You Fired a Tech Genius novel · Chapter 13 of 32

Chapter 13: You Knew

Zoe didn't answer me in the hall.

She took the microphone back to the grocer in the green apron, said "Thank you, sir," and walked out through the side doors.

I followed her, because I had nowhere else to put my feet.

The loading dock behind the Lakefront Hall smelled of diesel and wet cardboard.

A line of empty coffee urns stood on pallets in the cold.

She went to the edge of the concrete and stopped there, with her back to me and her hands in her pockets.

"Say it," Zoe said.

"Why did you hire me?"

"You heard why."

"I heard what you told nine hundred strangers," I said. "I'm asking what you told yourself."

She turned around.

Her eyes were dry now, and that was somehow worse than the tears in the hall.

"I had a file with two letters in it and a dead father," she said. "I didn't know if AT was a monster or a kid."

"And?"

"I thought if I could put you in a room and watch you for a month, I'd know."

"Know what?"

"Whether you'd lie to me."

The word sat on the concrete between us.

"About the hold?" I said.

"About anything," Zoe said. "A man who can look at you for a month with that in his past and say nothing is a man who'll do it again."

"You asked me for a rule. No lies."

"I gave you every opening a person can give without handing you the paper."

"You gave me a desk and your bed."

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