“Tarin, can you come in here?”
She took in a deep breath as she walked over and stood in the open doorway.
“We’ve decided—” He stopped and looked at Guy and Bailey, who were watching him expectantly.
Tarin glanced back and forth between them, wishing she could read the unspoken messages.
“All right. These two believe I’m wasting your talents, and we’re not getting any further ahead. So I need you to go through the eighty emails I sent you a little while ago. Read them. Figure out which are real and which aren’t.”
Her gaze flew to Guy and Bailey, who looked back at her with respect. Unsure what was going on and really unsure if she should mention it, she took a deep breath before asking them to come to her desk.
“Look, I know I kind of did this without permission but I want you to see something.” She sat while they huddled behind her. She flipped through each of the websites. “Now I’m not sure, but there’s something odd about this one, this one and this one and potentially these other five. I don’t think any of these are real.”
“What makes you say that?” Graham leaned over her shoulder. Neither noticed that Guy and Bailey silently made their way out the door, leaving them alone.
Graham soon got a chair and his laptop and set up beside her. For the next hour, he and Tarin worked together, going through the websites and identifying what not only seemed fake about them but what made them special. Graham attempted to backtrace the IP addresses but most had been blocked. Tarin checked the hosting services and all were legitimate. Next she pulled up the yellow pages and then reached for the phone. She hung up and dialed the next one on the list.
“Hi, can I speak to Cory Genner?”… “He doesn’t work there?”… “Okay, thank you.”… “Hi, is Penny Thornton there?”… “Oh, there’s no one there by that name. Uhm, could you tell me who your regional manager is?”… “You don’t have one. Oh. I’m sorry. I think I might have the wrong number. What is it that you do there?”… “Could you give me your website so that I can learn more?”… “Thank you for your help.”…
She was about to call the next one when Graham took the phone from her and set it down. It seemed to take forever for him to remove his hand. He withdrew, settling back in his chair. She turned her attention back to the screen but the heat from his steady gaze was like a gentle tapping on the base of her skull, telling her that someone wanted her attention but would wait her out. Taking a deep breath, she turned to ask what he wanted but the words never came out. His green eyes were intensely focused on her. There was a new, questioning expression in their depths. And she realized his chair was snug up against hers and awfully close.
Clearing her throat, she turned away and stood. “I need a drink of water. Do you want one?”
He waited until she had the fridge door open before replying, “Yes, please.”
The walk back to the desk was the longest ten steps she’d ever taken. She was trying to look anywhere but at him, fully aware that he hadn’t taken his eyes off her. At the far edge of the desk, she tossed a bottle to him. Opening hers, she took a long drink.
“I’m sorry if making those calls was the wrong thing to do. I know I should have asked first but it made sense.”
“Yeah, too much sense.”
She met his gaze. Who did he think he was? “I don’t need—”
He put up his hand. “Look, I owe you an apology. I’ve been a real butthead. I’m sorry. That was brilliant to call those businesses. I’m embarrassed to say it never dawned on me. I get so accustomed to using the internet, tracing and tracking everything electronically, that I forget there are other ways to get answers. Guy handles the investigations, so it never dawned on either one of us to do something that simple.”
He shook his head but finally chuckled. “So what did you learn?”
Reluctant to close the distance between them, she leaned against the far edge of the desk.
“Well, I learned in the second phone call, I should have asked way more questions in the first. I did learn Cori Genner has never worked there. So that’s probably a bogus request. As for the second one, there is no Penny Thornton, which I’m sure means it’s crap, too. Now in both cases, the companies exist. Hey, wait.” She sat down in her chair and clicked open a new browser, typing in a URL. Then she went back to the emails and found the one she wanted and clicked on the link. Then she flipped back and forth between the two websites.
“Okay, so what are you doing?”
She turned her head, her focus still on what she’d been looking at on the screen, so it was a bit of a surprise when she found herself almost nose to nose with Graham. His eyes widened ever so slightly, while hers peeled wide as she jerked back in her chair. To hide her embarrassment, she waved at the monitor.
“They look identical, don’t they?”
Graham studied them. “Yes, but I take it they aren’t?”
“You got it. Look at this.” She pointed to the two URLs—cornerstone and cornerstones.
“Holy crap. How did I miss that?”
“I’d have never missed that kind of trick before. Dammit. So why is someone setting up almost identical but bogus websites? What the hell is going on?”