Chapter Twenty-Two

Finn: Hey Mum, miss you. Having a rough week. Work sucks right now.

Mum: Give them all hell! Call me later. Dad sends his love too xxx

Finn walked into the open-plan Marketing office around nine o’clock, hoping no one would hassle him. He scoped out who was in and who was missing. Mimi appeared to be MIA, but she had a client appointment downtown, or so she’d said.

A few guys were drinking coffee and playing some complicated world-building video game when they should have been working. Finn glared at them but walked past without saying anything. For now.

Nate sat at his desk, tapping away on his keyboard, looking diligent, and raised a hand in greeting. “Hey, boss man. How’s it hanging?”

Heat rose from Finn’s chest and crawled up his neck. Nate’s comment wasn’t so offensive, but for some reason, that morning, it was annoying enough to tip him over the edge.

He strode across to the website team’s corner and hovered in front of Nate like an angry storm cloud about to hail down on him. “Will you quit it with the frat-boy nicknames? And how is what hanging, exactly? Are you asking about the state of my private parts? Because, frankly, I should haul you into HR and give you an official warning for that comment.” Finn turned to walk away, then called out, “And the rest of you, do some actual work.”

Nate’s mouth hung open, but Finn didn’t stick around long enough to watch him catch flies. He stormed into his office and slammed the door behind him. His conversation with Eden had left him fuming, and he wasn’t even sure why. She’d listened to him, given him a chance to explain, even let him touch her for a moment.

That was it. She’d pulled away from him, then said goodbye. It all seemed too final. And the more he rolled it around in his mind, the worse it sounded. Who could blame her? He’d lied to her almost from the second they met. Sure, he’d been trying to do the right thing, but what did it matter when the actual result was him ruining Eden’s life? He was angry at himself. That was the plain, unvarnished truth.

Finn slumped into his office chair behind his desk and toyed with the rubber stress ball shaped like a cartoonish hot dog someone had given him last Christmas.

Maybe he should talk to his team. Explain he might be called away suddenly on urgent business… He struggled to think of a good enough excuse. If he had to leave on short notice, to give evidence or to go back to Australia, what could he tell them?

Finn was sick of all the subterfuge. He wasn’t 007, not for real, wasn’t cut out to be a double agent, pretending to go about his work while actually investigating the people around him. He squeezed the rubber hot dog tight in his fist. Its eyes bugged out. Why did a hot dog have eyes anyway?

He needed to do something, anything, to make himself feel he was getting somewhere. He sifted through the pile of papers on his desk, searching for… There it was. The blue folder with copies of the financials for the patient portal project, innocuously labeled ‘Ad Spend.’ Eden needed to look at the file, to see what he’d seen.

Finn was no math genius, not by any means. But he’d studied accountancy as part of his marketing degree and then managed some major marketing dollars. Budget figures and comparisons with actual spend were something he understood. At least, he understood the legitimate way it should be done. And he was good at recognizing patterns.

A light rap on his office door had him tensing and stuffing the papers back in the folder. Nate opened the door and stuck his head around the doorframe.

“Finn, I want to apologize.” Nate’s gaze tracked to Finn’s hands as he stuffed the blue folder under a stack of plain beige manila folders. His filing system sucked. But now wasn’t the time for paper-shuffling.

Finn sighed. “Apology accepted. I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’ve been in a mood since yesterday.”

“Because Eden’s not around anymore?”

Finn tried not to react but felt his eyebrows lift to somewhere around his hairline. “I’m concerned for Doctor Robinson, but I meant because the presentation didn’t go to plan. Now I have to smooth things over with McTavish.”

Nate dropped his head, dark hair curtaining his face. “Oh, right. Do you need me to help? I’m happy to download whatever stats you need, like that stuff McTavish wanted last week.”

Finn rested his elbows on his desk and leaned forward, taking a moment before asking the inevitable question: “What stats did he request last week?”

“The usual. Traffic on the email servers between here and Europe, web search activity within the company, employee internet usage.”

With a shake of his head, Finn rose and rolled his shoulders. “None of those things are usual. McTavish shouldn’t be asking you for any of it. He should not be monitoring individual employees’ internet searches, not unless he’s formally investigating someone. You report to me, not him. Okay, here’s what we’ll do. Let’s head over to HR and talk to someone, confidentially, about what you’ve just told me. We’ll inform them of McTavish’s requests and let them decide what to do.”

Nate started walking backward, fast. “Nah, man. I can’t.”

Finn stood and strode across his office. He grabbed the door and called out to Nate, who’d already reached the far side of the larger team area, “Wait, what’s the problem?”

The younger man shook his head. “I can’t lose this job. I’m sorry, but if you think what I just told you is weird, you don’t want to know what else the boss asked for.”

Finn stepped outside his office door. “What? Nate, you can tell me. If you’re honest with me, I can help. You won’t lose your job.” Finn blew out a breath, watching Nate, hoping rather than believing what he’d said was true. He was damn worried about his own job, his own life plans, the consequences of what he already knew. How could he protect Nate?

Nate stood frozen to the spot. Except for his head, which moved from side to side like that carnival game where you pop a ball in a clown’s mouth to win a prize. He was obviously checking out the other guys from the team, who sat there staring, trying to figure out what was going on.

“Promise? If I tell you something in confidence, it has to stay anonymous. You didn’t hear it from me,” Nate stammered, his words tripping over each other.

With another sigh, Finn weighed his options. While he could promise not to reveal Nate’s name, chances were, he’d have to at some point. “I can promise I won’t reveal your name unless I have to, by law.”

Nate nodded, suddenly serious. He caught Finn’s eye and held his gaze. “I can live with that.”

Finn extended his arm toward his office, waving Nate through. The younger man loped inside, and Finn followed, making sure to lock the door behind them.

Cupcakes. The world needed more happiness, but for now, cupcakes would have to suffice. Everyone knew they were the next best thing. Anyway, Eden needed something to do to keep her mind off all the worries circling in her brain.

Eden held onto her sifter: a metal cylinder with a handle she turned with a grinding noise. She sifted the flour into the mixing bowl, making sure all the lumpy bits stayed behind.

Her phone rang, buzzing on the countertop. When she saw it was her doctor’s office, she wiped her hands on a kitchen towel and took the call. “Hello? Eden Robinson speaking.”

“Hello, Eden. This is Catherine from Doctor Fernandez’s office. She has your blood test results, and she’d like to discuss them with you.”

The receptionist wouldn’t give her the results over the phone but said the doctor had asked her to come in as soon as possible.

Eden agreed, in a voice that held a kind of dead calm. Faith called it Eden’s Meltdown Phase One voice. Her sister always got well out of the way before Eden got really pissed and entered Phase Two.

The next available appointment was later that afternoon, so Eden took it and got off the phone as fast as possible.

A roil of nausea tipped her belly upside down, nearly landing her flat on her ass on the kitchen floor. Eden hadn’t been feeling great lately. Low energy, lightheaded at times. And she’d vomited on Finn’s shoes… She’d put it down to skipping a few meals, wonky blood sugar levels, and stress. But she shouldn’t ignore it. It might be something, as it had been for the other women in her family before her.

Don’t jump to conclusions. You need evidence. Facts.

Eden’s eyes landed on the photo stuck to her refrigerator door. Her grandmother, all dressed up to go to Opening Day. A bit over three years ago now. She’d been so glamorous, so beautiful, always smiling. It was before she’d found out the breast cancer.

Her mother. Her grandmother… Would she be next in her family to suffer the scourge? Eden refused to say the ‘C’ word. Refused to even think it.

Her legs no longer wanted to hold her up, and she crumpled like a soufflé pulled out of the oven too soon. As she sank to the floor, the dam wall broke, releasing her tears to flow freely.

“So you’re saying we’re up shit creek without a paddle?” Finn sat at his desk, trying to absorb the salient facts in Nate’s story. He squeezed the hot dog stress ball in his right hand until its guts nearly exploded.

His head resting in his hands, Nate looked up. “Not sure I even know what that means, but yeah.”

“It’s Aussie for we’re fucked.”

Nate shrugged. “Oh yeah. We’re totally fucked with a paddle.”

That about summed it up. The situation was worse than Finn had thought, even worse than he’d suspected it might be when busy imagining worst-case scenarios. He’d be lucky if he didn’t get fired. But he could also be deported and still have to testify against McTavish in a US court. There would be no escaping the situation he found himself tangled in.

Nate wouldn’t escape either, poor guy. Finn didn’t believe for a second that Nate had any idea of the bigger picture when he took the job or when completing the tasks McTavish assigned. He was a talented website data analyst, but he was young, straight out of college, and clueless about the corporate world.

How would he know a corporation could be like a bog, with all sorts of things sucked down and hidden underneath layers of mud? Nate was the perfect combination of technical skills and naïve trust. A gift dangled like bait in front of the predator’s jaws.

Finn stopped recording their conversation on his cell phone. “Off the record, so to speak, I believe you did the right thing. There’s no way you could’ve stopped working for McTavish without him noticing or inventing some offense to get you fired.”

Nate nodded. “Exactly. Man, I’ve been worried. I’m putting my kid sister through school, and without this job, I can’t afford it.”

With a sigh, Finn leaned back in his chair. “I understand. You’re doing a good thing for your sister.”

Finn should have taken more of an interest in Nate since he came on board. He hadn’t known much about the guy’s background. Now he’d discovered Nate was trying to get his little sister back on the straight and narrow after a wild few years in high school. Their single mother was unemployed most of the time and unreliable at best. Nate had stepped up. He was more mature than Finn had given him credit for.

“Okay. Let’s go over this again. I’ll talk to Eden tonight and make sure she’s got all the facts. Afterward, we’ll prepare our paperwork for the meeting I’m setting up with the FDA and state investigators. We need to keep our heads down at work. We’ll still do what’s required and try not to draw any attention.”

“Got it.” Nate rose from his chair and headed for the door again. “But first, coffee.”

“Got to agree. Coffee’s a sound plan.”

Finn waved Nate out of his office, then checked the time. Only nine-thirty. Hours until he finished work and could see Eden again. That was assuming she agreed to see him. And given that he’d pretty much ruined her life, it was a big ask.

He bent forward and clunked his forehead on his desk. He had to try.