Page 9 of Taming Tesla

SIX

Cari

As soon as Patrick and I are dressed, we head back down the bar. It’s empty, a handwritten sign stuck to the door that says:

CLOSED

RE-OPEN @ 6 PM.

“Where is everyone?” I ask, looking around for Conner and Tess.

“In the office,” Patrick says, stopping abruptly. “I have to tell you something before you go in there,” he says, reaching out to grab my wrist, stopping me beside him. I can tell by the tone of his voice that whatever he has to say, I’m not going to like it.

He’s right. When he tells me that Declan had security cameras installed in Gilroys without telling anyone, I don’t have to ask him if Declan saw us together, the look on his face says it all. “I didn’t know,” he says again, his fingers tightening around my wrist for a moment before letting me go completely. “If I’d known, I never would’ve—”

“I believe you,” I say the same thing he said to me, and it’s true. Patrick has done and said a lot of things that have made me question who he really is, but no version of him that I’ve met over the past week would do something like that. Not to me and not to anyone else. “Has anyone else…” I swallow hard, shame and regret thick and heavy in my throat. Not for what we did. For the way, I behaved that day. The way I goaded Patrick into behaving.

“No,” he shakes his head. “I made him wipe the last three days from the hard drive. As far as anyone’s concerned, the feed went down when the storm hit.” He looks over at the pool table, brow furrowed like he doesn’t like what he’s seeing. “The good news is that with the cameras, we might be able to prove Lisa is lying about—” he stops abruptly like he can’t even bring himself to say what she’s accusing him of out loud. “Come on,” he says, cocking his head toward the hallway. “Let’s go see what else Declan caught on camera.”

The door to the office is open. I see Conner behind the desk, staring at the computer screen. He clicks the mouse now and then, scribbling notes without looking. Tess is hovering over his shoulder, pointing at the screen and muttering to herself. Declan is standing in the corner, thick arms crossed over his massive chest, looking like someone took his favorite toy. When we walk in, his gaze flickers over me, and I have to force myself not to look away. He looks miserable. I can’t say I feel all that bad for him.

“I went all the way back to the night you broke-up with Templeton,” Conner says without looking up from the screen, still clicking and scribbling. “Got him grabbing you—Cap’n coming to the rescue.” He gives the mouse in his hand a final click before sitting back in his chair to look at us. “I also have Templeton talking to Lisa.”

“She’s a waitress,” I say, not understanding why he was so excited. “Maybe he was ordering a drink.”

“Nope,” he says, shaking his head. “She was a patron, sitting three stools away from the action. I’ve got them chatting each other up for almost an hour before you even show up. When Templeton leaves, she slips out less than a minute later.”

“She didn’t apply for a job until a week later,” Tess says, picking up the thread. “And you’re right. She totally spit in your food when we had lunch on Saturday.”

“Told you so,” I mutter under my breath, skirting around the desk to get a look at the screen they’re both watching. Conner has the feed sped up, and I watch Lisa zip back and forth across the screen for a few seconds before it dawns on me. “She was there today. They all seemed pretty chummy. It wouldn’t surprise me if they didn’t know each other somehow.”

“I’ve got a guy —”

“He means a nerd friend from MIT,” Tess says, and Conner glares at her for a second before continuing.

“—who can find her easy enough. If she knows James, he’ll be able to prove it. Combine that with the cam footage from the bar and eye-witness testimony of that night, I think we’ve got a slam dunk. As far as the vid—” He starts to say something but is cut off when his phone rings. Looking at the screen, he frowns before standing up. “I have to take this,” he says, stepping out into the hall. As soon as he’s gone, Tess slips into his seat.

“I still think Sara’s involved somehow,” she says, pushing the toe of her boot against the desk to give herself a slow spin in the chair.

Before I can disagree with her, Patrick beats me to it. “Sara doesn’t have anything to do with this,” he says, his tone so absolute that it set my teeth on edge. “Why would you even think that?”

“I don’t know… maybe because it makes total sense,” Tess says. “And because she’s still all exploding ovaries over you?”

“Exploding what?” He looks at me like he needs an interpreter. “I don’t even know what that means.”

“It means she wants to marry you and make little baby Cap’ns,” Tess says. “And don’t deny it. You know it’s true.”

“Sara’s a good person,” Patrick says. The fact that he doesn’t deny what Tess just said makes it hard to look at him. He knows how Sara feels about him and he’s still defending her.

“You’d be surprised what a girl is capable of when she sees the guy she wants to—”

“It doesn’t really matter, does it?” I divide a look between them before focusing on Tess. The last thing I want to listen to is Patrick defending his ex-girlfriend. “If she is involved, we’ll know soon enough.” Before any of us can say anything else, Conner ends his phone call in the hallway.

“That was Ryan,” he says, looking at Tess like he just swallowed a bug.

“Ryan? Ryan O’Connell?” Patrick says, looked as confused at Conner. “He’s still overseas, isn’t he?”

“Yeah—Henley is coming to Boston to see their dad.” He looks down at his phone like it just betrayed him. “He wants me to go with her.”

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