Page 11 of Indecent Demands

It was also possible one of these so-called buddies of Damien’s was the thief. The money and power were getting to him, he wasn’t as loyal to his friend as he’d felt at first, and now he wanted his own slice of the pie. Resentment towards the ‘face’ of the company, the wonderkid, could grow quickly.

There was only room for one genius, one visionary, at the top. Just ask the guys who’d helped create the Apple company with Steve Jobs. Were any of them remembered? No.

I placed a call to our office. I knew that most everyone would be home by now, but that was fine. I put in the specific extension for one of our team and left a message asking him to look into the background and finances of the two men that Damien had created the company with. One was the company’s COO, and would probably be in charge should anything happen to Damien unexpectedly.

Honestly, if this really was about some kind of bad blood, I wouldn’t put it past the guy to make something happen to Damien.

That would get taken care of in the morning. I focused back on the computer system.

All right. Here were the entries made by the accounting employees, and by the managers when they put in their amounts. Now, those amounts had to have been changed…

I went into the code and examined it. Yes, there were gaps here. Something had been changing the amounts… but it would be difficult for someone to go in and do that manually.

Suspicion took hold of me. I didn’t see any signs of a program in the computer code, but there were small holes suggesting that there had been one, once upon a time.

I knew I had heard someone in this room. But someone couldn’t erase that much code in such a short time, could they? Whoever it was would’ve had barely any warning in advance. Whoever the guy in charge was, he probably hurriedly sent the techie down here to erase things when I went up to interview the managers and he caught wind of what was happening. That wouldn’t really give someone enough time to erase so much—unless—

I looked at the computers I was plugged into and saw that they did, indeed, have slots for hard drives.

Of course. The program had been stored on a hard drive which was then placed into the computer to infiltrate the software. When the hard drive was removed, so was the program, and then it was just a matter of cleaning up any traces that remained. Clever.

That didn’t tell me who had done this, but it did tell me they were damn smart and knew their way around computers. This definitely wasn’t just a C-level executive. There was someone in the tech department involved.

And I now had to find out who.

Chapter6

Ariana

My heart raced wildly in my chest. Holy shit, that had been a close one.

I had just finished up my work and was putting my equipment into my bag when I heard the door to the computer room open. I’d frozen in fear for a second, terrified.

If Seth caught me here—or anyone, really, but I suspected it was him—it was game over. I couldn’t think of a good lie—I was a terrible liar if I was unprepared.

Silently, I finished closing up my bag and crept to the end of the row, then stood with my back pressed to one of the tall computers. I hoped that would be enough to hide me as the person walked past.

The footsteps were almost silent. I held my breath, listening intently as the person passed my row at the other end of the room, and kept walking.

Moving as quietly as I could—and grateful that I was allowed to wear flats to work instead of being forced to wear heels—there was no way I could be silent in heels—I moved counterpoint to the other person, getting to the door and easing it open.

If this person turned around and looked, they would see me.

I slipped through the barely-open door and then walked quickly—but still quietly—to the end of the hallway to the exit staircase.

Once I was inside the stairwell, I booked it.

I tore down the stairs and out the door that led into the parking garage. From there I hurried out and to the security guard exit onto the street, where I finally slowed to a regular walk to the bus station down the block.

Shit. Shit, shit, shit, that had been way too close.

Thank God I had been right in thinking that I needed to delete my automated network from the hardware and took care of it immediately. I could be wrong and it could’ve been a random security guard or someone else in that room, but the way they’d walked silently through, searching? No, I had a feeling it was Seth. He must’ve heard someone in the room somehow.

My heart was still pounding even when I got on the bus and was riding safely home with my computer bag clutched to my chest. You’d think it held diamonds or something far more precious with how I was handling it.

When I got back to my apartment, I nearly collapsed onto the couch as the last of my adrenaline left me. This Seth Maxwell guy was on top of it, and dangerous.

I scrubbed at my face and unpacked my bag. Okay, okay, so Seth was probably going to go through the computer system. Would he be able to find the remnants of my automated program? I was sure I’d scrubbed everything clean but he might see that something had been there and then taken away.

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