Page 125 of Sexting My Best Friend's Brothers
It isn’t.
It’s a text message. From a contact I haven’t heard from in three days.
Harper: Hey big brother! Tessa isn’t picking up (tell her to check her phone—workaholic!). My flight got moved up. I land tonight at 9 PM and I’m heading straight to her place to crash. You guys have to come by for a drink to say hi! Please? I don’t want to bealone and I’m too tired for a restaurant. Rally the boys and meet me there with champagne! XOXO.
My internal processor stalls. A critical error overrides the system. I set the coffee mug on the counter before my grip shatters the ceramic.
“Asher?” Tessa asks, noticing the abrupt halt in my movement. “What is it?”
I look at Sarah from HR. She is a highly efficient gossip node in the office network.
“Tessa,” I say, keeping my voice flat and completely devoid of panic. “I need you to review a critical error log in the server room. Immediately.”
Sarah steps back, taking the hint. “I’ll let you guys work. See you at the briefing, Tess.”
The second Sarah turns the corner, I hand Tessa my phone. Tessa reads the message. She goes pale.
“Tonight?” she whispers, her hands shaking so badly the phone rattles against her fingernails. “She lands tonight? She’s coming to my apartment?”
“The Harper variable has accelerated unexpectedly," I confirm.
“I’ve got to go,” Tessa breathes, shoving the phone back into my chest. “I have to find Ethan.”
She turns and walks fast toward the executive suite, her heels clicking in an uneven rhythm.
I stare at the phone.
Nine hours.
We had a plan. We had rules. We had a strategy for secrecy. But Harper is the chaos variable. She’s the one element we can’t control.
And she’s coming home right into the middle of the blast zone.
I leave the coffee sitting untouched on the counter.
I need to find Ethan. We’ve got a problem. And for the first time, I don’t have a code to fix it.
22
TESSA
“Razor,” I say, holding up the black handle I found in the shower.
Ethan doesn’t flinch. He steps out of the bedroom, takes it from my hand, and drops it into the duffel bag by the door.
“Secured,” he says.
“This feels insane,” I mutter, checking the sink for stray whiskers. “We’re scrubbing my apartment like we just committed a felony.”
“We’re sanitizing the environment,” Asher corrects. He’s standing by the bookshelf, adjusting the angle of a photo frame by two degrees. “We’re removing variables.”
“The subject is my best friend,” I remind him. “Not a lab rat.”
“She’s both,” Asher says. “She’s observant. We have to be efficient.”
He picks up a pair of size twelve Italian loafers from under the coffee table. “Owen. Footwear. Sector four.”
“They’re Gucci,” Owen calls from the kitchen. “Treat them with respect.”
