“There’s nothing…” he began, and then saw my expression and changed tack. “I’m going through everything to see if there has been a breach somewhere. Our security is pretty tight. Our IT company makes sure of that. I can’t work out how this happened. Whoever did it knew exactly what they were doing.” He sighed and went back to his work.
I sat and stared at the unfamiliar screen in front of me. I hadn’t the first idea about security, or hacking, or data breaches, or any of it. I knew about graphics. I knew about design. I knew how to make things look good, how to make someone’s eye go to exactly where you wanted it. But all this technical stuff, it just wasn’t me. For the second time that morning, I quickly searched the internet for Clover House, and for the second time, my heart sank as the screen was flooded with praise about their many awards, glitzy events, and impressive charity work. I clicked on the website, and my eyes scanned over it. I didn’t even know what I was looking for. There wasn’t going to be a section devoted to their hacking strategies or a PDF on corporate sabotage to download.
I glanced over at Drew. He looked tired. His anxious face was glued to the screen, desperately searching for any clue that might give us some insight. I knew he wouldn’t find anything. These people weren’t going to pull off a stunt like this and then leave evidence behind. They were professionals. I browsed the ‘About Us’ section of the website and saw their smug faces staring back at me. One of the faces looked vaguely familiar and I realized with a jolt that he was the man who held the door open for me at Antoinette’s yesterday. Those same blue eyes stared out at me. What a small world. One of these people, maybe him, knew exactly what had happened. The only way anyone was going to discover anything would be from the inside.
Something inside me flipped over at the thought. Infiltrating them was the only way we would ever find out what had happened. Maybe Beatrix was wrong – I wasn’t as useless as she seemed to think. There was no way I could go ahead with my travel plans while they struggled to keep the business alive, and I clearly wasn’t needed in the studio. I tilted the screen slightly so that Drew wouldn’t see what I was doing, but he was oblivious. I took a deep breath to brace myself and started to read all about the wonderful internship that Clover House was so proud of. According to the blurb, they were so committed to supporting new graduates, they might even fast track my application. My heart pounding, I quickly sent them my details – congratulating myself on having the foresight to give them my mother’s maiden name and Effie as my first name. A warm wave of fear flooded me as I thought of all the ways I could possibly be traced. In a matter of minutes, I had upped the privacy settings on my social media accounts to the highest levels and essentially disappeared from the internet.
Chapter 4
KEEGAN
TO GET TO MY office, I had to run a gauntlet of persistent, high-pitched women and men eager to seem as though they were my trusted advisor. First Sophie at the front desk, who seemed to think she had to stand up and shout some pleasantry at me every time I entered, drawing everyone’s attention to the fact that I was there. I don’t know who told her that was necessary, but it drove me crazy. Marc from Accounting stopped me in the hall to ask if I’d seen the basketball game last night. Then there were the girls in the PR and Marketing departments. At any given time, half of them were fluttering their fake eyelashes at me, while the other half were permanently angry with me for a few ill-judged flirtations when I had first joined the Boston office.
Let’s face it – fucking the boss is never the way to get ahead in any job. And in this case, it pretty much guaranteed that there was no way you were going to make your way up the ladder where I might have to deal with you regularly, and I wasn’t the golden boy that some thought I was when I first arrived. There was a reason that the head of Marketing was Brian. Not only was he the best we had, but he was gay and I clearly wasn’t his type. The daily gauntlet of making my way through PR and Marketing was a constant cringing reminder of my early mistakes at the company.
After the gauntlet, the dragon. Sean. I will never know where he lurked waiting for me, but it was rare that I would make it into the safety of my own office without him ambushing me and listing a string of my failures and weaknesses. This morning, he was already in my office sitting at my desk, playing with my stress ball. I resisted the urge to ask him what he was doing in my space, choosing instead to completely ignore him as I took off my jacket and checked my voicemail.
It wasn’t long before the barrage started.
“Marketing hasn’t got your figures. They needed them two days ago. The Design team didn’t see you yesterday at all. Do you understand how busy we are? How critical this time is? How careful we need to be?”
“Marketing will have the figures when they are ready. I’m actually waiting for an email back from you about a few things for the report. The Design team didn’t need to see me yesterday. And yes, I understand how this animated game is fundamental to the continuation of life on Earth. Are you fucking done?”
“Look,” he spat out as he got up to walk around the office, straightening pictures and moving piles of paper around on my credenza. “I know you’d rather be back in Ireland chasing farm animals and getting drunk, but some of us actually care about this company. Do not mess this up.”
“You’re right,” I agreed, looking up at him with my very best nonchalant smile. “I would much rather be back home living my own life, but here I am, stuck living yours. But whatever you might think, I have no intention of fucking anything up. If you have a problem with my actual work, then you can raise it with me in a meeting with the shareholders. Until then, kindly fuck off.”
I waited until he was out of sight and closed my eyes, taking a deep breath and releasing it slowly. He was always a pain, but lately he was unbearable, watching my every move and sectioning off the company so that we were overseeing different departments. At least it meant I didn’t have to work directly with him. The numbers on my screen were a welcome escape, and I let myself become totally immersed in them. Numbers were safe, they were reliable. A two never turned into a six. The total column only changed when it had to.
Although this was not what I have envisioned for myself as a child or even a decade ago, I had a talent with numbers and spreadsheets and found that my work stood up to scrutiny.
The minutes ticked by, and the hours followed. I sipped my water and took pleasure in the jumble of spreadsheets merging into one unified work of art. A tap on the glass door made me jump, and I braced myself for more flak from Sean. Instead, it was Beverly, the janitor. I gave her a wave, and she came into the office. Lovely Beverly with her warm smile and wonderful dry humor. Beverly was my only ally in the Clover House world. She was in her sixties, but there was no faster worker. She couldn’t care less that I was supposedly her boss, and I’d lost count of the times I had been told off by her. I pretended to put up with it, but really I enjoyed being put in my place by her sharp Irish tongue. She reminded me of my late grandmother.
I like her so much that she came on Friday mornings to my condo and cleaned, even though I didn’t need a cleaning lady for myself and she didn’t really need the extra cash.