Page 14 of Pressure

“You could vet me and make me a member,” Marissa said. “If that is, I find reason to stay more than a week. My hope would be to finish my audit by midweek. At that point I’ll know what kind of work actually needs to be done.”

Lance glared. “You assume work needs doing.”

“I believe it was you who always said code could always be made better.”

Lance just shook his head. Now was not the time.

“Anyway, it sounds like a reasonable plan to me. The question is, will it be OK for Marissa to stay here on the property through the week?”

Russell spoke up then. “I personally would feel better if a vetted member stayed with her. Are any of you free?”

Lance sighed. He had a feeling someone would suggest that. “I can stay,” he said quietly.

Marissa shook her head. “That’s not a good idea.”

“It seems reasonable to me,” Dakota said. “Lance is the one who built the system. If you have questions about his ones and zeros, you have him right here at your fingertips.”

Lance laughed. Marissa wasn’t the type to ask questions. She just deconstructed and reconstructed lines of code until she found the answers she was looking for. This morning’s little question-and-answer session was out of character for her. Once she got into a job, she would zone out and not come back up for air until she was done or hit a stumbling block she couldn’t get over on her own.

“Isabelle could stay,” Garrett’s voice crackled over the intercom. “She won’t be there twenty-four seven because she’s supervising at the hotel some shifts, but she can stay.”

Marissa rolled her eyes but didn’t say anything.

“That works for me as long as Isabelle doesn’t object,” Lance said.

Garrett agreed to talk to her when he got into town tomorrow.

“Marissa, can we have you step out? You can work from my office for a bit,” Elijah said, tossing her a key.

Lance watched as she gathered her laptop and stepped out of the room.

“Next on the agenda, has anyone heard from Samuel this week? We’re starting to worry about him,” Elijah said when she was gone.

Lance frowned. “That’s odd. I know he’s a bit of a mystery but it’s not like him to miss a meeting and not call about it.”

“Tell me about it. I reached out to David because he knows him better than a lot of us, but David hasn’t heard anything yet either.”

Russell eyed Lance and gave him a subtle nod. The rest of the group didn’t know how much contact Samuel had with them for his own personal security when he was out of the country. Russell was signaling for him to ping Samuel and see if he was reachable.

The rest of the meeting went by swiftly as there was little to address. They had covered most of it in the regular monthly meeting last weekend. Thankfully, nobody gave Lance shit about his ex-girlfriend being in the building.

In the lobby, they scattered, with some heading upstairs to their suites and others leaving for dinner.

Elijah went upstairs to his wife and Lance headed for the office to check on Marissa.

“Hey,” she said, pulling off her headphones when he came in. “Do you want to go get some dinner and talk?”

He lifted an eyebrow. That was a surprising turn of events.

“Yeah sure, let’s go. You can stay at the Glenview tonight and we’ll sort out your arrangements here tomorrow or after the weekend is done.”

She nodded and slipped her computer into her bag. “Sounds good.”

Outside, Lance watched from his own car as Marissa climbed into her driver’s seat and started the engine. With Samuel missing and Marissa Sullivan back in his life, it had definitely turned into a very strange day. He wasn’t quite sure what to do with it all.

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