Page 103 of Lesson In Honesty

“I need someone to explain this to me. Tabitha’s idea of playtime is what, exactly?”

“She likes playing whack-a-mole with bad people.”

Okay, now it sounded like he should stop asking questions and bury any and all parts of the conversation somewhere where the Feds couldn’t find it.

“Did someone say whack-a-mole?” Tabby’s voice joined Grit’s on the line.

“Hey, little tiger. Mack requires an exterminator. Know anyone?”

“I know everyone. Which rat needs dispatching, Mack?”

There were a multitude of personal and moral boundary lines to consider, especially if the double entendre or six weren’t a joke. Having met Tabitha, he was willing to bet they were not yanking his leg. The question was, what level of punishment did he truly want for the Corrinthian Tech guys?

They outranked him in wealth and connections, that was for sure. They dominated several markets and were rumored to have government contracts; in the eyes of the law and justice systems, they were probably untouchable.

Terrorizing women and stealing classified data would get them a slap on the wrist, if that. Daisy and Hannah deservedmore, to be able to sleep in their beds at night without wondering if someone was going to break in and murder them.

“Corrinthian Technologies,” he heard himself say from a distance. “Todd Watkins, Brear Duffy, and Christen King.”

She muttered them under her breath. “Give me a second.”

Levi and Grit started talking about something mundane, filling the suspenseful silence as Mack’s brain and instincts clashed. What the hell had he just done?

Forcing himself to sip his rapidly cooling coffee, he tried not to let the nauseous feeling ruin the beauty of a cold, sunny morning in the Denver forest.

He’d taken a positive step, he reminded himself. The law wasn’t going to help protect his assets or his people, his goddamn friends. The backstabbing mole might see the inside of a jail cell, but he was in the mood to spill blood.

“Did you intend to give me a lovely gift, Mack?” Tabitha’s voice was full of glee now, happy and chipper.

“Ah…”

“Those are three very bad men in escalating degrees of wrongness. They’ll see the error of their ways within the week. Is that soon enough for you?”

“I… yes?”

“Perfect. And seeing as you’ve given me a gift, I’m going to offer you one in return. A freebie, if you want it.” Coyness touched her words, seductive and alluring. “Sonja Williams, one of your top clearance geeks, is in cahoots with them. She was heavily in debt to the tune of fifty-three thousand, seven hundred and thirty-two dollars and is now considerably cushioned by one million, three hundred and seventy six thousand dollars. I went ahead and transferred that over to your account, seeing as it rightfully belongs to you.”

Mack fumbled his mug, tempted to launch it over the railing. Pain stabbed him deep in the chest as the reality of a close friend’s betrayal shredded his heart. “You’re sure?”

“Always. I’ll track the stolen data and remove it from their network, but that doesn’t mean they won’t have hard copies. If they do, they’ll tell me where they keep them. Would you like me to handle the rat as well?”

Honestly, after this latest kick in the teeth, he just wanted to be done with the whole damn mess. Assessing the team for debt risk was something the company did routinely to avoid clusterfucks like this; he insisted on it because debt did strange things to a person—they’d take any risk, any shortcut, any viable means of eradicating that gaping money pit, regardless of the consequences.

Sonja either slipped through the cracks or… hell, he just didn’t know what she was capable of anymore. Her tech skills were certainly strong enough to hack into his system and alter the results—she was one of the original team who helped himbuildthe fucking system.

That meant she was dangerous not only to the projects his team had spent years working on, but to the very foundation of his company. She knew how his coding worked, the preventative and offensive blocks Tim would use to block her access, and how to circumnavigate it all.

“Tickity tock said the talking clock,” Tabitha warned in a sing-song voice.

He wasn’t a man who commissioned murder, he thought in despair. Reprimanding his team was such an uncommon occurrence, he’d forgotten the last time he’d done so. “Ask her why, Tabitha. Why she chose to do this instead of coming to me for help. Why she sold me, and her family, out and left us to hang.”

“I can do that. And then?”

“You’re smart, Tabitha. Highly intelligent. You can read people, right?”

“It’s one of my many, sought-after skills.”

“If she lies, pawns you off with excuses…” He couldn’t say it, couldn’t bite off the words and sentence a friend to hell.

---