Page 45 of False Evidence

“Right.” She pulled away from him. He’d read too much into the comfort she’d accepted from him.

He sat up, moving to the corner of the couch. She grabbed the throw blanket that had covered them both and pulled it around her, using it as a barrier.

“I won’t ever love anyone like I love you, but I understand why you don’t believe me. I was far too lost when we were last together. We can open those wounds later. Right now, I just want you to know I will move heaven and earth to help you and Gemma, and I have the engineering skills and tools to do it.”

“Earth is your zone as an engineer. I’m the one with the knowledge of the heavens, and I can say with authority you won’t be able to get the cosmos to budge on my behalf.”

He chuckled. “Ah. Literal Lex is in the building.”

She felt a pang at the name. Kendall too had called her that. “Just sayin’. I don’t think your money or your company can save me.”

“I’m selling the company. Then I’ll have a crap ton more money.”

“You are? Does Lee know? Of course. He must know but…he hasn’t said anything.” But then, Lee and Erica didn’t talk about JT with her, at her request.

He shrugged. “The closing is New Year’s Eve. Big party to follow where fat bonuses will be handed out.”

“Was the sale something Kendall was working on?”

He frowned and cocked his head as he considered the question. “Probably. Her numbers as a cost estimator would have been part of the due diligence. Why?”

“She said something about an issue with her job she wanted to talk to me about.”

He frowned. “Have you considered that what happened to you could be related to her?”

“I have. But I haven’t a clue how it might connect.”

“You were only about a mile from her house. The cop could have followed you.”

“But why?”

“What all did you get from Kendall’s house?”

“I left most everything there—I planned to go back next week with a rental van to pick up the couch and boxes that I wanted to take my time sorting through. Many of my school papers had been mixed with hers. I filled one archive box with framed photos, my mom’s cookbooks, and a few knickknacks we’d purchased for our various apartments together.

“It was all I’d planned to take, but when I loaded the box in my SUV, I remembered she’d mentioned the old PC you gave me for school that first winter semester. She’d said the motherboard had burned out, but she was certain the files were intact. Rescuing old files from dead computers had been on her to-do list for years, but she was admitting defeat and wanted me to take the computer off her hands, or she’d throw it away. One less thing to worry about.”

She grimaced, remembering that moment when she’d considered tossing the computer and being done. She’d lived without the photos and files this long. She wouldn’t know what she was losing, so did it matter?

But Kendall was gone. There would be no new photos of her, and she’d just spent hours crying over long-forgotten photographs with Kendall’s sister, Tanya. There could be some treasures on that hard drive.

So she’d given Tanya a big hug in the driveway, and the woman drove off.

“Tanya left, and I went back inside. I gave myself twenty minutes to find the old computer before I hit the road to pick up Gemma. It took me about ten to find the tan console box with the old Talon & Drake logo on it in the CPU graveyard in the office closet. Knowing that all the other electronic components in Kendall’s house would be recycled, I decided not to grab the whole console box. I opened it up and pulled the hard drive.

“I was in a hurry when I left, which is why it wasn’t in the box with the other items. I tossed it on the front seat with my coat. I was mad at myself for not just grabbing the console, when I was already on limited time.”

She’d gotten lost in memories in the closet. The damn computer had represented so much. JT had wanted to help her with school, but she didn’t want to feel indebted to him, so the compromise had been to accept a used but upgraded work computer that was no longer needed.

She’d known even then it was a lie. The Talon & Drake logo had been slapped on it to make it look used.

Thatwas why she didn’t want the console box. She didn’t want the reminder of those wonderful early days, when she was falling head over heels for JT Talon and trying her hardest to demonstrate to them both it was the man she wanted, not the stuff.

And so she’d wasted precious minutes pulling the hard drive.

“In the end, it’s a good thing I didn’t take the whole console and that I had it in the front seat with me. It’s what I hit the cop with.”

“Where is it now?”

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