Downpour (Alpha Love - A Paranormal Werewolf Shifter Romance Book 1) (21 page)

If you can get your hands on another sample, do it and don’t tell anyone. Run the tests you need outside of the company. What you’ve found is something incredible, don’t let LC destroy it. We’ve done too much of that already.

Be well.

Jennie

After the third reading, Sofie puts the letter down and holds her head in her hands. She had thought that Jennie had sold her out to Luke, but it turns out she couldn’t have been more wrong. She can’t believe that Jennie’s been fired, without any explanation, any real reason.
Well, there was a reason
, Sofie reminds herself.
It was because I had sent Jennie something and asked her to work on it outside of the rules. This is my fault.
She feels the full weight of her guilt settle on her chest like a dead weight.

She tries to think clearly, focusing on the advice that Jennie has given her. She knows what her friend was talking about. Ashton himself had admitted that the rock, among other things in the canyon, had special properties. She was itching to find out what that meant. However, Luke wouldn’t care about the scientific importance of what she’d found.
All he wants is to get those dollar bills out of the ground, what he destroys in the process isn’t of any interest
, she thinks.

She feels another flush of anger come over her as she thinks about her boss and his selfishness. Her train of thought is broken when there’s an insistent knocking on her door. She looks down at herself, realizing that she’s still wearing her clothes from the day before.

“Just a minute,” she calls out as she strips them off as quickly as she can and struggles into her pajamas, managing to fall over in the process.

“You okay in there, Sofe?” Finn’s voice sounds amused on the other side of the door. She throws open the door, remembering to stretch and yawn to complete the look. “Hi.” Finn looks at her dubiously. “How you feeling?”

“Much better.” Sofie nods emphatically. “Think I just needed some rest, feeling good as new this morning.” She reminds herself not to lay it on too thick.

“Great, well, you might want to get ready. Luke will be over here soon with the ecologist.” Finn looks at her like he’s trying to figure out what he’s missing.

“Today? The ecologist is coming today?” Sofie had known that it would be soon but hadn’t quite figured that Luke would be so prompt.

“Apparently. Figured you’d know already, but it’s nice to know I’m not always the last to hear.” Finn smiles at her.

“Alright, well, guess I better hit the shower.” Sofie starts to close the door, but Finn puts his hand out stopping it from closing.

“You okay?” He gives her that searching look that he gets when he’s trying to fit the pieces of a technical puzzle together. “Luke didn’t try anything yesterday, did he?”

At that moment, Sofie would like nothing more than to tell Finn exactly what happened from the moment she got into Luke’s limo to the moment Finn turned up at the door of the motel room she hadn’t slept in. But she can’t. She can’t tell him about Luke because after his threat towards her and her future and the way he’s managed to summarily get rid of Jennie, she’s not willing to put Finn’s head on the chopping block just to make herself feel better.

“No, he was a little creepy—as always—but nothing else.” Sofie tries to maintain eye contact with her friend while she lies to him, but she fails miserably, looking down at the floor. “I should really jump in the shower.” She smiles apologetically at Finn.

“Sure, see you in a little while.” Finn lets her close the door this time, but she doesn’t miss the confused look on his face. He knows that she isn’t telling him the truth, but he can’t understand why.

Sofie starts the shower running and goes to grab her phone, typing in a text to Ashton. But then she remembers Jennie’s warning—about Shale monitoring calls and emails. The phone belonged to Shale, it came with the job. That must have been how Luke had found out about the sample she sent to Jennie. She had sent her a text message before she’d mailed it. Shale must be monitoring their activity. There was nothing to stop them from looking at all her communications. Sofie puts the phone down slowly and starts running the shower, not wanting to arouse any suspicion by being late to the team briefing.

As she washes her hair, she tries to remember if she has said anything incriminating or potentially suspicious over the phone or on email. She can’t come up with anything, but it only takes a moment for her to realize that if Shale is monitoring her then they’re doing the same to Finn.

“Dammit.” She curses as she hops out of the shower, before being forced to go back inside when she remembers she hasn’t washed the shampoo out of her hair.

She half-dries herself and pulls on her clothes in record time. Throwing open her door, ready to head over to Finn’s room, she stops dead when she finds Luke with his hand raised as if he were about to knock.

She tries not to take a step away from him, remembering the way he had behaved and the look in his eyes the day before. But the presence of another man makes her breathe a little easier.

“Sofie, we were just looking for you.” Luke smiles at her like a Cheshire cat, and Sofie has to restrain herself from slapping the expression off of his face.

“Well, here I am. But I was just on my way…” Sofie tries to signal past them and closes the door behind her, but Luke doesn’t move.

“It’ll only take a minute. I wanted you to meet Dr. Franklin. He’s a top ecologists and someone that Shale has worked with before. So we know exactly how good he is.” Luke introduces the short, mole-like looking man, clutching a briefcase as if his life depended on it.

“Nice to meet you Dr. Franklin. I’m Sofie Braun, the geologist on the team.” Sofie smiles kindly at the man, but the hand that she shakes in hers is limp and cold, like a dead fish.

“In fact, Sofie is one of the best in her field.” Luke looks at her like a proud father, but Sofie isn’t under any illusions that he has any fatherly feelings towards her. “She’s also the one that got us on the track of the wolves in this area, isn’t that right Sofie?”

Sofie nods slowly, wondering why Luke is milking this introduction. She had expected him to be in a foul mood the day the ecologist showed up because if they were to find anything, that would be the end of the drilling site. He wouldn’t have any choice but to move on and leave Spring Canyon as it is.

“Fascinating.” Franklin has a way of saying the word as if it were anything but. “Well, with no official sightings of wolves in this area I wonder, my dear, if perhaps you were mistaken?” His voice is lugubrious, and the expression on his face makes him look as if he’s sucking on a lemon.

“I suppose that’s for you to decide.” Sofie tries to keep her voice breezy, smiling tightly at the two men. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to speak to our technical advisor on an urgent matter.” She slips past the two men, walking purposefully down the corridor towards Finn’s room.

“Anything we should be concerned about, Sofie?” Luke’s questioning voice that seems to be saying that he knows more than he’s letting on makes her stomach roll.

“No.” She turns around slowly and fixes Luke with a pointed look. “It’s just something I was hoping that Jennie could help with, but I haven’t been able to get through to her for the past few days.” She tries not to appear satisfied at the way Luke’s face darkens at her words. “Guess she must be busy.” She shrugs, before heading back down the corridor.

“Guess so.” Luke’s voice is low, but the anger in it is clear. She curses herself for being so stupid and bringing Jennie up, but it was as if she couldn’t control herself, like the man brings out the very worst in her without even trying.

She doesn’t even bother to knock on Finn’s door, not wanting to spend any more time in that hallway, knowing that Luke is watching her every move. She bursts through the door to find Finn in the middle of doing his hair in front of the mirror. He jumps about a foot in the air when he sees her.

“Jeez, Sofie. What, your parents never taught you to knock?” Finn sees the grimace on her face and realizes that this isn’t a social call. “What’s going on?”

Sofie takes a breath, wishing that she’d rehearsed this before barging into his room. She doesn’t want to sound like a paranoid freak, but the words just come spilling out. “Jennie’s been fired because I sent her a sample that I should never have sent her, and Luke knows, and he’s checking up on us through our phones.” She closes her mouth as Finn makes a calm down gesture with his hands.
So much for not getting him involved
, she thinks.

“Sit down. Slow down. You’re sounding a little crazy.” Finn sits Sofie down on the bed and steps away from her slowly.

“I know how this sounds, Finn. But seriously, have you ever known me to be a conspiracy theorist? You’re usually the one trawling the net for stories about what the government is ‘really hiding from us.’” She knows how much Finn hates her use of air quotes, especially when they’re about him.

“Okay, stop with the bunny ears. Tell me what you think is going on.” Finn crosses his arms, waiting.

“Shale is monitoring our calls, our messages, and I’m pretty sure our emails and internet searches, too.” She takes a deep breath, ordering her thoughts. “Luke knew that I’d sent a sample to Jennie before it had even arrived at the lab, and he knew that we were keeping it off the books. There’s no way he could have known that without having read the messages between us the day that I sent it.”

Finn nods slowly, following her logic. “Well, I knew about it because Jennie messaged me, asking if you were alright. It’s not the only way they could have found out.” Finn seems to be musing to himself. “Anyway, the equipment is all theirs, and most companies have access to their employees’ company phones and laptops. That’s not so strange, is it?”

Sofie knows what he’s saying, but the significance of what that could mean is lost on him and she can’t tell him why. “Just trust me when I say that although it may not be strange, it’s not good. They used that information to get Jennie fired!”

“And how do you know this?” Finn frowns at her, as he boots up his laptop.

“Jennie sent me a letter.” She can feel Finn roll his eyes. “Yeah, I know. How retro, right? But it was the only way she felt safe telling me what had happened.”

Finn’s expression of dubiousness gives way to understanding and, ultimately, belief. “So what do you want me to do? I’m guessing there’s something that you want otherwise you wouldn’t have burst in here like the hounds of hell were after you.”

Sofie smiles at the irony of the phrase. “Is there any way that you can tell if the searches you did on wolves and the stuff you found on the missing people were hacked?”

“Yes, but I don’t get why it matters. What difference does it make if Shale knows we were researching wolves or not? They know you have a hunch about the animals and that’s why they brought an ecologist down!”

“Finn, can you just trust me that it makes a difference? Luke will do whatever he can to get what he wants, and he wants whatever is underneath the ground in that canyon.” Sofie shuts her mouth before she says anything more, anything that could raise even more of Finn’s questions.
This must be how Ashton felt talking to me
, she thinks.

“Sofie, it’s just another drilling site. We do this all the time. How many sites have we surveyed and approved? Ten? Twenty? Thirty? What’s got you so attached to this one?” Finn leans over his laptop, pressing the keys in quick succession and then he stops, like a thought has just occurred to him. “It isn’t that gorgeous asshole that brought you back from the woods that night, is it? Has he been preaching some hippy-kumbaya crap to you?”

“First of all, his name is Ashton, and he’s not an asshole. Secondly, I don’t care how many other sites we’ve okayed for drilling, that all feels like it was a lifetime ago. Can you just trust me when I say that this place is different?” Sofie pleads with Finn, knowing how much easier it would be to persuade him if she could just tell him the truth. She comforts herself by thinking that he wouldn’t believe her anyway.

Finn doesn’t say anything, just returns to his screen tapping in a series of codes, letters, number, punctuation marks. It all looks like gibberish to Sofie. After a couple of minutes, he speaks up, confirming her suspicions. “Everything that I’ve searched since we got here has been sent to a remote location. Good thing I haven’t been watching any porn!” He winks at her before going back to the computer.