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Andersen’s tablet. “I bet I know who in accounting is being the most vocal about how expensive the project is.”
    “Bingo.”
    Frowning, she ate more of her dinner without tasting it. Whatever was going on between Jasmine Shah and Andersen seemed to be escalating, and Javier was caught in the middle. Was is possible he did have something on Andersen?
    “Do you know anything about the Gutierrez family?” Javier had never discussed his personal life, not even when they were in school.
    “No, I don’t.”
    There was something there, she could feel it. She would have to figure it out, but for now her primary concern was Andersen’s project.

Chapter 7

    Arriving an hour before shift the next day proved to be a good idea, as Dara spent the whole sixty minutes making additional changes to the presentation. There was no time to make a copy, and she concentrated on committing Andersen’s notes to memory so that she could transcribe them later.
    He hovered over her the entire time she worked, reprimanding her whenever she made a mistake, and making barbed comments about the state of her work and his opinion of it. In all likelihood she would have finished faster had she not had to deal with his imposing presence, which made her so nervous she could barely function. It was a relief when she finished, and he left to gather his things while she made backups and sent the presentation to the relevant personnel.
    Her mind wandered as she completed her menial tasks, and she chewed over one of his notes. He’d wanted her to include supplemental data justifying the cost of one aspect of the project, as per a request from Jasmine Shah, giving Dara the evidence she needed to confirm her suspicions that Shah was the fly in Andersen’s ointment. Shah seemed to have embarked on a personal quest to discredit his work, but was she doing so out of spite or because she stood to gain something from it?
    Exacting as Andersen was, Dara had never seen him work quite so hard on anything before, and all her other tasks had fallen by the wayside due to the obsessive honing and shaping of his presentation. He and Shah were engaged in a power play, but Dara had a hard time imagining that anyone could have gained the upper hand on him. Something big must be on the line, and she wondered what role Javier played in the whole mess.
    Remember how he stole your plans and you didn’t even know it? Had Letizia not caught it, you would never have suspected him until you saw that flawed design on the screen.
    Javier was far subtler and craftier than Dara had given him credit for being, and it wasn’t a stretch to imagine he nursed a vendetta against Andersen. Javier had seemed defeated when he’d acknowledged that she would become Andersen’s assistant, but there was no way of knowing if that had been a sincere manifestation of his emotions. He had made it quite clear that he would see to his own self-preservation, whatever it took.
    She would have to dig into it, preferably tonight. She could sense that things were coming to a head, and she wouldn’t have long to pass the information along to Mal. A major development on Magnum’s part could shift the balance between the Creators, and Mal would want to know before it happened.
    If he doesn’t already know. Don’t develop an overinflated view of your own importance in this whole thing.
    Suppressing a sigh, she wondered again why she was so eager to help Mal. She felt indebted to the Free Thinkers for what they had done for her mother, of course, but it was more than that. The ease with which she’d been manipulated during her apprenticeship stung, and it chafed her that Mal had written her off. She was eager to prove herself to him, but, more importantly, she was eager to prove herself to herself. Acknowledging how naive she’d been all her life was a bitter pill to swallow, especially since she had thought herself so smart.
    For once, Dara found herself anticipating a meeting as she and Andersen