22 — Loose Ends

JAPHETH POV

"You're doing the face," Kate said, dropping into the chair across from my desk without an invitation, the way she did everything.

"What face?"

"The face you do when you're thinking too hard about something and refusing to tell anyone what it is. Dad does it too. It's very annoying and very genetic."

"I don't have a face, Kate."

"You absolutely have a face." She stole a pen off my desk and started clicking it, which she knew drove me insane, which was exactly why she did it. "So. What's wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong."

"Japheth."

"Kate."

"I will sit here clicking this pen until you tell me, and you know I have the patience of a saint when I'm trying to annoy you specifically."

I sighed, leaning back in my chair. "Dean was in my office the other day. Peaches let him use my desktop to look at some document formatting for a case."

"Okay? That sounds extremely boring, which tracks, because Dean's entire personality is 'extremely competent and extremely boring in the most attractive way possible.'"

"He didn't have clearance for my review queue."

Kate stopped clicking the pen. "What do you mean he didn't have clearance?"

"I mean I didn't give him access, and I don't remember anyone else giving him access, and when I checked my queue nothing seems to be missing or changed, so I've just been sitting here feeling vaguely paranoid about my sister's boyfriend for absolutely no reason."

"That's unsettling but also extremely on-brand for you. You once accused Ranjiv of corporate espionage because he borrowed a stapler."

"That stapler had the Hughes account numbers taped to the bottom of it, Kate."

"It did not."

"It absolutely could have."

She rolled her eyes so hard I was mildly concerned for her optic nerves. "Okay, Sherlock. Did you ask Dean about it?"

"Not yet."

"Why not?"

"Because every time I try to have a casual conversation with your boyfriend he looks at me like I'm about to give him a pop quiz on tort law, and I don't want it to be weird."

"It's already weird, Japheth, you're sitting here theorizing about espionage via stapler."

"That was one time."

"It was one very specific and very strange time, yes." She leaned forward, suddenly more serious. "But for real — do you actually think something's wrong, or is this just your brain doing the thing where it needs a problem to chew on because you're happy and it makes you nervous?"

I opened my mouth to argue and then actually thought about it, which was annoying, because Kate had an infuriating habit of being right about things like this.

"Probably the second one," I admitted.

"See, this is why I'm the older sibling. Wisdom. Grace. Devastating cheekbones."

"You're two years older, not forty."

"Two years of extra wisdom is still wisdom, Japheth."

The door opened before I could respond, and Peaches walked in holding two coffees, looking entirely too pleased with herself for someone about to interrupt a sibling argument.

"Am I interrupting?"

"Nope," Kate said immediately, standing and snatching one of the coffees out of Peaches's hand without asking. "This is mine now. I'm taking payment for emotional labor."

"That was literally for Japheth."

"Was it? I didn't see a label." Kate took a long, theatrical sip, maintaining unbroken eye contact with me the entire time, clearly daring me to say something.

"You're a menace," I told her.

"I prefer 'delightfully chaotic.'" She set the cup down, suddenly businesslike. "Anyway. Talk to Dean. Ask him normal human questions like a normal human adult, and stop building conspiracy boards in your head about staplers."

"I will," I said, mostly to get her to leave.

"I'm serious, Japheth."

"I said I will, Kate."

"Okay. Good." She paused at the door, glancing between me and Peaches with an expression I recognized instantly as trouble. "Also, when's the wedding."

"Kate."

"I'm just asking a normal question."

"Get out."

"Love you too, baby brother." She blew a kiss and left, taking what remained of the stolen coffee with her.

Peaches slid into the chair Kate had vacated, grinning. "What was that about?"

"Apparently I have a face."

"You do have a face. It's a very nice face, generally, but right now it's doing something weird." She studied me for a second. "What's actually wrong?"

I filled her in on the conversation with Kate, watching her expression shift from amused to thoughtful somewhere around the stapler anecdote.

"You really thought Ranjiv was stealing account numbers?"

"That's not the important part of the story, Peaches."

"It's a little bit the important part of the story."

"The important part is that Dean didn't have clearance, and nobody seems to know why he had it anyway, and I can't tell if I'm actually noticing something or if I've just been weird about trust ever since—" I stopped myself before finishing that sentence, because I didn't love where it was going.

"Ever since what?"

"Ever since the whole Voss situation made me paranoid about literally everyone who gets close to this company," I finished, which was true, even if it wasn't the whole truth.

She reached over, squeezing my hand. "For what it's worth, I noticed something too. Small thing. He seemed relieved when I agreed to help, more relieved than the request really called for."

"See, now I don't feel as crazy."

"You still seem a little crazy, but less alone in it." She smiled, softening the jab. "Want me to ask him about it? Casually? I could probably get more out of him than you could, given that you apparently interrogate people about staplers."

"One time, Peaches."

"One very memorable time, apparently, since it's already become company legend." She stood, pressing a quick kiss to the top of my head. "I've got a meeting. Think about whether you actually want me to poke at this or if you'd rather just ask Dean yourself like a functioning adult."

"I liked you better when you were just my assistant and had to listen to everything I said."

"I never had to listen to everything you said. I just pretended to, for the paycheck."

"That's deeply hurtful."

"You'll live." She winked and walked out, and I sat there for a long moment, turning the whole thing over, trying to decide if I was actually onto something or just doing the thing Kate accused me of  needing a problem to chew on because happiness made me nervous.

My phone buzzed. A text from Ranjiv, of all people.

**RANJIV:** Random question. Did you authorize Dean Carlisle for document system access this week? Came up in a routine audit log. Not trying to start anything, just flagging it since it's outside normal protocol.

I stared at the message for a long moment, feeling the last bit of "maybe I'm just being paranoid" drain slowly out of me.

**JAPHETH:** No. I didn't authorize that.

**RANJIV:** Huh. Want me to look into it properly? Could be nothing. Could be a glitch in the permissions system.

**JAPHETH:** Yeah. Quietly, though. Don't loop in HR yet.

**RANJIV:** You got it, boss. For the record, this is a much more interesting mystery than the stapler thing.

**JAPHETH:** The stapler thing was a legitimate concern.

**RANJIV:** It was not, and everyone in this building still brings it up at parties.

I put the phone down, staring at the closed door Peaches had walked through a few minutes ago, feeling something cold settle in my stomach that had nothing to do with coffee and everything to do with the growing, uncomfortable certainty that my instincts  annoying, stapler-obsessed, paranoid instincts included — had been right about something this time.

I called Ranjiv back instead of texting, because some things needed an actual voice attached to them.

"That was fast," he said by way of greeting. "Miss me already?"

"Tell me what you found. The real version, not the text-message version."

"The real version is I genuinely don't know yet, which is annoying, because I like having answers." I heard him shift something on his end, papers maybe, or a keyboard. "Dean's access came through a side door  looks like it was granted under a temporary contractor credential that should've expired months ago. Somebody either forgot to revoke it, or somebody renewed it without flagging it properly."

"Is that normal? Credentials slipping through the cracks like that?"

"It happens. Big company, lots of moving parts, IT departments are chronically understaffed everywhere on earth. It's not, like, a five-alarm fire on its own." He paused. "But paired with the fact that you didn't personally authorize it, and that he specifically needed access to your review queue instead of, I don't know, just asking you directly like a normal person with a law degree  it's odd. I wouldn't lose sleep yet. I also wouldn't ignore it."

"Helpful. Very decisive. Very Ranjiv."

"I contain multitudes, Japheth, and one of those multitudes is appropriate caution before I accuse my boss's future brother-in-law of something shady based on a permissions glitch."

"He's not my brother-in-law."

"Not yet. Give it time. Kate's already planning the seating chart, I've heard rumors."

"Focus, Ranjiv."

"Fine, fine." Another pause, longer this time. "I'll keep digging quietly. Give me a couple days before you do anything dramatic, like interrogating him in a parking garage or whatever it is rich people do when they're suspicious of each other."

"I don't interrogate people in parking garages."

"You interrogated me about a stapler in a conference room with the blinds closed, Japheth. I was sweating. I thought I was getting fired."

"That's an exaggeration."

"It is not an exaggeration. Ask literally anyone who works on this floor. It's a whole story now. People do impressions."

"Of me accusing you of theft?"

"Mostly of your face when you realized the account numbers were from an old sticky note that had nothing to do with the stapler at all and had just gotten stuck to the bottom by accident." He was laughing now, clearly enjoying himself far more than the situation warranted. "Anyway. I'll call you when I have something real. Try not to spiral in the meantime."

"I don't spiral."

"You absolutely spiral. It's a family trait. Kate spirals outward, you spiral inward, your dad just pours a scotch and pretends nothing's happening until it explodes. Very healthy family communication style you've got going."

"Goodbye, Ranjiv."

"Bye, boss. Tell Peach I said hi, and tell her I still haven't forgiven her for the stapler thing either, since she was definitely laughing at me the whole time it happened."

I hung up before he could keep going, because he absolutely would have, and sat there for a long moment with my elbows on the desk, running through the conversation twice to see if I'd missed anything useful in between the jokes.

A knock interrupted me Dean himself, of all people, leaning against my doorframe with his usual easy smile, a folder tucked under one arm like nothing in the world was wrong.

"Got a second? Wanted to follow up on something from earlier this week."

My pulse ticked up, though I kept my face carefully neutral a skill I'd apparently inherited honestly, whatever the DNA results eventually said about anything else.

"Sure. What's up?"

"That document I had Jasmine pull up  I wanted to give you the full context, actually, now that I've got the final draft ready. Didn't want you to hear about it secondhand and wonder what was going on." He smiled, easy, unbothered, and if I hadn't already known something was off, I wouldn't have thought twice about any of it.

"Appreciate that," I said carefully. "What's the case?"

"Client dispute. Licensing rights, international partner, pretty dense stuff. I needed to check formatting conventions since our systems use a specific template the court expects documents filed in a certain way." He said it smoothly, confidently, the way a man says things he's rehearsed enough times that they've started to feel true even to himself. "I probably should've asked you directly instead of going through Jasmine. My bad. Didn't want to interrupt your meetings."

"No harm done," I said, watching his face for anything that didn't match his voice. I didn't find it, not exactly, which was almost more unsettling than if I had.

"Appreciate you being chill about it. Kate would never let me hear the end of it if I annoyed her baby brother." He grinned, pushing off the doorframe. "Anyway. Figured I'd clear the air. See you Sunday for dinner?"

"Wouldn't miss it."

"Great. Tell Jasmine I said thanks again."

He left, whistling something under his breath, and I sat there turning the whole exchange over, trying to decide whether I'd just watched a man clear the air honestly, or watched a very good lawyer rehearse an alibi in real time.

I genuinely couldn't tell. That, more than anything else that had happened that day, was the part that actually scared me.