Page 101 of No Holds Barred

“Ange lost her iPad,” Rex said, nodding in Angelica’s direction. “She’s panicking.”

“You haven’t found it yet?” Hope raised her eyebrows.

Angelica pressed her lips together and shook her head with wide eyes. “I feel naked without it.”

Hope’s cheeks brightened with a blush, and Angelica instantly regretted what she said. That was far too close to flirting for comfort. She slid her gaze to Rex to see if he’d noticed anything, but he didn’t even seem to budge from what he had his nose buried in now.

“To answer your question though, we seem to be missing half the people we need to film with.” Rex looked around the room. “No owners.”

“Again?” Hope breathed out and rolled her eyes. “They vanished on Cadence earlier this morning too.”

“Yeah.” Rex cleared his throat. “Incoming.”

“What?” Hope asked.

Angelica thought the same thing, but she didn’t say it out loud, but as soon as she raised her gaze, she was met with Josef’s angry face as he barreled toward them. Perfect. Angelica built up her armor. After the argument with him the night before, the last thing she wanted was to run face-first into that again, especially with the accusations he’d made quite loudly.

And since her microphone had been on at that point, she had to wonder how many of the crew had heard it.

But she was too scared to even ask.

If they knew, then surely Logan would have brought it up when he was questioning her that morning, right? Angelica clenched her hands into tight balls and waited for Josef to reach them and start on whatever new thing had crawled up his butt today.

“What are we doing?” Josef asked, though he didn’t sound instantly angry either.

“Waiting,” Rex said, locking his eyes on Angelica. “Not something we want to be doing either.”

“Waiting for what?” Josef looked to her.

“No one can seem to find the owners,” Angelica said. “I was just about to go in search of them.”

“I think I’ll join you,” Hope added as she turned and followed Angelica away from the two men. It was the quickest escape Angelica had ever had where Josef was concerned.

She shuddered as they stepped into the back offices and looked around even though Angelica was fairly certain the owners weren’t there. Because if they were, they would have been found already. Angelica breathed relief as it was just the two of them.

“So a missing iPad and three missing owners. Do you think we should call the FBI in for a raid?” Hope laughed as if she’d made the best joke on the planet.

Angelica rolled her eyes. “I’m more concerned about the iPad.”

“Why? Got state secrets on there?”

“No.” Angelica rubbed her hands together. “But I do have all of my notes for this entire episode on there. And the budget that I need to deal with because of the Leanne fiasco.”

“Logan’s not doing that?”

“We’re working on it together.” Angelica rubbed the back of her neck. “But it’s going to be hard to work off memory for filming.”

“You didn’t back up your iPad to the cloud?” A deep line formed in the center of Hope’s forehead.

Angelica shifted her gaze to Hope and then immediately flushed. “The what?”

“Oh my God, Angel. You…” Hope stopped and put her hands up. “You live and breathe by your iPad, and you don’t know how to back up the information?”

“Lyric does all of that for me—I think.”

“Holy crap.” Hope laughed. “I can’t believe you don’t back up your files!”

Angelica’s cheeks burned with embarrassment. It wasn’t ever an issue that she had before. Because she was rarely ever without her iPad within reach. But now… God, this just annoyed the fuck out of her. Where was it?