by Vivian Wood
“What, now?”
“Yes, now!” Erika snapped. “This is your last chance to see your name anywhere near the byline of this story.”
Cam bit her lip. She’d known this moment was coming. Hell, she’d wanted it for longer than she could’ve imagined. Only now that she was close enough to taste it, there was Smith to worry about.
Smith, and the fact she was fairly certain she was in love with him…
“Are you listening to me?” Erika growled, breaking Cam from her thoughts.
“Yes, yes,” Cam said, feeling a little breathless.
“How soon can you be here?”
“Um… I’m probably about ten minutes away.”
“Good. We’ll be waiting.”
Erika hung up, giving Cameron no choice but to tell the driver they were changing their destination. As the car turned toward the office and took her toward her fate, she sat in the back seat, staring out the windows.
She tried to breathe, but the in and out of air from her lungs did little to calm her fears. As she pulled up outside the newspaper's building, she briefly considered running. What would be the harm?
Except then Erika would tell Smith that Cam was a backstabbing bitch, and he’d dump her anyway. She felt a swell of emotions beginning to rise, and she shoved them back down. She still had to force herself to get out of the car, though.
She strode into the building, careful to act as though she had more confidence than she did. She left her luggage with the coat check, fairly certain that the meeting wouldn’t take long.
She tossed her long red hair when she got off the elevator, suddenly glad for her stockings and heels. They made her feel powerful.
She blew past the secretary at the reception desk, heading straight for the room where the board liked to meet. The walls in the newsroom were glass, so she spotted the editorial board before they saw her.
They were a bunch of aging men, their suits wrinkled and their heads balding. She counted six of them, plus Erika standing in her purple yoga pants and yellow stretchy top.
Erika saw Cam just before Cam opened the door. Her mentor’s face colored. Cam entered the room, ready to do battle.
“I’m here,” Cam announced, dropping her purse on the table. “Fresh off a flight from Japan. So let’s talk.”
She looked at the editors. They all stared back, running the emotional gamut from bored to annoyed. Several of them looked familiar to Cam, but she didn’t know their names off the top of her head.
“Cameron,” Erika said, coming around the table. “Take a seat.”
“I’ll stand, thanks,” Cam said, crossing her arms.
“Right,” Erika said. She looked to the board for help. “Umm. Do any of you want to take this one?”
“I will,” said a man in a tweed sport coat. “Cameron, you’ve been working undercover for us at Calloway Corp for almost two months. Is that right?”
“Yes,” Cam answered.
Another editor broke in, this one in a dark sweater. He seemed more friendly.
“We can’t continue to support you unless you agree to sit down with a reporter,” he said. “Erika has come clean with us about you working for Calloway, which… well. It wouldn’t be our choice. Having a reporter work undercover at the company is risky, to say the least.”
“So? What would you have me do?” Cam said, canting her head.
“Quit your job at Calloway,” the man said. “Come back to work. Talk to a reporter. Prepare yourself for a lot of questions from the government and other press outlets.”
“I have the whole experience documented. I wrote down everything, kept track of it as it was happening. I expect to be named in the byline,” Cam said.
The editors looked at each other nervously. Erika cut in.
“We can talk about that once you’ve returned.”
“No,” Cam said firmly. “I want what you promised me, in the beginning. And I want a promotion, to reporter.”
Erika’s jaw tensed. “Is that right?”
“Yeah. You want my material? You want to use my reports to sell papers? You get a reporter in the bargain. If not, just say so, because I can walk right out of here,” Cam shot back.
Erika looked at the editors. The nicer of the two men spoke up.
“Alright,” he said, sighing. “We’ll take you on as a reporter. But you have to turn over all your evidence right now.”
“Everything is stored in the cloud,” she said. She thought of Smith, and how pissed he was going to be when she told him of her deceit. “I can send it over as soon as I have time. I’ll just need twenty-four hours to tie up some loose ends.”
Erika’s brows arched. “Oh, is that all? You demand all this, then you say you need twenty-four hours?”
“Yes,” Cam said, her tone no-nonsense.
“We’ll send you a job contract,” interrupted the editor in the tweed coat. “Just send us the files as soon as you have the contract.”
“Fine,” Cam said. “I’ll be back here soon enough.”
She grabbed her purse and stalked out of the newsroom. She stopped and got her luggage from the coat check, then headed out into the street. Without any destination in mind, she walked a few blocks, then stopped and sat down on a bench.
She couldn’t stop thinking of the way Smith’s face would look when she told him the whole scheme. If he felt the way she did, or felt even a quarter of what she felt, he would be absolutely crushed.
She sat ramrod straight and tried to think of a way out of the situation that didn’t involve him never wanting to see her again. Nothing came to mind, no matter how hard she racked her brain.
Every single scenario she could come up with either had him swearing her off or her dropping out of his life forever. The only thing she could think of would be to let the paper publish her story without her name attached… but that would mean lying to Smith indefinitely.
It wasn’t something that Cameron could see herself doing. Lying to Smith was… it was wrong, if she was honest with herself about it.
She blew out a breath. She had to come clean to Smith. She knew he would be mad, even that he might never speak to her again. But if she thought she was in love with him, she owed him at least that much.
She stood up, unsteady on her feet, and looked around to hail a cab.
It was confession time.
26
Smith sat down at the bar. He ordered a whiskey, pulling his sunglasses off and setting them down on the bar. He was supposed to meet Lindsay Wu in a few minutes for a rundown of what she’d found out.
He drummed his fingertips on the bar while the bartender poured his drink. Lindsay walked in, turning heads as she crossed the bar. Her bright red wrap frock was eye-catchingly fitted on her petite frame. It reminded Smith of one of Cameron’s frocks, and he smiled as he thought of his girlfriend.
Maybe he’d ask her to wear that frock tonight, when they were out for dinner.
“Mr. Calloway,” Lindsay said, inclining her head as she slid onto the stool beside Smith. She laid a file before her on the bar.
“Miss Wu. Would you like a drink?”
Her smile was fleeting. “I would rather just get down to business.”
“Alright,” he said, pushing his glass away. “Let’s hear what you’ve got.”
She blew out a breath, then opened the file.
“I took the profiles of the top five people in your company, people who handled the money. That includes you, Mr. Calloway, as you instructed.”
He nodded, having nothing to add. She continued.
“I dug through everyone’s background. When you saw me at your father’s estate, I was still gathering information on members of the board. After that, I used my connections in the world of cybercrimes to… well, for lack of a better term, to hack into the personal computers of those people. What I found was… not just evidence that pointed to one person… it was damning.”
“And?”
“It looks like…”
she paused. “It looks like your father was the one who did it. He used his personal computer to move money from account to account within the company. He used an email address that is traceable to him to order the transactions. He used the same email to coordinate his cover up, using someone at Calloway Corp who he calls Stacey.”
He blinked. What she was saying… it wasn’t right.
“It can’t be,” he said. “That’s not possible.”
“I’m afraid it is, Mr. Calloway. And that isn’t the whole of it, I’m afraid. There’s more.”
Smith felt hostile.
“My mother is dead, so if you’re looking for someone else to paint with the same brush, you’re going to have to look somewhere else,” he said, gritting his teeth.
Lindsay hesitated, biting her lip, then shook her head.
“I’m sorry, Mr. Calloway.” She opened the file and slid it over. The first thing in the file was a photo depicting Cameron, hurrying into a building.
He clenched his fists. “What is this?”
“Your executive assistant, Cameron Turner. We looked her up… her name didn’t match the records we found. It took some digging, but I matched her to a Cameron Parker, who is employed by The Daily News. According to my hacker friends, she appears to have been fired recently, but these photos are from yesterday.”
He picked up the photos, looking at them with disbelief. They showed Cameron going into the newspaper's building, and then into The Daily News’ offices. Behind the photos was some information about Cameron Parker, along with a staff ID from The Daily News with her picture on it.
He looked up at Lindsay, aghast. “What the fuck?”
“Apparently Ms. Parker was assigned to pose as a secretary and look into your business practices. There are quite a few emails setting up her backstory and checking in on her, but I didn’t think them worth printing.”
Smith was stunned. He stared down at his drink for a full minute, cracking his knuckles. It took him a moment to get his emotions under control, to hide them behind a mask of nonchalance once more. When he looked up, his expression was blank.
“Are you absolutely certain about my father and Cameron?”
She nodded. “I have been very thorough.”
“Thank you,” he said, standing. “That’ll be all, then.”
Pausing to throw some money on the bar, he walked out. His fists were bunched tightly as he strode down the crowded street, ignoring his waiting car.
The things Lindsay had told him…
He felt betrayed. His father was stealing money from the business, and expecting Smith to… what? Not notice? Not care?
What his father was doing was not merely illegal, it was wrong on so many levels.
And Cameron… he had no idea what to do with her. He didn’t know her at all, that much was clear. Apparently he didn’t even know her real last name. Any positive feelings he’d had for her, especially since they started sleeping together, were phony.
In his mind, he started replaying every minute they’d been together. The first night they met, at the bar. Was that a setup? Had she looked into what sort of girls he liked, dressed the part, and played the brazen vixen?
Even setting that night aside, because he’d been a willing participant, there was so much more.
From the minute she’d walked into his office, the second she began to beg for her job, he’d been manipulated. She outright lied to him, not just at that moment, but dozens of times since then.
At a loss for what to do, Smith walked for almost an hour. He needed to deal with both Cameron and his father, sooner rather than later. He’d have to fire them both.
But while he could free his father from his job and likely see him thrown in jail, Smith didn’t quite know what to do with Cameron.
27
Cameron had it all worked out in her head. She was going to explain what had happened to Smith, as calmly as possible. He probably going to yell, or at least do his quiet but furious thing, but she was just going to put up with whatever he dished out.
She was parked across the street from his penthouse, amping herself up for what was to come. She took a deep breath and got out of her car.
She would just calmly repeat the details of the situation until he cooled off. It would all be okay.
She walked up to the building and scanned her key card. The door opened, to her relief. She pushed her hair behind her ears and hurried toward the elevators. She pulled her key card out and swiped it next to the bank of elevators, attempting to call one down.
But instead of opening a set of elevator doors, swiping the card emitted an angry boing boing noise. She looked at her card, and swiped it again. Boing boing.
After trying a couple more times, she put the card away and pulled out her cell phone. She sent a quick text to Smith.
I’m downstairs. My key card isn’t working.
She chewed on her lip. Of all the days for her key card not to work… She jumped when her phone buzzed in her hands. It was a text from Smith.
Coming down.
She inhaled and exhaled slowly, trying to center herself. She fidgeted with her dress. It was super short, made entirely of white lace. She’d spent a full hour picking it out, trying to look as innocent yet sexy as possible.
Not that she thought he would be so shallow and foolish as to be hung up on her looks when she had such devastating news, but a little reminder of what they had didn’t hurt.
Cam waited nervously for the ding of the elevator. When it came, she tried not to jump out of her skin. The door slid open to reveal Smith, dressed in all black, ready to go out.
The blank expression on his face made her smile falter as he got off the elevator.
“What?” she asked, already knowing something was wrong.
She moved to embrace him, but he turned away, pacing.
“I thought maybe you’d want to tell me,” he said, looking at the floor.
“Well…” she said, biting her lip. “There is something I want to talk to you about.”
“Really? Does it have anything to do with the fact that you work for The Daily News?” he asked, challenging her.
Her jaw dropped. “I—”
“You want to know something?” he asked, shaking his head. “I can’t believe I was so stupid. The night I saw you going into your apartment with some guy…”
“Smith, I—”
“He works for The Daily News too, apparently. See, I got a private investigator to look into the people around me. I didn’t mean you, but she came back with this… this story. About you and the people you work for, really work for.”
She was silent. He chuckled mirthlessly.
“Nothing to say now, huh? No clever little lies?”
“I was going to tell you.”
“Yeah? When? When the paper pulled you back in to your real job? When you got tired of my cock?”
She felt desperate, her voice rising. “I was coming here to tell you!”
He stopped pacing a few feet from her. He looked at her, his face contorting with rage. “SO WHAT?!”
She blinked at his shouted words.
“I thought— if you have time to get over your father’s deceit—”
“Yeah? You thought that I would just stop being mad? That I— who never wanted this fucking business, I’ll remind you— would just forget that the one woman I confided in betrayed me? That would be so lovely, wouldn’t it? So convenient.”
“I never planned for any of this to happen.”
“Except you did! You had to have known, from the moment that you saw me, or at least from the moment that you gave me the woe is me speech, that this was going to happen. You’ve set a goal, and you mastered it,” he said, shaking his head. “And I was stupid enough to fall for it.”
“Smith, really, I didn’t mean to hurt you. I care about you.”
He gave a lopsided smile, and pulled a small velvet box out of his pocket. He opened the box to show her a simple gold ring, no gemsto
nes or bling anywhere. She looked up at him, confused.
“This has been in my family for generations. It’s for the heir to the family fortune to use to propose; its lack of adornment is supposed to emphasize that marriage is about more than the ring. I’ve been carrying it around for a couple of weeks now, trying to find the right way to broach the subject. See where you stand on marriage.”
He snapped the box closed. She stared at him, uncertain.
“Well, it’s a good thing that I never found the right way. See, I was foolish, I thought maybe there was a future for the two of us. And if I’d dangled marriage in front of you… we might’ve been engaged, or worse, when I found out.”
That final thought pushed her over the edge. She lost her cool completely, and started to cry.
“I’m so sorry, Smith. When it started, you were just a job… I never thought that I’d come to l—”
“Don’t!” he interrupted her. “Don’t say that. Don’t use that word.”
“It was an impossible situation—”
“You say that like I don’t have a whole company to run! Tomorrow, you go back to The Daily News, but I go back to all the people who trusted my father, looked up to him. I have to beg forgiveness, for something I didn’t even do!”
“Smith—”
“You know what? I might’ve been a demanding boss. I might’ve needed too much. But the only thing I ever asked of you outside the office was honesty.” He grimaced, walking over to scan his key card. The elevators opened. “Apparently, that simple thing was too much to ask.”
He headed inside the elevator.
“Wait! Smith, don’t leave!” she cried.
He crossed his arms, and the elevator doors slid closed. The front door opened behind Cameron, and she turned to find two security guards heading her way.
“No!” she howled.
“Ma’am, we need you to leave the property,” one said.
“If I can just see Smith, talk to him…” she said.
“We’re authorized to give you this,” the other guard said, handing her a packet. “Now we need you to leave.”
