interview if there is one.”

“So, this is you trying to convince me to do the interview?”

“This is me giving you the information I have about the case, and maybe you getting to know me a little bit to make sure you can trust me,” Kenna replied.

“You have information for me?”

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