Secret Acquisitions

by Raleigh Davis

  “I know why you couldn’t.” The forgiveness there hits me right in the chest.

  “You’ll have to show me all the documents Grace sent you. The fact that she committed corporate espionage like that… It makes things more difficult.”

  The things I’m referring to is stopping Fuchs and grinding his company into the dust. I’m remembering everything I’ve ever heard about Corvus, and it’s all beginning to make a certain horrible sense. Corvus specializes in surveillance, whether it’s for police departments, state intelligence agencies, or even foreign governments. And what better way to watch people, all the people, than through their phones?

  It also explains why Fuchs’s been buying up encryption companies. He’s not interested in protecting data—he wants to make sure it’s entirely exposed to his all-seeing eyes.

  I’m pissed at him, but I’m also pissed at myself for missing all this. I’ve seen him around, chatted with him—I’m supposed to be good at reading people, but I’ve completely fucked it up with him.

  “I think Grace felt like she didn’t have any other choice,” January says. She sags against me, but it’s more from exhaustion than relief. “I’ve been working so hard for so long on this encryption system, and now he comes in with this ridiculous offer. Everyone’s going to think I’m crazy for turning it down. And Fuchs will suspect something as soon as I do.” She goes stiff under my arm. “And the other Bastards? How are you going to explain this to them? You can’t put Grace in danger by telling them.”

  Those men are my brothers; I could trust them with anything. But January can’t, at least not yet.

  “Can I at least tell Dev? We’re going to need some backup here. And he’s as silent as the grave.”

  Dev’s going to be furious when he hears about this. All the Bastards will, but him most of all. Privacy is beyond an obsession with him.

  January swallows hard, but she doesn’t immediately say no. “What can you even do?”

  I can think of several things, mostly involving my jacking up Fuchs. But that’s not how we solve things here. Besides, physical pain is fleeting, and I want Fuchs to hurt for a very long time.

  “First we finish the encryption system. The sooner it’s running in smartphones, the better. We’ve got a secure location we can move your team to.”

  January doesn’t know it yet, but she’s not going with them. I need her someplace even more secure, somewhere I know Fuchs would never dare to trespass. She can manage her team remotely. And I can make sure she’s safe twenty-four seven.

  “And Grace?” she says. “I can’t leave her where she is. She’s risked a lot to send me those documents.”

  Which I’ll need to see ASAP. I trust January’s story completely now, but I want to get a look for myself. As for Grace…

  My jaw clenches as January stares up at me, eyes dark and wide with appeal. She’s desperate for me to save her friend. God, I wish there was an easy way to buy us out of this situation.

  “She could always quit,” I say. If she’s truly in danger, it might be for the best. “She’d have to go back to…”

  “China,” January supplies. “But she doesn’t want to. Getting an H-1B is so hard, and she’ll get a green card at the end. If she quits, she’ll never get another chance like this.”

  January’s right, and I can’t see any path forward that ends happily for her friend.

  I set my chin on her hair. Even though the closet smells of bleach, the scent of her shampoo still reaches me. Her chest rises and falls, brushing against mine. Somehow the shabbiness of our surroundings makes the moment even more intimate.

  “We’ll figure something out,” I say. Grace going to another company will be tricky, especially with what she knows about Corvus. Fuchs isn’t going to simply let her walk away. “Elliot knows a ton of immigration lawyers. This must have happened before.”

  The tiniest of laughs escapes her. “I do know one person who got to stay after their H-1B was terminated. They had to marry a citizen.”

  The coil of tension in my spine loosens at her amusement. “Okay, I’ll put find a likely spouse on my to-do list. What’s her type?”

  Another laugh from her, which warms me all over. If she can laugh, then everything will be okay. I’ll spend every dime I have, twist the arm of every contact I have, to fix this for her. I need her to know that.

  “You could’ve told me,” I say.

  She goes very still, only her breath moving between us. “No, I couldn’t. I didn’t know if you were friendly with him, and when Grace disappeared and then sent me those files… I was so frightened. I am so frightened.”

  “No.” I tighten my arms, pulling her closer. “You have nothing to fear anymore. Fuchs may be an asshole, but so am I.”

  Her asshole.

  When she turns her face up to mine, the blue of her eyes is stark even in the bare light from the dinky bulb. “So you’re on my side?”

  I brush my lips over her temple, the pulse there like butterfly wings. “Yes. Always.”

  Her shudder is one of relief. “But what about the money? You invested so much—”

  “I don’t give a shit about the money.” For once, I truly don’t. “All I care about is your safety.”

  My heart wants to jump out of my chest. This is the worst possible time to realize that I’m falling hard for January, but I have to tell her the truth. She really is all I care about right now.

  She nods. “Okay. I… I trust you.” She blinks as if clearing her head. “I guess I’d better get to packing up the office. Can I let everyone know where we’re going?”

  I shake my head. I’m willing to tell the Bastards, but her team doesn’t need to know the rest. They’ll be safer that way. “All they need to know is that they’re going to a new building. A more secure one. Everything else is too sensitive to share.”

  We’ll tell her team there’s a rival company trying to beat them to market and that we need to move fast if we want to sell to Pixio. It’s a common enough story they’ll believe without question. And they’ll work their asses off without question too.

  “Wait.” She puts a few inches between us as she realizes. “They? Not me?”

  “No. We’re going somewhere Fuchs can’t get to you.”

  Even our secure building is too close to the belly of the beast for my comfort. Fuchs wants her, but I’m never letting him have her. Not even a glimpse.

  “Where, Antarctica?” she asks.

  “That’s a bit farther than I had in mind. And colder.” I can’t help but smile, because she’s way off track here.

  She raises her eyebrows. “So where?”

  “Napa.”

  When her mouth drops open, I take advantage and steal a kiss.

  Once we’re up in Wine Country, safe from Fuchs’s prying eyes, we’ll have time for more. But I’m greedy.

  For her. And only her suddenly.

  Chapter 21

  Even though I’m technically on the run from one of the most powerful, secretive men in the tech world—oh, and racing against the clock to stop his evil plans—the sight of the winery rising before us, waiting like a castle at the end of a fairy tale, makes me gasp with delight.

  “Of course you own a winery,” I say.

  Mark turns the Tesla into the main driveway. “It’s not mine. It’s Logan’s.”

  I insisted that we stay in the City long enough for me to see my team safely to the secure building, although Mark wanted to drag me off to Napa straight from the janitor’s closet.

  My team surprisingly took the news without many questions. Mark simply said that he’d arranged for better office spaces for us, and they went along with it. They didn’t even say anything when he told them I’d be working off-site with him.

  Mark also arranged for someone to get my clothes from my apartment and explain my absence to my roommates, dealt with the lease on our current office space, conferred with the other Bastards about what to do after bringing them into the loop, and never once let
me out of his sight.

  I don’t know what he has planned beyond selling the Ultra system to Pixio, but I trust that whatever it is, it will work.

  We come to a stop in front of the house. It’s done in a French château style, the roof dark gray slate and the windows set with cut leaded glass. The afternoon sun paints it and the green vines snaking up the rolling hills in a wash of gold. I expect Cinderella or Sleeping Beauty to step out at any moment, a long-stemmed glass of red wine in her hand.

  “This is Logan’s?” I ask as Mark comes around to open my door. “How often does he come here?”

  Logan might look like Prince Charming, but I find it hard to picture him in this “house.”

  “Hardly ever.” Mark hands me out of the car. “He bought it for Callie. And then she left him.”

  I walk up to the massive oaken door, trying to get my mouth to close. “She left him right after he bought her a winery?”

  Mark shrugs as he unlocks the door. “I don’t think the two are related, though she never told him why she was leaving.”

  The entry foyer is almost as impressive as the exterior. Marble tiles veined with various shades of red, white, and gold are set in a complicated pattern beneath our feet. The ceiling rises two stories above our head, and the floor-to-ceiling windows illuminate the double staircase at the end of the hall.

  “I can’t imagine anyone not liking this. Is there someone who at least takes care of the vines?”

  Mark shuts the front door with a weighty, echoing thunk. “There’s a management company for the vineyard. And someone comes in every other week to air things out. But otherwise, no one’s going to disturb us.”

  “So no interruptions while we work?” It’s a relief to hear but also exciting. Yeah, I need to work my butt off and keep up with what my team is doing, but we’re in a freaking castle, just the two of us, for probably weeks.

  Mark’s smile is knowing. “Nope, not a one. We’ve got a secure internet connection once we get it set up. But with our phones off, we should be unreachable.”

  That was the other thing Mark did before we left—turned off both his phone and mine and got my entire team brand-new work phones. He told my employees to leave their personal phones at home and to never discuss the project outside our new secure building. Again, they accepted it pretty readily. Getting rid of any and all phones entirely would have been best, but my team definitely would have said something about that. And we can’t explain to them the real reason for all this cloak-and-dagger stuff.

  “I left my phone at your place.” I walk across the marble floor, peeking into the rooms opening into the foyer. One is the living room—or maybe something that fancy is a parlor?—done in shades of burnt orange and bright golds, the same as a brilliant sunset. A huge swath of the vineyard is visible through the windows. “So I’d say I’m pretty secure.”

  Mark pats his pocket. “And I’ve got a burner.” He looks around. “Do you want the tour?”

  I do, but… “Let’s get our work area set up. We can do the tour when I’m too exhausted to think anymore.”

  Mark raises an eyebrow. “Among other things.”

  Two hours later, I’m beginning to see the cracks in Mark’s oh-so-perfect façade. He’s typing away at a terminal screen, his fingers somewhat hesitant. Like he’s forgotten what he’s doing.

  “No,” I say as the string he’s typing comes up. “Do you not remember this?”

  We’re trying to get the internet set up, but like all things technical, it’s taking us longer than we’d hoped. Even programmers sometimes shake their fists at the idiot machines they have to work with.

  “No, I remember.” Frustration leaks out of his voice. I’m reminded of the times together in the computer lab at Stanford, when we’d both be working on some assignment and he’d grumble about it in that exact same tone. His fingers start again.

  “No,” I say again. This time I push his hands aside, and Mr. Master of Silicon Valley lets me. “Let me do it. Wow, you really have forgotten stuff.”

  When I hit Enter, the screen flashes as data packets go flying between Mark’s laptop and the website we’re pinging. Finally something’s working.

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Mark says, but his lower lip is adorably pouty. “It’s like riding a bike.”

  “Right.” I tap in some more commands, double-checking the connection. “Except a bike is pretty much the same as it’s always been and code changes constantly.”

  When I look up from the screen, he’s smiling at me, all fond and warm.

  “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

  Okay, maybe I am. I shrug. “It’s strange to be better than you at something for once.”

  “Wait, what?” He grabs me and pulls me down into his lap. “You always got better grades than I did.”

  I love that he does this now, just pulls me into him for a cuddle—or more—whenever the mood takes him. Out there, he’s the lion, taking down lesser foes and ruling the plains. But here, with me, he’s my kitten. Or maybe I’m his.

  “Yes,” I say, “but I worked ten times as hard. It always seemed to come so effortlessly to you. Like you were born knowing how to code and I was running as fast as I could just to stay in the same place.”

  I might have gotten the grades, but he was the one who’d made it big. In a world where people proudly proclaimed their dropout status alongside their bank balances, he’s the winner, not me.

  “That’s not how it was at all. I wasn’t naturally better—I was lazier.”

  I snort. He was no such thing. “Okay, lazier, but also better. If you had worked as hard as I did, you would have smoked me.”

  “Is that really what you believe? That you have no natural talent and I do?” His hand is stroking my back, long, gentle strokes, but his body has gone tense.

  “Well, I have some natural talent.” I shake my head. “But I’m not some boy-wonder coder. Hard work isn’t sexy here—flashes of genius are.”

  I’m only speaking the truth, and he knows it. Programmers who keep their heads down and get stuff done are appreciated… but they’re not celebrated. And I’ve always been the head-down type.

  “Your encryption program is genius.” I can’t see his expression, but the conviction in his tone rattles through me. “Honest-to-God, once-in-a-lifetime genius.”

  Of course it feels wonderful to hear that, so much so that I’ve got a massive lump in my throat. But some perverse part of me wants to push back, to downplay what I’ve done.

  “You said it yourself,” I point out. “Who needs that much encryption on their personal pictures?”

  I know that it’s necessary. I know that I’m right… but all my vulnerabilities are spilling out, into the safety of his hearing.

  “But you proved I was wrong.”

  I melt into warmth and happiness, finally able to believe. “Wait.” I put a hand to my ear, suddenly giddy. “What was that I heard?”

  He gives an irritated rumble. “You’re annoying, you know that?”

  I tilt my head to grin up at him. “Only sixty-seven percent of the time.”

  “You can’t use my own jokes against me. That’s a violation of joke law.”

  “Let’s go back to what you said before then.”

  His sigh is heavy, but his eyes are twinkling. “I was wrong. It happens sometimes. But not often.”

  “Of course not.”

  His expression turns serious. “January, once this is out there, you’ll be able to do anything you want. You’ll be that famous.”

  “I don’t want to be famous. I think… Well, I think running Ultra is what I really want to do. I don’t want to jump ship for something better. For me, there is nothing better.”

  “And you’ll be able to do that. But there’s nothing else?”

  Dream big, is what he’s saying. Only, if Ultra is on steady ground and we’re together, I can’t imagine what else I might ask from life. “There is something,” I say. “But it’s kind of si
lly.”

  “I like silly.”

  He doesn’t, actually. He’s funny and charming and devastatingly sexy, but he’s not anywhere near silly. I’m amazed he even uses the word, he’s so far from it.

  “There’s this guy on the internet who makes Enigmas. Reproductions of the original German code machines,” I explain. “He machines and hand assembles each one.”

  I saw one once at an encryption conference. Another historical enthusiast had one out to show the other attendees. I’d coveted it like nothing else in my life, but when he told me the price, I knew I’d have to hit it big or sell a kidney to afford one. And since I was still living with roommates and both my kidneys, the dream of having one was far, far away.

  “That sounds amazing,” Mark says. “Does he sell plans?”

  “Like, to make your own? Yeah, but you’d need a high-end machine shop. Which I don’t have.”

  He’s quiet for several long moments, his expression unreadable. And then he kisses me, making forget everything but him. I pull him close, greedy for him, but then the computer chimes.

  Work. I really do have to work.

  Mark sighs, then spins me around in his lap so I’m facing the computer. “Someday your Ultra will be world famous. And then you can get the old-fashioned encryption machine you’ve always wanted.”

  “But first,” I say, staring at the command window as it waits for me to pour code into it, “I have to finish it.”

  Mark puts his mouth against my ear. “I know you can.”

  So I start typing.

  Chapter 22

  We’ve reached the point in the day where my brain has turned to mush.

  Even though Mark still looks fresh as ever, after twelve solid hours of coding, checking in with the team, and going over the chip-testing results, I’m ready to pop something in the microwave, then collapse on the couch for several hours of fitful sleep. Except that in this magical place, I get to eat a lovely, hot meal prepared by the chef Mark has hired and to lounge on the back patio, watching the sun go down with a glass of wine in my hand.