Good Elf Gone Wrong: A Holiday Romantic Comedy

It felt like a funeral as we watched Elsa scan through the last folder.

My nerves were shot. I hadn’t slept since I’d dozed next to Gracie that night in my apartment.

“No,” I said, shaking my head. “No.”

“There’s nothing here,” Lawrence said quietly. “I think … Hudson, I think EnerCheck is clean.”

“I’ve been in their office,” I snarled at Lawrence, grabbing him. “I was there. It is a complete sham operation.”

Anderson pulled me off of him. “Stop it.”

“You said it yourself,” Talbot said carefully. “That people underestimate Gracie. Maybe … maybe she has actually been running a legitimate company this whole time in the background.”

I closed my eyes, trying to control my breathing.

“I cannot,” I forced out, “tell Grayson fucking Richmond that we wasted over half a million fucking dollars on a wild-goose chase. Oh fuck.” I sat down on a stool and buried my head in my hands.

“He is going to fucking kill us. There is big fucking money riding on this. Hundreds of billions of dollars. He’s—he’s going to—I don’t know, he’s going to fucking ruin us.”

“We can check the files again,” Jake offered.

“We already checked,” Elsa said. “There’s nothing on the disks. We’ve all been up for the last thirty-six hours with the team scouring it. There’s lots of pug pictures, some work stuff, sure, but nothing incriminating.”

I hurt her for nothing.

“Today is the day,” I said, feeling like I was watching the scene from far outside my body. “We have until midnight, then Grayson is going to want an answer.”

“Welp,” Jake declared, grabbing his jacket. “I’m going to get on a plane and fly as far away from here as possible.”

“The fuck you are,” Elsa said. “We die together!”

“Hell no. I’m going to Vegas,” Jake said.

I knew what I was going to do. If I only had a few more hours left on this earth—I was spending them with Gracie.