Page 38 of (Not So) Mad About You

He sighed. “You should have taken your phone out when Luke was busy putting away the clients’ electronics like the rest of us did.”

“Wait, what?”

“Except you weren’t here, were you?”

She had no choice but to go for it again, since the conversation was spiraling out of her control. “Wait, what?”

He grinned. “You don’t think we’d all let Luke take our phones for real, do you? We let him take them and then, when the programmers come in, we sneak in and get them back before Luke locks the door again. But you, obviously, were late, so you didn’t get the chance.” He twisted his mouth in thought. “There’s no getting through that door.”

“Right,” said Bea, finally catching up. He thought her phone was in there. She didn’t correct him, not when it looked like he might help.

“Okay, the keys are in the brass pot on Luke’s desk. You just need to distract him long enough to grab them, come back here, get your stuff, and replace them before he notices. Easy.”

“Easy?” Her stomach felt all hiccuppy at the thought.

“Yeah, just go tell him, I don’t know, tell him Daria wants him for something. He’ll go off looking for her.”

“He will?”

Josh’s eyes sparkled. “Not figured out that they’ve got a thing going on yet?”

“Uh, no?”

“Well, they do. Go tell him that, get the keys, and then rush back here. I’ll keep an eye out make sure no one comes near. Go on, off you go.”

Could it really be that easy? She looked at Josh, who wiggled his eyebrows at her. Alright, if she was going to do it, it might as well be now.

She hurried down the corridor to Luke’s office, knocking on the door and then sticking her head around it.

“What?” Luke said, absorbed in some sort of paperwork.

“Uh, Daria wants you?”

He looked up and then grinned the grin of a man who wasn’t thinking with his brain. “Right, cheers.”

He practically ran out of the office, leaving Bea in the corridor outside. She took three deep breaths before she went in. She went around his desk and easily found the keys before being distracted by the papers on his desk. They were some kind of financial statements. The numbers were impressive. More impressive than she would have imagined. She didn’t think that the program could be making that much money.

A sound out in the corridor reminded her of what she was supposed to be doing. She pocketed the keys and rushed back to where Josh was waiting.

“Told you it would work,” he said. “Go on then, in you go. I’ll stay out here and be lookout. If I see someone coming, I’ll knock twice on the door and you’d better hide yourself away in there, just in case. Got it?”

Bea nodded breathlessly and then tried to unlock the door with hands that were shaking so much that Josh had to take the keys from her and do it himself.

Once inside, she had a millisecond to think about what exactly she was doing. Breaking into a locked room. If she got caught doing this, she’d be fired for sure. But then, if she didn’t do it, she’d be fired for sure. She took a breath. Alright, she’d better not be caught.

She went to the trunk, dialed in the first three numbers that Alli had given her, then went through the cycle of the fourth barrel until she hit seven and the lock sprang open.

She hurriedly searched through the ziplock bags until she found the one with Alli’s name on it, all the while listening for Josh’s knocks.

And then she had a dilemma. Did she leave the empty bag in the trunk or take it with her? Which would look more suspicious? Take it with her, she decided. Alli’s phone was heavy in her hand and one tiny little piece of her brain told her tocheck it, to look and see. But she didn’t. Alli made her feel funny in ways she couldn’t define, and what she really wanted was the woman out of her life for good.

“All done,” she said brightly to Josh as she slipped out of the room and handed him the keys to lock up. She hoped she looked innocent enough.

“Not so fast,” said Josh.

So she looked guilty. Great.

He held the keys up. “You’re not done yet, you’ve got to put these back.”

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