Page 123 of Hale Yes
“How did you find out?” I ask, and his eyes narrow. I have no idea why he’s acting so weird and quiet. Maybe this is just how he processes during a crisis.
“Someone in the patent office knows my dad. That person heard rumors we were working on something similar and thought it was too much of a coincidence. They will probably lose their job if anyone finds out who it was.”
“I would give him or her a medal,” I mutter. “What about the security cameras? When are they going through the footage? Should we be there to help? If it was actually Wilhelm who broke in, I can identify him in about two seconds. He walks like Shaggy fromScooby-Doo.”
Helix licks his lips. “We already looked at the footage.” His eyes bore into me, and I throw up my hands.
“Why didn’t you say that while I was blabbering about it earlier?” I ask, tossing my hands up and letting them fall in frustration. “What did you find?”
“Nothing.”
I stare at him, waiting for him to elaborate. Rolling my hand, I say, “You’re going to have to give me more than that. The cameras had to have picked up someone.”
“Not if they were set on a loop for several minutes,” Helix replies, lifting one eyebrow as if waiting for me to explain this.
My hand goes to my mouth in horror as I flop onto the chair across from him. “Someone put the camera on a loop?” He nods once, and my mind goes into overdrive. “Oh my god! That means someone in the security office is in on this. They must have looped the feed so the thief could break in undetected.”
This is even worse than I thought. Some stranger didn’t just break in. Someone who the company trusts to keep them safe betrayed them.
“Or…” Helix starts, standing and retracing my steps back and forth across the wood floor. “Someone hacked into the system and then went in and stole the formula. Someone who is very good with computers and who knows my passcode to the safe.”
He stops, and with his back to me, asks, “Do you know anyone like that Nicolette?”
That’s when it hits me. He’s talking about… me.
“Helix.” I rise from the chair with acid churning in my stomach and take a step toward him. “Helix, look at me.”
When he does, I stumble backward at the cold accusation in his eyes. “Tell me you don’t think I did this,” I croak.
His jaw works back and forth. “What other explanation is there?”
I gape at the man I thought loved me. “You didn’t answer me. Do. You. Think. I. Did. This?” Each word is clipped and filled with all the anger and pain that I’m feeling.
He averts his eyes, and my heart drops to the floor. “I don’t want to believe it, baby.”
“Don’t call me that,” I yell, startling his eyes back to me. “Don’t you dare stand there and accuse me of stealing and lying while calling me baby in the next breath. I’ve never been so fucking insulted in my life.”
And hurt. So damned hurt I can barely stay on my feet.
“Do you think this is easy for me?” he barks. “Do you really think I want to consider that the woman I plan to marry could have betrayed me?”
They say when you die, your life flashes before your eyes, so I wonder if I’m actually dead when everything I care about blurs through my vision. The career I’ve worked so hard for. My relationship with Helix. The entire Hale family that opened their collective arms and welcomed me more than my own family ever has.
All of it is gone in a snap, and suddenly, my legs can no longer support my weight. I drop to my knees as tears haze my eyes. I haven’t cried since I was twelve years old. It’s not that I don’t feel emotions. I definitely do, but I haven’t allowed the physical representation of those emotions in the form of tears in over twodecades. I’ve often thought that maybe my lacrimal glands were somehow defective.
But as twin waterfalls stream down my cheeks, I know I was wrong. My glands were simply saving up the torrent until I got drop-kicked in the heart and lost everything good in my life.
“Nicolette,” Helix says, dropping down beside me and trying to pull me into a hug.
I fight him off, shoving against his chest as I attempt to catch my breath enough to hiss, “Don’t touch me.”
He holds up both hands at my demon voice. “I won’t touch you, but I need you to talk to me. Tell me what happened, and I’ll help you.”
“You’ll help me?” I shriek. “How exactly are you going tohelp me? My career is over. The only good relationship I’ve ever had is over. So tell me what the fuck you think you can do for me.”
His face goes soft with so much sincerity, and that stabs me in the chest deeper than anything. “I love you, bab— Nicolette. I would do anything for you.”
“Except believe me,” I say quietly, and he looks away, blinking as his own tears begin to fall. That just pisses me off. “I want you to leave.”
