Kyle had a notepad in front of him. “I’ll need names, but then we should probably play it safe and run traces on anyone in the building, and also at least the employees who would come into contact with Noelle.”
“Whoa. I don’t think that’s a good idea. I don’t want to invade anyone’s privacy.” Somehow she’d thought they would look at her system, tell her she was being paranoid, and she would be on her way. She should never have told her dad about it. She should have sucked it up and gone to company security and taken her chances. “Look, I think I’ve made a mistake, and I am sorry for wasting your time.”
She started to stand.
“Sit down, Noelle.”
Noelle sat at the sound of that commanding voice. It did not escape her that everyone was staring, but oddly, not at her. They were staring at the man who’d ordered her to sit. She got the feeling they were all surprised those deep-toned words had come from Hutch.
“Dude, you sound serious. Good for you, man.” Taggart nodded Hutch’s way.
Why was she sitting? She forced herself to stand again and reached for her cane. “Thank you for your time. Again, I’m sorry for wasting it.”
Hutch’s eyes met hers, and she felt a bit pinned by them. “Ms. LaVigne, the only thing you’re wasting is the unique opportunity to figure out if you truly have a problem. If you thought you could fix this some other way, you wouldn’t be here. I assume you’re going to ignore the problem now that you’ve decided we’re going to be too much trouble. There’s a reason you didn’t in the first place. If you turn your laptop over to company security, what do you think is going to happen?”
“Hutch, perhaps we should…” Charlotte began.
Her husband reached out and took her hand in his. “No. I want to see how this plays out. You wanted him in the field. He’s going to need to take charge. And possibly learn how to protect his balls. She looks like she knows how to wield that cane.”
She did, actually. Her self-defense teacher had believed deeply in turning anything around him into a weapon. He’d been careful to teach her how to make that cane work for her in more ways than one. “I think it’s not any of your business.”
“Oh, but it is,” Hutch contradicted. “Ian, you don’t fully understand what’s going on here.”
Taggart’s lips were turned up in a ghost of a smile, as though he loved the drama but wasn’t going to make it too obvious. “Oh, I think I do.”
“She’s embarrassed and trying to find a way out,” Hutch said, his expression grim. “I made an ass of myself because I thought this might be a Charlotte setup, and I hadn’t gotten a good look at her, so I was an asshole.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” Was he about to be an asshole again?
“It means you are the sweetest thing I’ve seen in a long time, and I regret the fact that I’m not going to get a chance to do anything but work with you. But you should understand that I believe you have a real problem.”
She was not going to think about what those words did to her. “That’s not what you said before.”
“That’s because I hadn’t looked into the fact that someone recently died at your lab.” He managed to make the words an accusation. “You didn’t bother to mention that. You said there was an accident and the lab had to be shut down to ensure it was safe. You did not mention that one Madison Wallace died in that accident.”
“I didn’t think I needed to.” She knew she should have, but the last thing she needed was her father to think she was in more danger than she was already in. He would have a bodyguard sleeping at her place, and that was not necessary.
“I think you knew exactly what you needed to say and you didn’t,” he shot back. “You don’t want to be here. You don’t want the disruption to your life. You don’t want to acknowledge the problem might be bigger than you’re willing to admit. And you’re in a bind. You know something’s going on at your office but your boss—while brilliant—is also vindictive and seems to genuinely enjoy firing people and creating as much drama as she can. No matter what they find on that system, you’ll be under close scrutiny.”
He wasn’t wrong about that. “Well, I’ve got friends who are good with computers. They can look into it.”
Did he think she wasn’t connected? She literally worked in a lab. She was surrounded by people who were obsessed with computers.
Not once had she thought about going to one of them. Not once.
His eyes narrowed slightly. “I think you don’t want to rock the boat with your father. I also think you’re the type of woman who thinks she’s smarter than everyone else.”
“Hey,” Kyle said.
Hutch held a hand out. “You are not the primary on this case.”
“Well, we’re not going to have a case at all if you keep talking,” Kyle complained.
“I definitely think I’m smarter than you.” He was starting to irritate her. And her heart was pounding because no one challenged her like this. No one. She was the sweet, innocent Noelle who couldn’t walk as well as the rest of them. She was treated with a politeness no one seemed to understand marginalized her, too, because she wasn’t allowed to be passionate. She could hurt herself. She was weak and fragile.
It felt good to snarl a little his way.
He stood, his palms flat against the desk, as though he didn’t quite trust himself if he didn’t plant them there. He stared at her, every lean line of his body predatory, and yeah, that did something for her, too. “You probably are, but I’m about to prove that I’m a better game player than you are because I’ve already hacked your system. I did it with my phone. With my phone, Noelle. That’s how easy it was. You have spyware all over it.”
She gasped at the thought. She wasn’t bad with computers herself, but she’d had no hint that there was spyware. “But I have security on it.”
“And whoever uploaded it to your system knew exactly how to get through,” Hutch explained. “Do you know what else I found on your system? Because I can let you guess or I can send it straight to your father and let him handle the problem.”
She felt her face flush because she thought she knew what he was talking about. It was habit for her to write down her thoughts. It helped her organize them. She had lists all over her system, but only one that Hutch could threaten her with. “You wouldn’t. You don’t have any reason to.”
Kyle frowned. “I seem to be lost here. What exactly are we doing?”
“She believes someone murdered Madison Wallace, and she wants to find the killer.” Hutch let the words sit there like a bomb that was definitely going to go off right in her face. “On her own. She’s got lists of suspects. She thinks someone screwed around with the chemicals Madison Wallace was using. And somehow she’s not connected the dots here.”
“There is such a thing as coincidence.” But now that he said the words out loud, she could hear how dumb she sounded. “I don’t know why anyone would hurt Madison. Not for the same reasons they would hurt me. Everyone hated her, but she was a rock star. From what I can tell, she was on the verge of a breakthrough. We didn’t work on the same projects, so I don’t think my computer problems are connected.”