Page 100 of The Five Year Lie

But then he doesn’t. I’m waiting on my couch, TV off, just listening to the silence. Buzz’s whistling has stopped, too.

Fifteen minutes pass, and then thirty. My mind wanders to the last day I saw Drew.

And, to be accurate, I barely saw him at all. I was asleep in his bed, naked, because he’d woken me up in the middle of the night for sex.

My phone alarm went off while he was drying himself after a shower. I squinted sleepy eyes in his direction, and he sat down on the bed and played with my hair for a minute. It had the unfortunate effect of making me drowsy. And I dozed off when I should have been getting up for work.

He kissed me on the hair, though, before he left. Still, I didn’t get up. I don’t know why. I’ll always regret it. That was my last chance to talk to him, and I had no idea.

And now I’m sitting here mooning over it like a dummy.

I pick up my phone and text Zain a GIF of an old woman in a rocking chair.

Ariel: This is me, waiting for you. Did you find it?

Zain: Actually let’s not do this right now. I’ll see you in the morning.

Ariel: Why?

But he doesn’t answer.

I’m so frustrated I could spit. But I head upstairs, where I’ll undoubtedly waste another hour googling judges and Jacob Markers all over the interwebs.

33

FIVE YEARS AGO, AUGUST

On the morning it’s all going down, Brainz makes sure to go into the office bright and early.

If anyone ever checks the log, they’ll see he tagged into the building around eight and logged into his terminal shortly after.

But he’s not getting any ordinary work done. Not with TheBoss messaging him every five minutes.

TheBoss:Is the kid at work yet?

Brainz lifts his eyes and scans the room. Drew Miller’s chair is empty.

Brainz: Not yet. But it’s early. You make the dropyet?

TheBoss:Going in now.

Brainz: Keep me posted.

Brainz hopes TheBoss doesn’t chicken out. He’s been a solid partner so far. But you can never know for sure. Some people talk big but then panic when shit gets real.

Today’s mission is twofold—get rid of Drew Miller, and clear out all the evidence that little asshole discovered on the network.

Actually, the mission is threefold. Brainz has an extra little surprise planned. But TheBoss doesn’t know that yet.

Everything is on a need-to-know basis. And TheBoss nearly lost his mind when Brainz finally laid out all the dirt on Drew Miller. “A spy? We have a fucking spy? I’ll fucking kill him.”

That’s pretty much what Brainz had expected. So he was ready with a plan. “It’s personal with this kid, so we’re going to shut down the LiveMatch beta ahead of schedule. If he was just a corporate spy, we could fry his ass. But this isn’t going to go away.”

TheBoss fumed some more. But in the end, he agreed. They’d sit on LiveMatch for a while, until the dust settled. After all, it will be just as valuable six months from now.

Then he laid out a very specific plan for removing the evidence from the Chime Co. network. Just to cover their tracks.

“You are a goddamn genius,” TheBoss said when he’d heard the whole thing.