He actually laughed, low and throaty, the kind that made the fine hairs on my arms stand up. “I can count on you for the numbers?”
I nodded, concise. “You’ll have them.”
He stood, towering over the desk. “I like the new hair,” he said, and I hated that it worked, that it made me flush.
I didn’t respond. He left, unhurried.
I stared at the computer, forcing my hands not to shake. I started going through the emails, line by line, and found another one I didn’t write: a message to the audit team, sent at 2 a.m., offering to “defer responsibility for the quarterly overage discrepancy pending further review.” My words, but not my style. Someone was either ghostwriting me, or they’d gotten access to my account.
I texted Margot again.
ME: This is getting weird.
MARGOT: How weird?
ME: Gabriel-level weird. He’s moving up the board timelines, someone’s deleting my meetings, and now I’m sending emails in my sleep.
MARGOT: Are you still using that dumb password you picked in college?
ME: No, but thanks for the confidence.
MARGOT: Just checking.
My hands hovered over the keyboard. I needed to call IT, but that would set off a chain of investigations I couldn’t control. I needed to handle it myself. I checked the outbox one more time. All clean.
For the first time in months, I felt an electric pulse in my chest that had nothing to do with caffeine. Someone was trying to screw me, and the usual suspects were not in my immediate line of sight.
I picked up my phone and dialed Gabriel. He answered on the first ring.
“Miss me already?” he said.
“Funny. I want to know why you’re fast-tracking the merge,” I said, keeping my tone low and steady.
He was quiet for a moment, and I knew he was weighing how much to tell me. “You’re the only person here I trust to get the numbers right. The board wants answers before the weekend. I figured you’d want to be the first to present.”
“So this is a test.”
He let out a breath. “You can call it that.”
“Don’t patronize me. Is there something I should know? Is someone coming for my job?”
He hesitated. “I’d tell you if there was.”
I almost believed him.
Instead, I said, “Then tell your goons to stop deleting my calendar events.”
A pause. “No one on my team touches your schedule.”
“Sure.” I hung up before he could respond.
I pulled up my security logs, which required a ridiculous three-factor authentication process that I’d invented to keep out exactly this kind of interference. There were three logins from my account in the past twenty-four hours: one from my phone, one from my laptop, and one from a location in Midtown I’d never even visited.
I screenshotted the logs and emailed them to myself, attaching the backup calendar, and encrypted it with a key only Margot would know. I texted her:
ME: Something’s up. I’m sending you something. Open if I go dark.
MARGOT: You watch too many spy shows.