Page 61 of Due Diligence

She looked taken aback. “You watch horror films or talk about them on Reddit?”

“Both,” I admitted. “On the ‘Horror’ subreddit, right?”

Cassie nodded. Briefly, we stared at each other in silence, realizing that we had stumbled upon another similarity we both kept under lock and key.

“Should we tell each other our usernames?”

“Hell no,” was her response.

I smiled. That was the right answer. It was the cardinal rule of Reddit to never tell anyone you knew in real life about your username.

“Favorite film?”

She took a drink of her beer as she thought about it. “Going to have to go withSilence of the Lambs,” she decided. “What about you?”

“Same,” I admitted.

Cassie went so far as to roll her eyes. “You’ve got to be shitting me. This is another ploy to sleep with me, right?”

“Cassie, look at me,” I said to her, feigning seriousness. “Do I looked like a man who tries to seduce women using theSilence of the Lambs?”

As soon as the words left my mouth, I could practically see the gears in her brain working on overdrive as she concocted a snappy response. The funny thing was, I didn’t even stop her. I was excited to see what she would come up with—and she didn’t disappoint.

“You look like a man who seduces women using theSilence of the Lambsbecause it’s too much work for him to watchThe Notebook.”

“That’s surprisingly accurate.”

“I do my best.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and that small gesture hit me with a wave of desire to reach out and yank her hair around my wrist while I kissed her soft neck. “And you should call me Cass, by the way.”

“Cass?”

“Yeah. I haven’t gone by Cassie since college, and Cassandra is just the name I use at work.”

I smirked. “Does this mean we’re best friends now?”

“It means you made me come in a nightclub bathroom, so it’s probably best if you use my name. Even my barista calls me Cass.”

“I’ll take it.”

She surveyed me before she said, “So what the hell is going on with you and Alex?”

I paused, wondering how she could possibly know that he called me at three in the morning. She was good at her job—a regular Sherlock Holmes, frankly—but nobody wasthatgood.

“You lied to him yesterday,” she continued. As she spoke, she reached over and picked up the glass tealight holder on the table and rotated it, spilling the wax into the votive. “When he walked into the conference room, you lied to him and said we were renaming files instead of looking at those ledgers.”

“Oh,” I replied. “You noticed.” As soon as I said that I felt like an idiot becauseof courseshe noticed.

Luckily, she didn’t draw attention to my comment. Instead she shook her head. “Look, if you don’t want to talk about it, it’s okay.”

“No, I can talk about it.” I cleared my throat and then took a long drink from my beer. “I should talk about it. I think it’sworth sharing with you, both from a due diligence perspective and also because I intend to spend a lot of time with you from here on out, and you should know about me and Alex.”

“You intend to spend a lot of time with me?” she questioned, intrigue in her tone. “That’s presumptuous.”

“Are we not having drinks together as we speak?”

Cass raised a shoulder. “Fair enough. Tell me about Alex.”

I took a moment to collect the right words, wondering how to share this with someone who wasn’t Dr. Jensen for the first time. After a beat, I fixed my expression and said, “Cass, I’m so close to being free from this whole…” I trailed off. “I’m justso damn close.”

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