Delilah
I had no idea what on earth Brandon was talking about. Of course, I didn’t have anything to do with his bank accounts being frozen. It was ridiculous that he and his friend would even think something like that. I almost started laughing right in his face when he said it, it was so preposterous.
“What was that all about?”
“Brandon is here. He fed me some story about his accounts being frozen and his friend thinking I had something to do with it… so bizarre.”
“Wait, were his accounts frozen? Is he really under investigation?”
“He says he’s not, but I don’t know what I believe. It’s too much of a disaster; I just don’t want anything to do with it right now.”
“Then, you better not turn around because he’s walking this way,” Mattie said as she smiled from ear-to-ear.
“Why are you smiling? This is bad. I don’t want to talk to him right now,” I said.
“Dance with me,” Brandon said as he pulled my hand and me toward the dance floor.
“No, Mattie doesn’t want to be left here alone. I need to stay with her,” I protested.
“I’m fine. You two go have fun,” she laughed.
“You’re the worst friend ever!”
“I really like Mattie,” Brandon softly said as he held onto me and we moved slowly with the music. “I need to feel you next to me. Whatever else is going on is just noise. This, right here between us, is real and I feel it. I know you feel it, too.”
“I’m sure that mass murderers have women that loved them, as well,” I snarked at him. “I can’t get mixed up in whatever is going on with you. It’s just not my style. I live a drama-free life.”
“Hey, me, too!” he said.
“No, you live a life where people are threatening you and hacking into your…” I trailed off as I started to think about the trouble I had been having at work. The hacker that was getting into accounts. The consultant who had helped me. The strange man with the exchange commission who had come in to interview me. I didn’t know how it was all connected, but it was starting to fit together.
“What?”
“Remember I told you I was having problems at work? There were coding issues and errors.”
“Yeah, that’s why Josh and the private investigator thought you probably had something to do with it all. Because you had access to my credit card and bank information through your system.”
“Do you believe me when I say I had nothing to do with it?”
“Yes.”
“You said a guy with a thick neck came and threatened you, right?”
“Yes, he was a really big dude. Looked like he’d been lifting weights with his neck and had arms bigger than my thighs.”
“A computer consultant came in to help me with my coding errors. The guy you’re describing sounds just like him. I remember Mattie and I talking about how we judged him and thought he couldn’t know anything about computers.
“But he fixed the errors. He came in and fixed them,” I said almost to myself as I started to trail off. “Unless, he had really planted the bug and then came in to use my access to get the information he needed. One day, he copied items to a flash drive. Shit, I think I did have something to do with
this. I let him copy files from my computer.”
Brandon didn’t seem as upset as I thought he would be after learning that I had pretty much given some dude direct access to his financial information. I certainly hadn’t done it on purpose, but still I was very reckless with private customer information and financial data.
“So, who is this guy, and why is he after me?”
“Oh, I don’t know all of that.”
“We have made a lot of progress on this together. Much more than I was able to make with my lawyer and the investigator this afternoon. I think we should take a break and dance,” Brandon said with a sly smile.