Page 34 of Sex, Lies, & Techy Guys (Love on the Sunshine Coast)

“Thanks Mila. You’re the best.”

“What do you want first?”

I can’t wait to get out of the clothes I wore to the meeting. I feel so sleezy. “I’m going to change clothes and you should have a rather large glass of wine ready for each of us. I need it to relax and you’ll need it when you hear what happened.”

“Two large glasses of wine coming right up.”

“And you won’t need Netflix because this is better than anything we could watch.”

After I’m comfy, curled into one of her chairs, and have laid out the whole story, we’ve barely made it to the bottom of our first glasses. Getting the story out calmed me down and she was captivated.

She stares at me and I can’t blame the single glass of wine for her slow reaction. She’s as stunned as I am.

Then in best friend fashion, she says, “You want me to go drag them out of your house by the nuts?”

“I might take you up on that. I don’t want to see them again until the trial, although they have to know that what they’ve done is grounds for a mistrial.”

“But if the prosecution bribes the judge…”

“A risk I’m willing to take. It would make fabulous grounds for an appeal.”

CHAPTER 16

lance

Kyle stayed in the lobby and I waited at Penny’s car, but after forty-five minutes we took the hint and headed home…to her home…that she doesn’t want us in anymore.

A home that we no longer understand. I’m still reeling from the gut punch of finding out she hadn’t told us her real name. Us not being travel writers hasn’t been the only façade.

Taking a ferry back to Gibsons makes the trek all the more worrisome. If it was only a car ride, it would feel less ominous.

But with each of our unreturned calls and texts, we feel more and more like unwelcome guests who need to listen to her single communication asking us to pack our shit and move on. My chest aches. With all the sneaking around we had to do on the dark web, I never expected real life to be the problem.

She needs her space, which we’re desperately trying to give her instead of tracking her down. We want to explain. But we also need her to do the same for us, and so that we can help her.

I pace from the office through the living room to the bedroom and back, failing to do anything constructive.

Where had Penny gone when she didn’t leave the office building? When will she come home? Will she stay gone all night, or just as long as our car is parked outside?

Kyle and I have been over our options. They all suck. How do we prove that we didn’t know she was the Penelope we were investigating? The irony is not lost on me that we have to prove our innocence from something we didn’t know, kind of like the situation she’s in.

As the storm clouds move away and the sun falls low in the sky, I can’t take it anymore.

“Let’s do it. I have to know she’s safe.” There are so many ways we can track her down but we agreed to start with the most legal and least invasive.

Kyle opens his laptop which he’d brought into the living room. “She’ll be pissed.”

I rake my hands through my hair. “She’s already pissed and hurt. At least if we convince her to let us explain we can undo some of the damage.”

“Even if she won’t hear us out, we can let her know we’ll leave so she can sleep in her own bed.” Kyle hangs his head and I’m sure he’s thinking the same thing as me…her bed became our bed. How can any of us go back to sleeping alone?

Keeping our hacker creepiness to a minimum, we find her friend Mila’s interior design business, get a last name, then look up her residential address. And when we drive to it, we’re rewarded with Penny’s car sitting in the driveway. The silver lining is that we didn’t have to do anything illegal, but with our level of concern rising, we would have.

Kyle parks the car just past the house. “I never would have thought I’d put a woman above financial security and my professional reputation.”

I assure him, “They say high risk yields high rewards.”

He pulls the key out of the ignition and pauses before opening his door.

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