by Anne Conley
“There’s a lady there who doesn’t quite fit the profile of someone trying to bring down a multi-million dollar company, but she’s acting awfully suspicious. Last night, she kept trying to get Paige to let her go get her drinks and almost cried when she wouldn’t let her. She used to work for Paige, but Patton lured her away with something, and then she came back to work for her during the toss-up, but she’s got something on Paige, I just haven’t figured it out yet.”
“Blackmail?” He leaned forward again, resting his elbows on his knees.
Evan nodded. “I think so.”
“So what’s your next step?”
“I’m going to write some code today. Something that’s like a meta-crawler. It’ll be a program to draw parallels and make connections I’m not finding. Using all of the data online, it’ll cross-reference all these names and find connections between things that would take me years to look for manually. Because there’s just so much.” He sighed. “I can focus on these two, but it’ll take some time. Time I’m not sure I have. The Crimson Lady’s still active, and all my attempts to get her out of the mainframe have come up fruitless.”
“I’m glad you’re on my team. Not sure I want you suspecting me of anything and doing all that meta-crawling shit with my background.” Simon stood, running his hands down his chin.
Evan grinned, and as Simon left, keys started clacking.
Two hours later, he was still absorbed in the code when Ryan knocked on his door.
“Hey, man, you need a break? I need a spotter.” Ryan leaned on his doorframe and waited.
Evan looked up, squinting in the darkness at the silhouette in his doorway. “Sure, just give me another minute to work out this bug and I’ll be in there.”
An hour later, Evan left the program running on his computer and went into the gym, where Ryan was doing chin ups.
“Punk ass mother fucker,” Ryan grunted out as he lowered his body to the floor.
“Sorry, got caught up.” Evan walked into the gym, their sanctuary at Pierce Securities. This was the one place where they did their best brainstorming. He should have been in here earlier.
Stalking over to the bench weights, Ryan muttered, “Nobody else is here to do it, or I would have gotten someone else.”
“I said I’m sorry, fucktard. This case is killing me.”
Lying down on the bench, Ryan gripped the bar and Evan helped him pull it up straight overhead.
“Tell me about it,” Ryan grunted out as he lifted.
So Evan spent the next twenty minutes laying it all out, as succinctly as he could, leaving off his growing feelings for their client. He knew Ryan would get it, he just wasn’t willing to admit it.
“What does PSL stand for?”
“Paige Stygman Lawson. It’s her initials.”
“Have you talked to her ex-husband?” Ryan exhaled loudly as he raised the bar.
“There’s not one.” Something Ryan was saying struck a chord in Evan, but he waited for Ryan to spell it out.
“Then why two last names? Parents usually don’t saddle girls with family names like that.” And there it was. Ryan was right.
A prickle of unease shot up Evan’s spine. He hadn’t thought of that. He’d searched Paige Stygman Lawson and hadn’t come up with anything. She hadn’t told him about an ex-husband, and Stygman wasn’t a last name on her list. If it wasn’t her name, that might explain why Paige Stygman Lawson hadn’t brought up much, but if it was someone else, why wouldn’t she tell him?
Ryan let out a groan, slamming the weights back in the brackets. “Go check it out, man. I’ll stay off the bench.”
Grateful, Evan rushed back to his office and started rummaging through his drives. Last year, he’d made a program which meta-crawled through the internet for deleted files. He hadn’t used it much, and it took up too much space on his computer, so he’d stored it on a flash drive and stuck it in his drawer.
Sticking the drive in his fastest available computer, he entered the commands to have it search for Lawson and Stygman deleted files. As the code flew across the screen, he watched it work, searching the internet. Once something’s on the internet, it’s there forever.
Sure enough, his program started getting hits and files started showing up. While it continued working, Evan started looking through them, and a chilling picture began to form.
Dale Stygman was Paige’s initial business partner when the company first started. They’d met in college and formed an alliance. After working together for three years, Stygman had died in a tragic boating accident. There were photos, but they took a little longer to retrieve. When Evan finally pulled one up on his screen, his breath left him in a whoosh.
A wiry man, not much taller than Paige, stood next to her, hand at her back. He was dressed in a tailored suit, a man with money. Paige wore an evening gown, black and sexy as sin. Dale Stygman looked at her like he would proudly lick her shoes and love every minute of it.
Looking at his watch, Evan found it already evening time. He left his computer running the meta-crawler program on the suspects and drove over to Paige’s house, his thoughts racing around his head.
Paige had been partners with Stygman. Stygman died. Patton emerged as a rival and led a very public attack on Paige’s company in the press and courts until she took him over. Now Patton had disappeared. Evan had done another search on his recent activities, but absolutely nothing came up, which was weird. No credit card transactions, no movement, nothing.
Then there’s Peggy. Someone who used to work for Paige, then Patton, now Paige again, and she knew something about Paige that Evan suspected Paige didn’t want to be made common knowledge.
And Koen. Fucking Koen, who didn’t exist until six weeks ago. And Paige had no fucking clue.
And then there was Paige herself. Paige, who probably knew who he was when they’d originally met, giving him a fake name so he’d never be able to find her again. Then she’d hired him to track down The Crimson Lady’s controller and probable creator.
And whoever controlled The Crimson Lady was an expert on Artificial Intelligence. So was Paige. She’d admitted to hero-worship with Evan. Could she be behind The Crimson Lady? To what end, though? As hard as Evan tried, he couldn’t come up with a motive for her to sabotage her own company. Unless, somehow, he was a part of it. He could see her laying final blame on his theories and taking him under with her.
Again, why?
Mental illness knew no reason, though. If she was crazy, it would all be justifiable in her own mind. And that’s really all that was necessary. She didn’t seem crazy or unhinged, but again, mental illness could be invisible to the observer. Who was he to know?
When he pulled up in her driveway, movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. It was dusk, and hazy shadows meshed shadows with objects, but he thought he saw a man running away from her house. He’d been staring at computer screens all day long, though, and couldn’t count on his depth perception’s accuracy. It could have been someone running around the house next door. Or it could have been nothing. A trick of the impending darkness.
He got out of his car and walked to her door, ringing the doorbell and waiting.
Soft music wafted to his ears, and he heard the padding of footsteps as she came to the door. When she opened it, he saw she was dressed comfortably in yoga pants and a tank top, and he was taken aback by her beauty. Again.
Stifling every primal urge in his body, he strode inside, not looking around. He didn’t want to see what her personal space looked like. Evan didn’t want to be sucked into another thing from which to extricate himself. He knew if he looked around and saw another facet of her personality, he would be that much more hooked on her. And he couldn’t be. Not tonight. Tonight he needed answers. Not distractions.
“We need to talk.”
Closing the door behind her, she locked it and led him into the kitchen, where the aroma of roasting garlic pierced his nose. “Okay.” She lowered herself
to a bar stool against the kitchen island. “You want some wine?” She gestured to an open bottle next to her, and he realized she’d been working on her laptop.
“No, thanks. Tell me about Stygman.” Shock registered on her features. “I uncovered some stuff, and it left me with more questions than answers.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know, just tell me about him.”
Paige’s features darkened with sorrow, a hurt he didn’t understand. Evan watched her mouth part, edges downturned, and the wrinkles around her eyes deepen. She sighed heavily, suffering loss all over again with that one exhale, and Evan smothered the need to take her in his arms and take away her pain.
He had no idea what pain she’d suffered, not really. As far as he knew, she was working with Stygman in some elaborate hoax, although he still hadn’t figured out to what end. He wasn’t even sure if the words about to fall from her mouth would be truth.
“Dale and I met in college, initially as assigned partners in a programing class freshman year. My parents died that year, and he was there for me. We clicked together and became best friends. That’s where we met Roger, too.” Evan’s eyebrows rose at the declaration that she and Roger Patton used to be friends, but he didn’t say anything. “We did everything together, eventually becoming roommates… me and Dale, not Roger. He stayed in the dorms. Dale’s and my goals and business plans clicked for after college, and it just made sense to go into business together. So we started PSL.” She drank the rest of her glass of wine and refilled it silently, lost in her own thoughts. “It made Roger mad.” Taking a sip, she mused, “He thought we were starting Patton, Stygman, Lawson, but when Dale told him there was no way in hell he would ever work with us, Roger went off to lick his wounds. I remember when we toasted to the start of PSL, he kept calling it Paige Stygman Lawson, like we were married or something.”
Evan could kick himself for his assumption that the company was named after her. That had been his first major mistake, and it could end up killing her. He took a deep breath, choosing not to focus on that.
“So Roger started PatTex.”
“Yeah.”
He would deal with Patton later. One thing at a time. “Tell me more about Stygman. What happened?”
“He used to be so funny and charming. He was an unlikely womanizer, sort of the hot, geeky type, and I was forever making fun of his conquests, his cheesy pick-up lines that seemed to never fail. He was kind and generous, doing all the cleaning in our apartment while I did all the cooking. We were great partners in our domestic life as well as our business life.”
Her voice faded away, and Evan watched her, silently urging her to continue. She absently tucked an errant tendril of hair behind her ear and didn’t seem to have anything else to say.
As if to ward off the impending silence, she spun around and ducked into the fridge, returning with a plate with various cheeses on it. Smiling at him sheepishly, she offered, “My weakness.” Turning again, she rummaged in a cabinet for a box of crackers.
When she’d finally stilled her body at the kitchen island again, Evan pressed her. “What happened?”
Paige looked up at him, and the look in her eyes made his knees rubbery. “You.”
Confused, he felt his mouth harden. “What do you mean?”
A wry smile quirked the corners of her mouth as she stuffed a piece of cheese and a cracker in it. “You were our hero. When we designed our first video game, every roadblock we encountered was answered by asking ‘What would Rocco do?’ You were our inspiration, until you weren’t.” Her eyes fell to the granite countertop, where her fingers traced patterns.
“When the TEKNIX article came out, I was heartbroken for you, but at the same time, exhilarated by the pictures. I knew your career was ruined, but I wasn’t sorry to have such tangible evidence of your… virility. You had been elevated to some sort of God-like status in my mind, and it made Dale mad.”
Grabbing a piece of cheese for himself, Evan munched along with her. “I hated doing those pictures, but my agent said it was necessary. I thought that article was going to bring AI into the public conscience, not as a sci-fi thing of the future, but as a reality to be dealt with.”
She nodded. “I know. I know those pictures weren’t the real you, but they’re hot. You have to admit that.”
“Yeah, well, as hot as a twenty-something hothead can be, I guess.” Evan walked over where Paige had wine glasses hanging and selected one, pouring himself a glass from the bottle on the counter.
Paige chuckled ruefully. “Yeah.” She blushed. “Dale got jealous, I think, of my infatuation with you, because I was obsessed with those pictures. We had a major difference of opinion. He wanted to use the intuitive aspect of AI you spoke about developing in our video games, and I was against it. I felt like it left too much room to chance. It was something we wouldn’t be able to control.” Her eyes tracked his reactions over the rim of her wine glass.
Artificial Intelligence is computer intelligence that uses environmental influences to adapt and maximize its own chances of success. Evan had theorized that AI could never mimic human decision-making until it utilized intuition, like humans, in its decision-making process. He’d been close to developing a program that would do that when TEKNIX came out with their article on him. The National Association of Computer Ethics was threatening to try him in a series of hearings before Congress, so he’d ditched the project, along with any future he might have had in AI.
“Dale wanted to have lifelike characters interacting in his games, and I agreed, but could only play devil’s advocate with him on it. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized AI wasn’t a game, not the way you’d described it, and it had no place in games at all. So he decided to leave the company. That’s all he told me, he was leaving. I was heartbroken. I’d lost my best friend. But when he left, he took a bunch of my notes, and then the boat crash happened.” She looked down at the ground, but when he lifted her chin to see her eyes, a tear rolled down her cheek. “I think he was going to double-cross me, open his own company. He was on his way to the Bahamas in his boat. Was killed.”
“Was it just a coincidence then that we met the night you took over Pat-Tek, or is there more to that?”
She shook her head, her green eyes wide. “Oh, that was the best night of my life, and a total coincidence. I had no idea I would meet you that night. But as soon as I realized who you were, I had to, you know?”
He did know. Because the moment he’s seen her, he’d had to have her, too. Evan heard her tears in her throat, and moved to comfort her, knowing as he did it was a mistake.
As soon as he took her in his arms, her soft warmth made his stomach flip over, but he restrained himself from kissing her senseless. Instead, he lowered his nose to the top of her head and inhaled. Her clean woman scent, devoid of perfumes, calmed his need to throttle a dead man for hurting her. He would take that.
He inhaled a cleansing breath and re-seated himself on the barstool, remembering why he was here.
“Okay, that’s one. Tell me about Patton.”
She sighed. “Roger was always a little weird and very competitive. Everything with him was a competition. He never could do as well as he wanted, though. He was seriously goal-oriented, and his main goal was to beat Dale at everything. He wasn’t nearly as good looking as Dale, though, so he overcompensated with everything else. His programs were supposed to be better, his company bigger, you know.”
Evan scoffed. “Pat-Tek’s games were nothing compared to yours.”
“Yeah, and it killed him. He hated being second-best. Hated that Dale and I moved on without him. When Dale died, the lawsuits started.” She wiped a tear away from her cheek. “It was, like, losing my best friend wasn’t enough. He wanted me to be completely ruined.” She sniffed. “So I fought back.”
“Why in the hell didn’t you tell me about Dale from the beginning?” He tried to disguise the hurt, but it came out anyway, and Paige
’s eyes widened.
“It wasn’t intentional, Evan. Honestly. This whole thing has just been so intense, I didn’t know which way was up half the time. I’m way over my head here, and I really thought you could help. But having you around has made me incredibly stupid.” Evan nearly choked on her honesty. Her eyes beseeched him, and he believed her. Lord knows he hadn’t been thinking straight around her, either.
“So why don’t you believe Patton could be a suspect here? I don’t get it. It seems like with his history, he’d be at the top of your list.” He needed the truth, needed to know what she knew.
She shook her head. “He’s a humanitarian. He wouldn’t hurt these innocents.”
He would leave that for now. Moving on to the real topic of his visit, he decided it was time to focus on Koen, since Paige was finally opening up to him.
“I need to know about Koen, now.”
She looked at him with surprise. Genuine surprise. Evan marveled at her naiveté. Could one person really be so trusting? He supposed he used to be that way.
“You really think he could have something to do with this?” She reached for another piece of cheese and a cracker, and Evan watched as she took a bite and washed it down with a sip of the wine.
“He could.” Evan’s voice was firm. “I need to rule him out if nothing else.”
“He doesn’t have the skill set for something like this. He’s a lawyer, for crying out loud.”
“He’s a lawyer for a software company,” Evan pointed out. “Have you been to his office, met his co-workers? Any of his friends?”
She thought before she answered. “We did go out with some of his friends once, to a movie, then we went to dinner separately.”
“So you didn’t really interact with them?”
“Well, no. But they all seemed to get along just fine.” She was so fucking naïve. How had this woman climbed to the top?
Jesus. He could have just asked random people to let him pretend to be their friend, or paid them for the privilege. It wasn’t unheard of, and if he was desperate, anything was possible.
