That wasn’t possible.

And as the video started again, I smiled to myself.

At the start of the video, you could see me from above and behind. I was sitting on the first row of benches with my feet on the floor. There was steam swirling in the room, but you could see me relatively clearly. After about three seconds, the door to the steam room opened and Jay walked in, naked, and sat down next to me.

There had been no one else in the steam room when I had walked in, so whoever had taped this had not been in there. I clicked the video player closed—I was all too familiar with what happened next—and thought for a moment. I closed my eyes, leaned back in my desk chair, and tried to recall exactly what the back wall of the steam room looked like. Obviously, whoever had shot the video had some kind of peephole into the steam room. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember everything about the back wall—I’d never had any reason to pay any attention to it. That was a useless line of thought.

Well, then, what’s behind the wall?

I pictured the gym again. It was a stand-alone building, with a parking lot in the front that continued around for more parking on either side and parking in the back. The front wall was all glass. The cardio equipment was lined up along the front windows so you could look out onto Shaw Avenue while you worked out. The front two-thirds of the building was devoted to the weight area. The front desk was located in the center of the weight area, and it was round with refrigerated cabinets below that stocked water, protein and energy drinks, and assorted protein bars. The locker rooms were in the back—the men’s on the left side, the ladies’ on the right. Separating the locker rooms were office spaces and the storage room.

I raised an eyebrow. Either the storage room or someone’s office had a peephole into the men’s steam room.

And I was pretty sure Body Quest’s owners wouldn’t want that to become public knowledge.

The next question was, who actually shot the video?

Someone who had access to the offices and the storage room. It had to be someone who worked there.

I laughed. I knew exactly who’d done it.

I picked up my phone and made the call I needed. I asked the right questions and got the answers I’d expected. I hung up and smiled again.

Money was indeed power.

I poured what was left in my coffeepot into my mug and walked back out onto the balcony. My father had once advised me, “Anytime you’re in a situation where you get emotional or start to panic, the most important thing to remember is to calm down and put your emotions to the side—and think logically. Logical thought will almost always get you out of any situation. Logic never fails. Your emotions will cause you to make mistakes every time. Don’t shut them down completely—you don’t ever want to become one of those people who don’t feel anything. That’s a living death. But you don’t want to ever make a decision based on emotions. That only works out if you get lucky, but ninety-nine times out of a hundred you’ll wind up worse off than you were before. Never forget that.”

I sat back down on the wicker love seat on the balcony and picked up my phone again. I dialed Dante’s number and got his voice mail again. I sighed, and then sent him a text. I don’t know what’s going on but we need to talk.

It was entirely possible I was overreacting, but it was weird how he’d gone from hot to cold so quickly.

Logic.

Bobby Dunlap had sent me the steam room video. I went back inside and pulled up my e-mail account. I clicked on his e-mail and checked. Yes, I’d been blind copied. The time stamp on the e-mail showed it had been sent around seven-thirty Friday night. I rolled my eyes and opened an Internet-tracking program. Stupid, stupid people, I thought. My father wrote programs and had his own programming company. Do you honestly think I can’t find out just about anything I want to through a computer? I was using computers before I was five. I’ve forgotten more about computers—and the Internet—than you’ll ever know. And I have access to software your average Joe does not.

It took me exactly four minutes to hack into Bobby Dunlap’s e-mail—the university’s e-mail service was “protected” by a security system that was laughable—and see who he’d copied on the message. As I scrolled through the addresses, I shook my head. He’d sent it to almost every single Beta Kappa—so everyone in the house had seen it. But one name was missing from the list: Chad York. Cyork@csupolk.edu wasn’t on Bobby’s list. I went to his in-box, and there wasn’t anything there with a video attachment. I rolled my eyes and clicked on Deleted Mail. Like so many others, Bobby believed that deleting an e-mail got rid of it and didn’t know he actually had to clear his deleted mail archive.

Typical.

And sure enough, there it was.

An e-mail from Chad with a video attachment, and the subject line read: Check this out.

I opened the e-mail and read the message.

Bobby,

Download this video. I am sure you will be as shocked as I was. For obvious reasons, I can’t forward this around. Would you mind doing it? Everyone in the house has to see this.

Xo Chad

I forwarded it to myself. I signed out of Bobby’s e-mail account and switched over to mine. I opened the e-mail and hit print. I leaned back in my chair and thought while it printed. I leaned forward and opened another access program—one my father’s company had developed for law enforcement. I logged in the IP address of Bobby’s computer and crossed my fingers. If his computer was hooked up to a wireless network—which Beta Kappa had—I could access his computer like it was right in front of me.

Got to love wireless. I smiled to myself as Bobby’s desktop came up on my computer. I clicked on his documents folder. Oh, silly, silly Bobby, I thought as I started dragging all his class notes to the trash. I opened a couple of files—term papers he was working on. Pity, I thought as I deleted them. Sure hope none of these are due soon. It was tempting to load a hard-drive-destroying virus, but I resisted that temptation. A corner of my mouth curled up into a smirk. No virus, I decided, because while that might suck, it will drive him crazy wondering what happened to all his schoolwork. I pictured him sitting in front of his computer, eyes wide in horror, as he tried to find his term papers and finally realizing they were gone forever.

Next time you’ll think twice before doing Chad’s dirty work, asshole, I thought as I emptied the trash, smiling at the pop-up warning ARE YOU SURE YOU WANT TO EMPTY TRASH? FILES WILL BE PERMANENTLY DELETED AND CANNOT BE RETRIEVED. I knew that wasn’t strictly true; a ghost of the files would remain on the hard drive and an expert tech could retrieve them—but it would also cost a fortune Bobby didn’t have. I clicked the Yes box, and the trash emptied.

Never should have fucked with me, Bobby. I’m smarter and richer than Chad. You picked the wrong side, now suffer the consequences.

I whistled as I deleted all evidence I’d tapped into his computer from his history files, and I logged out of his computer.

Even the best forensic computer expert wouldn’t be able to figure out someone had hacked in.

For a brief moment, I considered hacking into Chad’s laptop, but decided against it.

I had something much nastier in store for his sorry ass.

Someone started knocking on my front door, and my heart lifted for just a moment, thinking it might be Dante. But it couldn’t be—security hadn’t called me to let him in. I really do care about him, I thought sadly as I went to see who it was, and cursed Chad again.