by Emma Shortt
Kate was not alone in the apartment. Will was there, cooking something that Meg was sure would usually smell delicious. It did not smell delicious tonight. Meg’s appetite had completely deserted her. Mostly, she wanted to lie down on Kate’s couch and throw herself a really, long-winded pity party.
Kate knew something was wrong the moment she opened the door. She didn’t say a single word. She ushered Meg into the apartment, shot Will a warning look, and led Meg straight to the couch.
“Hot chocolate?”
Meg’s throat felt horribly thick. She doubted she’d even be able to get the stuff down. “Yes, please.”
Kate disappeared to make it. Meg kicked off her boots and curled her feet underneath her. She looked across the space to where Star Trek Voyager was playing on the flat screen. It was the first part of “The Year of Hell.” It was one of Meg’s favorite episodes.
She lowered her head onto her arm and watched as Janeway snapped out various commands to her crew. She looked tired. Meg was tired. It wasn’t a regular kind of tired. It was more like a bone-deep exhaustion. It wasn’t helped by the fact that her legs ached. That stupid run! To think that she’d actually done that for him!
“Here.” Kate appeared with a steaming mug of chocolate in her hands. She’d added cream and marshmallows.
Meg placed it on the table next to the couch. Kate sighed. She took the spot next to Meg and grabbed her hand.
“What happened?”
“I don’t even know where to start,” Meg said.
Will emerged holding a bowl of what looked like chicken soup. “It’s hot,” he said. “Be careful.”
He placed it next to the hot chocolate. The gesture was oddly touching. Meg shifted back into a sitting position. Her gaze moved between the hot chocolate and the soup, and then between Kate and Will. Tears, actual tears, welled up in her eyes. Meg scrubbed the back of her hand across them.
“So stupid,” she muttered, because they weren’t tears of pain; they were tears of anger and frustration. Chance was an idiot!
“What happened?” Kate asked again.
Meg didn’t see that there was much choice but to blurt it out. “I met Jack Richards.”
Kate started. “You what? When?”
“I met him a week ago,” Meg said.
Kate looked at Will, eyes wide. He shrugged back at her. “I don’t understand—”
“Jack Chance. Jack Richards,” Meg said, and even she could hear the emotions in her voice, the anger, the betrayal, the hurt. “They’re one and the same, Katie.”
Kate gasped. “That’s impossible.”
“Seems not.”
“But…Chance is a PI.”
“Chance is a lie,” Meg said slowly. “He never existed. He invented the whole PI thing so he could pull us into the investigation with him.”
“But…” Kate shook her head. “Why would he even do that?”
“He got the idea from me,” Meg said.
“You lost me.”
She gestured to the laptop on the other couch. Will passed it over. Meg flipped it open and typed straight into the search bar. “My Magnum PI blog? He found it.” She turned the screen around so that Kate and Will could look at it. Tom Selleck smiled across at them. “He found all my old blogs,” Meg added. “He built the Jack Chance persona around them.”
Kate looked back at her. She shook her head even as she reached out to take the laptop. “That’s…creepy.”
“You’re damn right it is,” Will snapped. “It’s time Jack Richards and I had a talk.”
Meg held the laptop closer to herself. The underside was hot. For once, Meg did not feel hot at all. She felt cold. Tom continued to smile at her.
“A talk?” Kate said.
“He looked up information on you and Meg? Built a persona around that information?” Will cracked his knuckles. “Yeah, we’re going to have a talk.”
Once again, Meg was oddly touched. She was also indescribably grateful to have such amazing friends. Was it the same for Chance? Even now, were he and Gabe sitting down and discussing what had happened? Meg wanted to think so, but she didn’t think it was likely. Jack Richards was surely too self-contained for that.
Except with you.
She shivered. Chance had been anything but self-contained. He’d been passionate, affectionate, sweet. But then, he wasn’t Jack Richards with her, was he? He was Jack Chance. And yet…Chance was a lie.
“I’m tempted to head to X-Tech now,” Will continued. “See what he’s got to say for himself.”
“Seriously?” Kate said.
Meg swallowed against the lump in her throat. “I appreciate that, Will. But you’re never going to get near him. He’s Jack Richards.”
“Your point?” he asked.
“I’m being delicate here, Will,” Meg said. “And I know you’re uber-successful and quite rich and whatnot, but Jack Richards is a whole other league. He’s the genius. Every nerd I have ever met wants to be him.”
Will waved her words away. “He’s just a man.”
“A man who’s worth more than some small countries.”
“Money has never impressed you before, Meg,” Kate said softly.
“It doesn’t impress me now,” Meg replied. “But it does put him in an entirely other world. You know people like that don’t live like we do.”
“Chance seemed normal enough.”
She shook her head, even though part of her agreed. Chance had been, was, a normal sort of guy. They’d gone out for coffee, eaten lemon cake, spent the weekend lolling on the couch, and gone for a fucking run! Those were all normal sorts of activities. Meg would never have imagined someone like Jack Richards doing any of those things. And he drove a Prius! A Prius!
“Chance was,” she said, confused all over again. “Richards isn’t.”
Kate sighed. “But…Chance is the person you’ve spent all week with. And if he’s Jack…”
“I know,” Meg replied. “I know. I can’t resolve it, either. He’s Chance but at the same time he’s the actual Jack Richards.”
Quickly, though Meg had no idea why, maybe just so she had something to do, she typed his name into a new tab. The old, grainy nerdy pictures came back. Meg narrowed her eyes on them, looking for the similarities. How had she missed it before? It was the eyes. No wonder they had seemed so familiar! Had part of her somehow known it, subconsciously perhaps? Was that why she’d felt so comfortable with him, trusted him so early on, because he was the man she had wanted to help her from the start?
“Look,” she said. “Look!”
Kate leaned in. “I can’t see it. They look nothing alike.”
“He cut his hair, grew the beard, and ditched the gray sweater.” She scowled, his image swimming into her mind, her stomach clenching as it did so. “No, he had that on tonight. That’s when it clicked.”
“I don’t…” Kate pushed her glasses up her nose. “I don’t understand this. You’re going to have to start from the beginning here. Talk us through what happened.”
Meg told them everything. The afternoon spent at the Magic: The Gathering meet. How Chance had run out of there like the devil was on his heels. How she’d realized that, despite spending the weekend together, he was never going to tell her the truth. How the only way to that truth was through Jack Richards.
“I actually started to think that Jack had hired him,” Meg said. “That was the reason he was lying.”
“He kind of did,” Kate said.
Meg continued. She explained about the program that Chance had built. The things it could do.
Kate gasped. “He’s a genius.”
“Didn’t I say that already?”
“He built that in a couple of months?”
“Yep.”
“Can you imagine what he might build in the future?”
“I don’t know that he’s going to build anything,” Meg said. She paused. “This Golden Group thing he has, it’s weird, but it’s like he’s trying to suppress t
hings, stop us from making leaps, from making advances.”
Will had been quiet throughout Meg’s story. He spoke now in a subdued tone. “Richards wouldn’t be the first person to do that. There have been plenty of examples in history where pioneers were scared by what they discovered.”
“You think Chance is scared?”
He shrugged. “This Golden Group, do you know what’s in it?”
“I know my research is.”
“And the other problems? The Millennium Prize problems?” he asked.
“Maybe.”
“What would happen if someone solved them all?”
“These aren’t just math puzzles, babe,” Kate said. “They all have applications in the real world. Most people don’t realize that mathematics is part of everything. If someone could solve the most difficult of them…”
Meg nodded. “World changing.”
“Exactly.”
“There’s no way even Jack Richards has solved them all,” she said.
“He wouldn’t be trying to suppress them if he had,” Kate said.
“No…” Meg trailed off.
Kate gave her a poke. “Meg, what are you thinking?”
“I don’t even know,” she admitted. “This is all just so surreal.”
“It has to be,” Kate agreed. “I mean, you had sex with him.”
“Kate!”
“I know but…” She shot Will a look. “You remember how we used to sigh over him in college?”
Will arched a brow. “Sigh over him?”
“Not in that way,” Kate said quickly. “Not me, at least, but thousands of girls did. There were more pictures of him around in those days, I can’t remember them, but I can remember that everyone thought he was all sorts of cute, with his curly hair and nerdy looks. And he was so smart. He sold his first internet start-up when he was still a teenager. What was that?”
The exhaustion hit Meg all over again. She was such a mess of emotions that she wanted to close her eyes and sleep them away. Surely, it wasn’t unreasonable to want to deal with it all in the morning? She eyed the corridor. Hopefully, Will hadn’t converted her room into Kate’s office yet. “Something to do with secure money transfer,” she said almost absently. “It had cutting-edge encryption.”
“It had a weird name, didn’t it, a play on the security?”
“Yes…”
Kate bolted upright. “Oh my God!”
A shot of adrenaline hit Meg, kicking the exhaustion into the long grass. She straightened up herself. “What?” she demanded. “What is it?”
Kate grabbed the laptop off Meg’s lap. “Of course, how could we have been so stupid!”
“Katie, what?”
“Give me a second….”
Her finger flew over the keys. Wikipedia opened on the screen. Both Meg and Will leaned in to see what she was doing. A logo came up. It took Meg a moment to remember it, but once she did, it all seemed so fucking obvious.
“Take a Chance,” she whispered.
“I completely forgot,” Kate said. “They changed the name after it was sold. It was bad marketing. No one wanted to take a chance on sending their money securely.”
Meg reached out and ran a finger over the old logo. Her heart thumped. This was where he’d gotten the name from. Gabe had been telling the truth. Jack Richards had been Chance for a very long time. But what did that mean? That Chance was the real Jack? That he’d been himself all along? That what had happened between them had been…real? Honest? She was so confused!
“He sold that company for more than a billion dollars,” she said slowly. What had that been like, becoming an overnight billionaire when he’d been just a teenager? Meg had never considered it before.
“And another one and then another one,” Kate said. “He started X-Tech not long after. You remember he put out an invite for anyone and everyone who had anything innovative to join him?”
“We didn’t have anything then,” Meg whispered. “But I remember, I remember wishing that I had. I so wanted to work there. To work what him. It was always my ambition. Finish my PhD, pitch my idea, and maybe, maybe get to work with Jack Richards.”
“I’d say that’s a fairly achievable ambition now,” Will said. “They don’t have any choice but to work with you.”
“Because we had sex?”
He shrugged. “Because they stole your work.”
“They’ll give it back.”
“You’re sure of that?” he asked.
“Yes. Chance was…” She shook her head. “He was horrified. He’s probably in the tower right now, trying to untangle the whole thing, trying to find out what ERQ has been up to.”
“You know what that means?” Kate said, snapping the laptop shut.
“What?”
“You’re going to have to see him again, Meg.”
“I can’t,” she said quickly.
Kate snorted. “You have never run away from a challenge. You’re not going to start now.”
Chance’s image swam into Meg’s mind. Jack’s did, too. They were the same person, and yet, she couldn’t seem to squish them together. Would she ever be able to?
She rubbed a hand over her head. “What would I even say to him? Everything has happened so fast…I don’t even know where to start.”
“You’re going to have to start somewhere,” Kate said. “And soon, I’m guessing. If he’s anything like Will, he’ll be camped out at KIT first thing.”
“To beg forgiveness?”
“I’d certainly hope so,” Kate said. “There’s quite a lot to forgive.”
And there was. Meg couldn’t argue with that. He’d started this whole thing between them on a foundation of lies, and not small lies, either, but ridiculously large ones. But then, he had started it, and look where it had led them. Meg liked him. He made her smile. He made her laugh…
He made her happy.
Was he right? Had she always, on some level, been aware of the most important data in this equation? The data that was them…their attraction…their compatibility…
Kate reached out and took her hand, pulling Meg from her racing thoughts. She gave it a squeeze. “Like I told you in the very beginning,” she said. “Remember what this is about.”
“The work,” Meg whispered.
“No, silly,” Kate replied. “It’s never been about the work. It’s always been about the game.”
“It’s not the one I wanted to play,” Meg said.
“It’s the one you are playing,” Kate replied. “Question is, are you going to play it to the very end?”
Meg took the laptop back and clicked on Chance’s image. Her heart clenched. She could see him now in the nerd he once was, maybe continued to be. Why had he changed the way he looked? Why had he pretended to be someone else? Who was he? Did she dare find out?
She looked back up and her gaze met her friend’s. Kate was right. Meg had never run away from a challenge before. This might the biggest one so far. How could she possibly do anything other than face it?
Something arced between them. Meg took a deep breath, something like a shaky resolve blossoming in her belly. She’d wanted the truth in the very beginning. Despite what had happened, she still wanted it.
“All the way to the boss level?” she whispered.
Kate laughed. “This time it absolutely is.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
It was the very early hours of the morning before Chance looked up from his computer screens. He was in his office at X-Tech, the one located at the end of the plain corridor, behind a door that few ever dared enter. Gabe was the exception to that. He sat at the far end of Chance’s desk, fingers flying over his keyboard, jacket and tie long since discarded, hair no longer artistically ruffled but simply ruffled.
Chance thought it fair to say that he felt fairly fucking ruffled, as well. He leaned back in his chair and stretched out his back. It ached. Everything ached. And he was fucking exhausted, but they were making progress.
“You okay there, Gabe?” he asked.
Gabe looked across at him. His eyes were red. Probably his contacts scratching. Gabe did not go for the geeky-guy-in-glasses look. “We haven’t pulled an all-nighter likes this since we were kids,” he said. “I kind of miss it.” He looked over at the many empty soda cans and pizza boxes. “We might be past the age of soda and pepperoni,” he added. “I’m going to pay for this tomorrow.”
“You and me both,” Chance said. He eyed the code running down his screen. He could remember writing most of it, some though…it was almost unrecognizable to him. “We’ve never pulled this sort of all-nighter,” he said after a moment.
“The sort where we try and get some control over rogue AI?” Gabe asked.
“ERQ is not AI,” Chance said. “At least, not in the true sense.”
“She’s wonderful,” Gabe breathed. “If we could find her corrupted code and—”
“Absolutely not,” Chance said quickly. “ERQ’s days are numbered.”
Gabe sighed. “You were more fun when we were younger.”
“And you dressed better,” Chance said.
Gabe picked up a balled wrapper and threw it in Chance’s direction. Chance swatted it away.
“I should be asking you if you’re okay,” Gabe said. He picked up a can of soda, took a swig, and pulled a face. “Flat.”
“I’m wonderful,” Chance said. “Just fucking wonderful. I’ve spent the last few years stealing other developer’s work—”
“We don’t know it’s the last few years.”
“However long it’s been,” Chance said.
“It wasn’t on purpose.”
Chance rotated his shoulders. The muscles twinged. “That’s not the point.”
“We can fix this, Chance,” Gabe said. “I’ll help.”
“You are helping.” He looked back at his screen. The code continued to run. “How much stolen data do you think we’ve tracked down?”
Gabe picked up another balled wrapper and threw it at him. “I don’t even know why you’re asking me that. You and I both know you’ve been running the calculations as we go.”
“Two point seven percent,” Chance sighed.
“Based on her records?”
