Moments of Julian (22 page)

“
That’s horrible,” I say,
my brows furrowing.

Finally, Julian’s eyes meet mine
again. He brings his finger tips to my chin and his eyes soften.
“So you see why I couldn’t look away from you from the moment the
first words came from your lips. You are brutally honest, Sage
McCain. You never say things just because it is what I want to
hear.”

“
I’ve never even met this
woman, but I already want to gouge her eyes out with my
Louboutin’s.”

This brings a genuine smile to
Julian’s face and his entire countenance lights up.

My phone starts ringing. This is the
eighth call I’ve gotten in the last five hours. It is the middle of
the night here in China, but the middle of the day at
home.

“
Sounds like someone needs
to talk to you pretty bad,” Julian says, looking in the direction
of my phone. “Maybe you’d better get it.”

I groan and slowly push myself up into
sitting position. “I don’t want to,” I complain as I reach for it.
The caller ID says Gretchen.

“
Yeah?” I answer, my tone
slightly annoyed.

“
Why have you not been
answering?” Gretchen sounds terrified and infuriated at the same
time. “Things have gone to
hell
here.”

“
What are you talking
about?” I demand, standing.

“
You’ve been fired, Sage,”
Gretch says and she sounds like she’s hissing between her teeth.
“Mr. Maxwell thinks you stole over two million dollars from that
company you just signed. They pulled up your bank account and found
all the money our clients have been reporting the last few days as
stolen, is in
your
bank account.”

“
What?” I breathe. Julian
sits up and his brows furrow. “I haven’t stolen anything. Why would
I need to? And why would I ever make such a stupid move as to steal
from my own company?”

“
I told them you didn’t do
it, Sage, but Mr. Maxwell showed me your bank statement and I saw
the money there myself. Don’t ask me how he got access to your
account, but he is on the war path and wants your head.”

My fingers knot into my hair. “That
shouldn’t even be possible for anyone to transfer money out of the
clients’ accounts,” I say as I start to pace. “That is what the
Blue Wall is all about. No one should be able to steal
money.”

“
Well someone has,” Gretch
says, her voice starting to sound exhausted. “That’s why Mr. Boss
is flipping out so bad, the Blue Wall is supposed to be
impenetrable and it has been hacked. So far twenty of our clients
have been reporting stolen money. Ten of those have been traced to
your account, the other ten we haven’t traced yet.”

“
And they really think I
stole the money?” I exclaim. “I have zero computer skills. How do
they expect me to have hacked the Blue Wall?!”

“
I don’t know Sage, but
you’d better get your ass back here, and fast, or you may wind up
in jail.”

I swear and smack my hand against the
wall. “Get me a flight home as soon as you can.”

Gretch agrees and hangs up.

“
What the hell is going
on?” Julian asks. He’s on his feet by now, his arms folded across
his chest. “And what is wrong with the Blue Wall?”

“
Someone hacked it.
They’re stealing money from Digit clients. Half of it is in my
account,” I say as I fix my eyes on him. “Someone is trying to
frame me.”

Two hours later, we are on a plane
back to the states. I sit jittery and sick in the first class seat
next to Julian, actually biting my thumbnail as he clicks on his
keyboard. I logged into my bank account for him and he’s scanning
over the transactions now.

“
There are deposits here
alright,” Julian says. “The first one was made four weeks ago.
See?”

The amount isn’t huge, not enough for
me to have even really noticed. I look at the date and my stomach
churns. “That was the night of the banquet. That sleazeball you
saved me from dancing with? He asked me that night about new tech
Digit was supposed to be coming out with.”

“
He knew about the Red
Door?” Julian asks, his eyes narrowing.

“
He didn’t have a name for
it and I don’t think he really knew what it did,” I say, crossing
my arms over my chest so I don’t gnaw my nail to the quick. “But he
knew something new was in the works. I didn’t even know
then.”

Julian shakes his head. “This doesn’t
make sense. The only other person who knew about the Red Door at
that time was Gideon.”

“
But what does the info
being leaked early have to do with the Blue Wall being
hacked?”

“
I don’t know yet,” Julian
says, looking back at his laptop. “But they have to be connected.
Sage, look at these transactions. There was one deposit made to
your account every weeknight around seven at night. The amounts
keep getting bigger and bigger. It looks like you’ve stolen over
three million dollars in the past month.”

“
I didn’t steal anything!”
I say, feeling my blood burn.

“
But it doesn’t look good
that you haven’t noticed the deposits,” Julian says, giving me an
apologetic look. “How did you not notice?”

I sigh and close my eyes. “I used to
be really good about keeping tabs on my assets. But, I started
making such good money and I always knew it was there, so I stopped
worrying about it and well, I guess I just got lazy.”

Julian doesn’t say anything, just
looks back at the screen.

To a man who invented the most
advanced financial security system in the world, learning the woman
he’s gotten involved with doesn’t keep tabs on her own account must
be insulting.

“
But I checked my account
like two weeks ago, there wasn’t this many deposits then, I
swear.”

“
Someone could have
possibly faked the deposit dates,” Julian says, his eyes scanning
the screen. “It would have been hard to hide the transactions from
showing up if they really did go in those dates.”

“
Where are the deposits
being pulled from?” I ask.

“
They’re all coming
directly from the clients’ bank accounts,” Julian explains. “That’s
the part that really doesn’t make sense. See, the Blue Wall
wouldn’t catch money going
in
to an account. But no one should have been able
to pull money
out
of a Blue Wall account. Whoever hacked it has some serious
skills and some serious intent.”

“
And some serious
knowledge about how the Wall works,” I say as things start sliding
into place in my head. “We have four floors of tech guys who
service our clients. It could have been one of them. And Mr.
Maxwell was the only one that knew about the new tech. Julian, what
if he’s involved in this?”

“
But why would he want to
frame you?” Julian questions. “You’ve done nothing but make him a
lot of money.”

I shake my head. “I don’t know. But
someone at Digit wants to see me crash and burn.”

CHAPTER
EIGHTEEN

The airplane lands at SeaTac airport
and my pulse skyrockets. I have no idea what to expect when I step
foot off of it. Things are about to get bad, of that I am
certain.

Julian takes my carry on and I
anxiously wait the minute or so until they let us off the plane.
When they open the door, I walk up the terminal with sweaty
palms.

“
I’ll be here the whole
time,” Julian says beside me. “I will help you in every way I
can.”

“
Thank you,” I say
distractedly. It is an instinct answer. In my head, I imagining how
bad prison food must taste, and how awful I’m going to look in an
orange jumpsuit.

It is everything I can do to keep my
composure when we round the terminal and I can see Mr. Maxwell and
two federal agents waiting for me.

Julian swears.

Mr. Maxwell is stony faced, but I can
see it in his expression: he looks betrayed.

“
Miss McCain,” one of the
agents says when I get within hearing distance. “We’d like you to
come with us. We have some questions for you.”

“
Of course,” I say,
keeping my voice cool and even. “Let’s get moving so we can get
this misunderstanding taken care of.” My main reason for being in a
hurry is so that I do not have to bear the humiliation of everyone
on our plane seeing me whisked away by FBI agents. It is bad enough
that everyone at the airport is straining their necks to get a look
at the two people who are wearing badges and looking very
official.

Nothing much scarier than seeing
someone this official in an airport. It’s easy to let your
imagination start running away from you.

“
You may want to call your
lawyer,” the other agent says.

“
I don’t have one,” I say.
Suddenly I am panicking and my cool exterior is about to
crack.

“
I’m calling mine,” Julian
says. He’s already got his phone out and is holding it to his
ear.

“
Isn’t that a conflict of
interest?” Mr. Maxwell says angrily as we walk swiftly toward the
exit.

“
Mr. Maxwell, this
attorney has never represented me with anything to do with this
company and has no ties to Digit. Trust me, you do not want to piss
me off at this very critical time for Digit, and I am pretty ticked
about what is going on right now.”

Mr. Maxwell gives him a hard glare and
his eyes shift from me to Julian and back again.

“
Fine,” he finally says.
“She’s going to need a smooth talker to get her out of this
mess.”

“
You do confirm that this
is your bank account though?” Agent Rodriguez asks. She is
extending a printout of all my transactions to me.

“
Yes, this is my account,”
I say again, rubbing my temples. I’ve asked for some Aspirin, but
it has yet to be produced. The room they are interrogating me in is
small, dark, and musty smelling. “This is the bonus I was promised
for closing a Canadian deal. My boss told me the bonus would be
twenty percent higher than a previous bonus was. As you can see,
this amount here is exactly that. I just assumed that was it. I
didn’t think much about the fact that it came from a different
account.”

“
Mr. Maxwell has confirmed
that the first amount was indeed your bonus, but the second
transaction was stolen money. And you used that money to pay off a
large chunk of your home. You do understand how that looks, Miss
McCain. You say you didn’t take the money, yet you’ve spent some of
it.”

“
My client has told you
already that she does not have the knowledge to transfer money from
such secure accounts,” Penny Watson, the attorney Julian called for
me says. “Or any account for that matter. She has a business degree
from the University of Washington. She has limited computer skills.
Unless you can prove that she is capable of pulling off such a
difficult task of hacking through the Blue Wall, I need her to be
released while you and Digit investigate this matter
further.”

Agent Rodriguez is giving me the stare
down. She’s hard as nails and shows little to no emotion. And she’s
been questioning me for the last three hours straight.

“
You will not leave town,”
she says, her eyes fixing on me. “I expect you to answer every
phone call we send your way and you to be ready to jump to the
station at any second. We will be in contact soon.”

I stand from the hard chair and try to
smooth the wrinkles out of my dress pants. I’m exhausted and in
dire need of a shower. Jet lag is making everything fuzzy and out
of focus and the twenty hours of travel have left me feeling coated
with travel yuck.

“
I await your contact
eagerly,” I say more snarkily than I should as I walk to the
door.

Julian jumps up from his seat in the
lobby as soon as he sees me. He crosses the room and his eyes are
fixed on Rodriguez. “As the creator of the Blue Wall, I offer
myself up as assistance any time you need it in your
investigation.”

“
Thank you Mr. Dohring,”
she says, her voice annoyed. “But considering your…personal
interest in Sage, we won’t be able to consider much of what you
have to say.”

Julian clenches his teeth, making his
jaw muscles stand out. His hands curl into fists, but instead of
lashing out, he simply nods his head and puts an arm around my
shoulders.

Mr. Maxwell is sitting on a desk, his
arms folded over his chest. I want to talk to him, to explain that
I am innocent. But Penny has advised me not to communicate with him
unless both she and his own attorney are present.

I step outside and Julian sets our
bags out of the way on the sidewalk. “Give Gretchen a call,” he
says as he stuffs his hands into his pockets. “Tell her that I’ll
meet her at Digit in fifteen minutes and I need her help. I assume
she knows all of your passwords and everything?”

I nod. Gretchen could really ruin me
if she wanted to. Which makes my blood chill instantly.

She could
ruin
me.