Losing Everything

Chapter 11.2

Lucy walked back along the beachfront towards Erica’s. She walked, looking out towards the sea, until reached the place where she had left her car that morning.

Then she stopped, surprised.

There was a police car sitting in front of her car. There was a police car, with a cop inside it, who got out when Lucy walked up, as if he recognised her.

He probably did, she realized, most likely from her drivers licence photo.

She hesitated, uncertainly, then walked over to him. “I think you might be looking for me,” she said.

The cop seemed to think so too. He asked her name, and when she told him, he said he needed to talk to her about the misuse of a company credit card.

“Misuse of a card?” Lucy said.

The cop nodded.

“Did someone make a complaint or something?” Lucy said.

“The company who owns the card did, apparently.”

Lucy stood there, a bit shocked. She assumed this was Jake being a spiteful asshole, and not that the Bitmo board was actually out to get her. She assumed it was Jake, because this was exactly the kind of awful thing Jake would do to be vindictive, and because he probably had the authority to cancel credit cards or report them stolen, too. She wasn’t sure, because she had never cared enough about the financial side of the company to find out, and she was starting to realize that was a mistake. She should have expected something like this, she supposed.

She should have expected it, but all the same, it was a shock.

“Fuck,” she said, and then quickly, thinking that swearing at the police was probably bad, added, “Sorry.”

“It’s fine,” the cop said. “Are you all right?”

“Just surprised.”

The cop glanced around, at the houses that happened to be nearby. “We could go inside, if you’d like to sit down.”

He seemed to be assuming she had parked the car near where she lived.

Lucy hesitated. “Can we talk here?” she said. “I’m staying with someone and I don’t know whether she wants my problems being dragged into her house.”

“Of course,” the cop said, and leaned on the front of the police car instead.

“What do you need to know?” Lucy said.

“Did you withdraw money from this company’s credit card account? Bitmo, I think it’s called?”

“Yes,” Lucy said. “I did, but…”

“Last night?”

Lucy nodded.

The cop held out his phone. There was a photo on the screen. Lucy, standing at an ATM, withdrawing money. It had a time and date printed in the corner, and was from the night before.

“Yeah,” Lucy said. She had assumed as much. “It isn’t stealing though. I was a director of the company until yesterday, and the company’s bankrupt anyway.”

The cop nodded. He had a notebook, which he unfolded. He took a pen out of his pocket and carefully wrote that down.