Sam glared at the woman she’d once thought of as her friend. “You need to stop doing me favors if we’re going to keep up this friendship. We can’t go on this way.”
Jennie just laughed and pulled the locker room door open, letting Sam shuffle past her into the room.
“Shower. I need a shower.” Samantha walked down the rows, turning into the one where she’d locked up her belongings. Jennie went to the locker opposite and slipped her member card into the slot at the same time Sam slid hers in to open her locker.
“So,” Jennie said, drawing the word out. “I noticed you and Logan have been having lunch together a lot.”
Sam fought to control the blush cruising up her cheeks, but even she wasn’t foolish enough to think she could control blushing. Stupid physiological responses.
Jennie laughed again. “Anything you want to tell me?”
“Nope, not a thing.” Samantha turned away and opened her locker door.
She stopped and stared at the contents of her locker. It was wrong.
“What’d you say?” Jennie asked over her shoulder and Sam cringed. She wondered when she would ever learn the difference between voicing something in her head and saying it aloud. You would think a grown woman would have mastered that skill.
“It’s wrong. My stuff is in the wrong spot.”
Jennie turned and looked at Sam’s locker with a frown. “What do you mean? Wrong how?”
“My jacket was hung on the front hook not the back one. And the zipper of my purse was facing the front when I left, not the back.”
Jennie didn’t question how Sam knew this. They’d spent enough time together for her to know Sam had an exact picture of her locker and how she’d left it in her head.
She wasn’t going by some fuzzy memory as anyone else might. She wasn’t confusing it with the last time she’d come to the gym with Jennie. She had an exact image in her head to compare to what she saw now.
“Is anything missing?”
Sam pulled her jacket out and fished in the pocket. Her car key was where she’d left it. She pulled down her purse and checked for wallet, cell phone.
“Doesn’t seem like it,” she said as she fished out her wallet and opened it. Cash and credit cards were all where she’d left them. “Nope. Nothing obvious.” Even her gum was where she’d left it in the small zipper section on the side.
Jennie and Sam both looked at the locker, frowning for a minute, ideas of a shower long gone. Jennie finally turned and tugged her own clothes out of her locker.
“I wonder if someone started to go through your things and was interrupted. We can tell the staff on the way out. I know they’ve had wallets stolen in the past. That’s why they went to the member card locks on the lockers. So no one would forget their locks. I wonder if someone figured out a way to get around the keycards.”
Sam grinned and grabbed her clothes, launching into an explanation of how easily one might get through the keycard locks with the right tools as she dressed.
Jennie rolled her eyes. “Come on, Gadget Girl, I’ll buy you a donut.”
“I deserve two donuts after what that sadistic spin witch just put me through. That woman needs to be stopped before she hurts someone.”
Jennie rolled her eyes again, but a smile split her face as she pushed Sam toward the door.
Chapter 6
The group laughed as Andrew detailed his newest method of killing Logan. At this point, they’d dropped all mention of the game being related to Logan hurting Samantha; it was simply a game to see who could come up with the most creative way of taking Logan out.
Earlier in the week, someone had taped a picture of a baby seal to the copy room wall and the whole office had been playing darts on it.
Samantha walked into the room and took the chair Logan had saved her at the conference table. Sara, Kaeden, Andrew, Logan, Jennie, Chad, and now Samantha, had all gathered for lunch.
The new members of Sutton Capital were bonding. Kaeden and Andrew had apparently attended the same camp, only at different times, when they were younger. Sara and Samantha started hanging out when Sam found out Sara was designing her own robotic prosthesis to take the place of the traditional prosthesis she wore on her left arm.
They used a 3D printer to create parts and had been brainstorming ways to make the hand not only perform all the tasks a natural hand could, but also function in ways a typical human hand could not.
“What did I miss?” Sam asked, surveying the group with her gaze as she hung her purse over the arm of one of the chairs and tossed a take-out bag on the table in front of Logan. If anyone noticed that Sam now delivered his lunch to him more days than not, they didn’t comment on it.
Jennie spoke up first. “Andrew was just telling us how he was going to kill Logan with a staple gun and plastic wrap. I’m not convinced it will work,” she said with a grin.
“Oh!” Sam sat up straight and grinned at Logan. “I figured out how I’d kill you.”
Logan groaned but returned her smile. “Why do I have a feeling I’m going to regret letting this game continue?”
“Let’s hear it, Sam. How are you going to take the big guy down?” Sara asked.
“I’m not,” she said, as though she’d just announced something brilliant. “I’d make him do it.”
There was a collective stilling of everyone at the table, and Logan felt a creep of unease crawl up his spine. Even in his screwed-up state, no way he’d take his own life? Right?
Chad spoke first. “You wanna spell that out, Sam?”
“First, I’d figure out who mattered the most to him—family, friends, whoever he cared about. Then, I’d set those people up, slipping into their lives and planting evidence. I’d make it look like they were dealing drugs, or involved in an affair, or something criminal, anything that would destroy them if it were discovered. A lot of that can be done by computer, and if you’re good, you can do it without leaving a trail. When everything is in place, I’d contact Logan and let him know he had forty-eight hours to commit suicide or I’d release the info on his friends and family. Even if the people were never convicted of the crimes I set them up for, their lives would be destroyed, or at least interrupted in a pretty significant way. He’d do anything to keep them from that fate, including taking his own life. It’s perfect.”
Jennie cleared her throat. “Why give him forty-eight hours?”
“What am I, a monster? He needs time to come to grips with it. A chance to say goodbye.” She smiled and looked around the room. “Did I win?”
Dead silence met her until Logan cleared his throat. “Yeah, Sam. You won.”
Jennie was the first to break the tension as she burst out laughing. “Holy crap, you scare the crap out of me, girl.”
When everyone stopped laughing and Sam shrugged, seemingly satisfied in her standing as queen of the murder conspirators, Jennie spoke up again. “Hey, Sam, did you tell Chad about your locker yesterday? At the gym?”
“Nope. I figured it was just someone trying to grab wallets, like you said.”
“I think you should tell him, just in case,” Jennie said, biting her lip as though uncertain.