Page 34 of Unbound

Taking Sybil past the kitchen, I lead her down the hall and into the room she’s been borderline obsessed with. Settling her behind my desk, I wake up my computer.

Her brow creases in confusion. “I thought you said what I was looking for isn’t in this room?”

“Technically, it’s not.” I log into one of the secure servers McKinley Security uses to protect all the sensitive information Titus’s division collects. “I’m actually a little surprised you haven’t found this on your own, Snoopy. Especially considering Heidi seems to think you could give her a run for her money.”

Sybil snorts. “If she said that she’s just being nice, because I’m nowhere near as awesome as Heidi is.” She pauses, shifting in her seat. “And in the interest of transparency, I probably could have gotten in here on my own, but it didn’t seem right.”

My movements stall as I look away from the screen to where she sits close at my side. “You didn’t hack into our system?”

Sybil shakes her head.

In the past twenty-four hours she’s done many things to make me suspicious of her motives and plans. She’s also done quite a bit to make me consider trusting her. To make me want to believe we aren’t really on two different sides. Finding out she didn’t use her considerable skills to go digging through my company’s data edges me even closer to the latter group.

I pull up the collection of documents Ruth, Toby, and I scanned. They live on a couple flash drives, but also here—a place where I thought I didn’t have to worry about anything happening to them. It’s possible I still don’t have to worry, because the person most likely to search for them is sitting right next to me.

Looking at them.

“Holy shit.” Sybil’s eyes lock on the computer screen as her hand moves against mine, stealing the mouse so she can scroll through page after page. “This is a lot.”

“It is.” I stay where I am, leaning an elbow against the desk. “I don’t know if any of it is relevant or useful, though.”

“Then why did you collect all of it?” She continues scrolling, her other hand now on the keyboard as she zooms in and out.

I try to follow along as she works, but the movements are too fast and my head starts to hurt from trying to maintain focus. Turning away from the screen, I rest my eyes on Sybil’s intensely focused expression. “We had a very limited amount of time we could stay. Rather than wasting it searching through the piles shoved into cardboard file boxes, we just started scanning, getting as many as we could before they kicked us out.”

Thank God for Ruth. I expected to manually sift through what we found, assuming—based on the lack of information up to this point—it would be a handful of pages and maybe a few photographs. Without Ruth’s forethought to bring portable document scanners, we would have been screwed. There’s no way even three of us could have made a dent if we were inspecting each document manually.

“Why was your time so limited?” Sybil seems to be following along with our conversation just fine even though a significant amount of her attention is locked onto the scanned documents flashing across the monitor.

“There was very little interest in letting me in at all. I was only able to get the time I did because of Heidi’s boss, Pierce. I don’t know who he had to threaten, but eventually I was granted access. Unfortunately, it was only for a small window.” I lower to a crouch because my back is starting to hurt from being bent over. “And technically, I missed the first appointment.”

Sybil’s head snaps my way. “Because of the accident?”

I shake my head at how quickly she makes the connection. “That’s right.”

She pauses what she’s doing, swiveling the chair to fully face me. “I should probably tell you I saw your medical records.”

“Has anyone ever explained boundaries to you?” I don’t actually care that she found out what happened to me that day. On some strange level, I almost like it. That someone exists outside of my family who was so desperate to find out whether or not I was okay, they hacked into an entire hospital system to find out.

I do recognize Sybil’s concern over my well-being likely had more to do with her desire to investigate my mother’s death, but beggars can’t be choosers.

“My mom tried.” She flashes me a grin. “I bet you can guess how well that went.”

“You are a nightmare.” I try to remain serious as I say it. To maintain the straight face I normally wear so easily.

I end up grinning back at her. Probably because I’m delirious from exhaustion.

Dropping to my ass with a groan, I lean back against the built-in cabinetry lining the wall behind us. “How long do you plan to sit here?”

“However long you’ll let me.”

Sybil’s attention goes back to my computer. She pulls one leg up into the chair, sitting on it as she hunches over, bringing her eyes closer to the screen.

Leaning forward, I open a drawer, pull out a pair of my blue light glasses, and set them on the desk. “Put those on so you don’t burn your retinas out.”

There have been times I’ve had to stare at a computer way more than I wanted to. It led to eye twitches and headaches and muscle pain. I don’t mind giving Sybil occupancy of my office, but I won’t let her hurt herself on this quest. Especially when it’s a simple fix.

Without looking away, she fumbles around for the glasses, picking them up and sliding them on her face. “Thanks.” She tips her head. “Everything looks the same.”