by Ravenna Tate
She felt Viggo’s gaze on her, and looked up to find him glancing down at her with nothing short of love in his eyes. He never had answered her question, but she felt the love in his touch and she saw it on his face. He did love her. One day he might say the words, but right now all his focus was on what Dave could tell them. She understood that.
“Dave,” said Ace, “if you won’t do this for us, do it for my father. Do it for Brent. You two were thick as thieves in college. He’s told me what a damn genius you are.”
“Your father? Yeah. You should talk to your father about this program, Ace.”
“What does that mean?”
When Dave stood slowly and Madison saw the venom in his eyes, a nasty shiver ran down her back.
“What does it mean? Ask him about Ronnie Treadway. Ask him how many hours I spent on this program, only to have the glory go to another man.”
“You and Ronnie were supposed to be partners,” said Ace. “I know that. My father told me all that.”
“Then how can any of you ask me now to fucking help you?”
“Ronnie is dead,” said Emmett. “But you know the program as well as he did.”
Ace flipped the toggle switch off so Dave could no longer hear the conversation in the room. “Maybe I should see if my father can travel here and talk to Dave? The witty me storm duo, together once more. We’re not getting through to him.”
“What is that?” asked Madison. “Witty me storm, I mean.”
“It’s a catchphrase those two used in college when they had trouble writing code.” The corners of Ace’s mouth turned up. “My father still talks about those days with nostalgia-filled eyes. He and Dave were close friends. We might get somewhere if my father was here.”
“Then call him,” said Dominic. “We’re out of options.”
Madison rolled the words around in her head. Witty me storm. What a curious combination of words. “How did they come up with that phrase?”
Ace grinned. “It’s an anagram of I met Mr. Towsty. Dr. Bingley Towsty was a visiting professor in one of their classes, and he challenged them with complex coding problems that not even Dave could figure out. From that moment on, whenever they ran into a coding issue they couldn’t resolve, they used the phrase witty me storm.”
“If he was a professor, why didn’t they use doctor instead of mister?”
“They couldn’t come up with anything they liked that way.”
Madison was intrigued. “But what led them to finding a catchphrase at all?”
“Someone in their class made an offhand remark one day about having met the professor years earlier. My father and Dave said something along the lines of, ‘Oh, I’m important. I met Dr. Towsty,’ and it stuck. But they used witty me storm instead of I met Mr. Towsty so no one would know what or who they were talking about.”
Words flashed through Madison’s brain as the letters rearranged themselves in her head. She let go of Viggo’s hand and walked around the room. No … it can’t be that obvious. She tried the letters again, just to be sure, but she already knew they fit.
Viggo walked over to her and placed a hand on each shoulder. “Are you all right?”
“The phrase … there’s another anagram that works.”
“What is it?”
Tears sprang to her eyes. She hated to have to tell him this. Their admiration for Dave, despite his betrayal, was palpable. “Tommy Twister.”
“What?”
The Weathermen plus Angela and Julianne crowded around Madison.
“Are you sure?” asked Viggo.
“Do it yourself. It fits. Witty me storm is an anagram for Tommy Twister.”
“Holy shit,” said Ace. He strode over to the window and flipped the toggle switch up. “You wrote it. You wrote the virus. You wrote the Tommy Twister virus, didn’t you?”
Dave and Ace stared each other down. Madison didn’t need to hear him confirm it. She saw it on his face.
“Finally,” said Dave, his voice flat and dull. “Took you fucking long enough, didn’t it?”
Chapter Eighteen
Viggo wanted to go into the room and beat the shit out of Dave. If Madison hadn’t been holding his hand, he would have. Everyone was talking at once, and none of it made any sense. His mind raced. Dave Perry had written the virus, but did that also mean he had uploaded it? Viggo couldn’t believe that. He didn’t want it to be true.
Damien whistled loudly and finally the noise died down. “Hang on. Just hang on.” He faced the window. “Dave, are you telling us you hacked into The Madeline Project and uploaded the virus?”
“No.” He walked up to the window. “I was not the one who did that.” His voice and face were desperate once more. “Please let me come in there and talk to you all of you, face-to-face. Please.”
Viggo glanced around the room. What harm could it do now? Dave was beaten, and he knew it. There were twelve of them, plus the henchmen he and Blaine employed. Dave wasn’t going anywhere. “Let him in here. He was our friend once.”
They rearranged the chairs and tables so everyone could sit in a circle and see Dave. The other men stood near the entrances to the room. One of the men stood directly behind Dave.
Dave leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “I didn’t know they were going to fuck it up.”
“You didn’t know who was going to fuck up what?” asked Kane. “Be specific.”
“The five of them. Sam, Dante, Mindy, Clyde, and Shawn. I only wanted to take back what was mine. The Madeline Project was my program. Ronnie got all the credit because he put in the tweaks that made it work, but I had the original idea. I told him we could harness the fields to make it run. It was my baby.”
Viggo’s blood ran cold. “How and where did you find those five?”
Dave shrugged. “How did you all find each other? You didn’t start out looking for future billionaires. You met people and became friends through mutual interests. That’s how I met each of them over the years. Weather control geeks, coding experts, et cetera. One thing led to another. Most of the other thirteen you have were simply on the fringes and got pulled in for various reasons. But only those five had my code.”
“You mean your virus,” said Blaine.
“It wasn’t a virus. It wasn’t written with that intention. They called it one afterward, but I didn’t write it specifically to act like a virus.”
“So you didn’t plan any of this,” said Atticus. “You didn’t set out to fuck up the program on purpose.”
Dave gave him a look of disgust. “Of course not. Why the hell would I do that? Why would I seal my own fate?”
“So what did happen?” asked Barclay. “Was it really a coding error? Was it really something that fucking stupid?”
“Forget the coding error,” said Blaine. “Why? Why wait this fucking long to say anything? We’ve all been underground for eight years! Why did you let this happen? How could you let this happen?”
Dave put up a hand. “Let me back up first. You need to understand something. I didn’t start out wanting to sabotage the program. I only wanted to restore it to what it was supposed to be. I wanted to take it back.”
“What the hell did you hope to accomplish by doing that?” asked Grayson.
“They’d be forced to acknowledge me! I wanted to hold it hostage until I got the same fucking credit as Ronnie had!”
“So this was about your ego,” said Damien, his voice filled with disgust.
“Yeah, it was about my ego, Damien. The same way each of you are all about your own companies, and making sure everyone on the planet knows you exist, and how much fucking money you have. Don’t sit there and lecture me. No one ever took something of this magnitude away from you. You don’t know how this feels.”
Damien stood. Next to him, Ace placed a hand on his arm. “Easy.”
Damien took his seat again, but his face was filled with anger. “You took away my planet, you dumbass. You took that away from all of us. Don’t sit ther
e and tell me I don’t know how this feels.”
“Okay,” said Dave. “Touché. But I never meant for this to happen. By the time I realized the five people I thought had enough expertise to help me do this had other intentions, it was too late.”
“Why did you need help in the first place?” asked Dominic.
“I no longer worked for NSSL. I needed their inside information. The others got it for me, in bits and pieces. Those five became my main contacts over time. I was at HCS by the time they copied that wrong string of code into the program. There was nothing I could do without jeopardizing my position at HCS.”
“Then why did you fight us the whole time?” asked Addison.
“I didn’t. Not at first. I thought I could undermine the hackers from within. I tried to get HCS interested in forming a team and tracking them down, but they didn’t care. You remember what it was like at first. The whole fucking planet was in chaos. No one above me believed this was anything but a mistake in the coding. A switch someone forgot to flip. No one believed it had been deliberate. Not at first.”
“You were going to rat them out by helping your bosses at HCS find them,” said Oliver.
“Yes. Exactly.”
“And you couldn’t simply give them up because then you’d be caught, too.”
“Yeah. That’s it in a nutshell.”
“So what was with the dog and pony show you and Bonnie put on that day?” asked Barclay.
Dave shook his head. “Bonnie. Now there’s a fucked up piece of work. I had an affair with her, okay? I thought she was an ally. I trusted her. I told her everything. She said she’d help me, but when all of you got too close to the truth, she panicked. The more hackers you found, the more she became convinced we’d be found out, too.”
“You wrote the article and it screwed you both,” said Emmett. “Why did you do that?”
“I’d been with HCS for thirty years. I got sloppy and complacent. I never thought I’d be caught. Never. I thought they’d believe it was Bonnie who had written it, and then I’d be rid of her.”
“Didn’t you think she’d rat you out?” asked Blaine.
“Hell no. Do you realize what I have on that woman? You have no idea the shit she’s done.” He glanced toward Atticus. “Take your fiancée, for example. Bonnie’s husband is the one who strung her along for years before she found out the truth, right?”
A muscle twitched in Atticus’s jaw as he nodded.
“He’s the first person I would have gone to. I’d have let him know a thing or two about his wife”
“Pretend I know nothing,” said Emmett, “and lay it out for me. You and Bonnie. I want to know the progression there. I want to know why you practically named Emma in the article.”
Dave sighed loudly and rested his elbows on his knees. “I did that to try to implicate Bonnie. Bonnie shot off her mouth at HCS about her husband’s indiscretions. Emma wasn’t his only one. Too many people had heard her mention Emma. It was easy for me to find out where Emma went after she left the police station. I knew she’d gone to work for Atticus.”
“So you never meant to hurt her directly,” said Atticus.
“That’s right. She was collateral damage. Leland had threatened Bonnie when she told her husband she’d get back at him for having an affair with Emma. He knew about all her affairs, including the one with me. Bonnie told me everything, you see. She’s like that. She doesn’t give a shit who she hurts.”
Dave leaned back in his chair. “I put the info about Emma in the article to implicate Bonnie because enough people heard her shoot off her big mouth. I thought it would be easy for them to reach the conclusion that Bonnie had written the article.”
“Okay,” said Atticus. “You’ve explained it.”
Viggo didn’t imagine Atticus wanted to discuss what Leland had done to Emma any longer, so he spoke up, changing the subject. “Is there really no way we can get back into the program?”
Dave sighed and rubbed his face with both hands. “There is one thing. One possible way, but it’s a long shot. I never tried it. And we won’t know if it worked unless we have people watching on the surface at the same time.”
“Why didn’t you try it?” asked Blaine. “In all this time, why the fuck didn’t you try it?”
Dave gave him a look filled with pain. “Because everyone would know it was me. What I think might work is traceable. If I’d so much as tried and failed, there would still be a footprint. The next person who tried to access the program would find it. Or if one of you got too close and stole my laptop, you’d have found it.”
“Fuck that! Stole your laptop. You of all people understand why we took Rob’s.”
Dave held up his hands. “Okay, okay. You’re right. I sat on this for eight years because I was afraid, okay? Are you fucking happy now, Blaine? I didn’t want to get caught. I didn’t want all of you to know I betrayed Brent, and I betrayed each of you.”
“But now you claim you can fix this?”
“I said maybe. Maybe this will work.”
“Tell us what you need,” said Ace.
****
Everyone took a break while Ace and Emmett tried to get in touch with Merrill Taber, one of the few Storm Troopers they’d all trust with a project this important. Damien and Kane had the necessary computer equipment brought to the room.
Madison and Viggo went into another room to talk, at her request. “Do you believe him?” she asked.
“Yes. We all do. He knows he has no time left, and he’s backed into a corner.”
“So all that work you did to track the others down … I mean, how do you feel about that? It turned out to be unnecessary.”
He shook his head. “No. That’s not true. Each piece of this puzzle fit together. We needed all of it. Without the information from Rob’s laptop, we wouldn’t have the background that led us to Dave. All he did was fill in a few blanks. If we hadn’t found the others, and if you hadn’t recorded that conversation, we never would have had a reason to pick him up. And you … Madison, do you realize what you’ve done for us?”
“It’s just an anagram. He gave you the clue himself. One of you would have figured it out eventually.”
“Maybe. Maybe not. But we have it now because of you.”
The admiration in his eyes was almost too much for her to deal with. She put her arms around him and held him close. “If this doesn’t work…” She couldn’t even finish the thought.
“It will work.” He stroked her hair and back. “It has to work.”
In a few moments, they’d call him back to the room. It was now or never. She took a deep breath. “You never had the chance to answer my question.”
He sighed so softly she almost didn’t hear it. Her pulse raced. Should she have waited to ask? He placed a finger under her chin and lifted her face toward his. Madison didn’t bother blinking back her tears. What would he say?
“I’ve never said this to any woman before.”
“Oh, God,” she whispered.
His gaze softened, and all she wanted to do at that moment was return to the hotel and make love to him until neither of them could walk. The hell with the experiment, and the hell with Dave’s idea.
He brushed her tears away. “I do love you, Madison. I never thought I would fall in love. Never. I didn’t want to. But God help me, I do love you. I love you so much! I want you with me for the rest of my life.”
She was sure her heart would burst from joy. “I love you, too. The only place I want to be is in your arms.”
He kissed her, and she was lost in his scent and the feel of his mouth on hers. Her joy couldn’t be contained. She pictured it spilling out of her pores and running down the hall, out into the street, where it blanketed the city.
Until she heard someone cough and the spell was broken.
“Sorry to interrupt,” said Ace, grinning like a teenage boy watching porn for the first time. “They’re ready for the test.”
Chapter Nineteen
Viggo spoke with Blaine for a few moments, then explained the plan to her. Dave was going to use a back door into the program that he’d designed, but that he wasn’t sure would still work because of the coding error the hackers had made. It wouldn’t give him control of the program, but he was hoping to write code that would give the program what he called a suggestion.
“A suggestion to do what?” she asked.
“To read the code he types in. Nothing more. He said that’s a failsafe he put into the program that no one knew about, and that would only work with a string of code he has to type in first. No one would have been able to do this but him, because he gave no one else the necessary string of code to use. If it works the way he hopes it will, the program will read it. He can go into the code to see that it did. Then he can make another suggestion to execute a command.”
“And none of you could do this because you didn’t know the code?”
“That, and because we didn’t know this back door existed. We didn’t know he’d built these features into it. No one knew, including the hackers. He isn’t sure it will work because of their coding error. He also isn’t sure the program will do anything beyond reading the suggestion, even if he does get in. But it’s the only thing we have left to try.”
“What is he going to suggest it do, once it reads the code?”
“Cease activity for fifteen minutes.”
She glanced toward the video screen where they could see Merrill in his bunker, surrounded by computer equipment. “Oh, I get it now. Merrill is watching the radar to see if that happens.”
“Yes. Exactly. Dave is first going to access the program and see if it will do step one. Read the code. Then if it does, he’s going to wait until Merrill can get reliable signals from a weather satellite that tell him there’s an active storm or two in the area. Dave will then tell the program to execute the suggestion, and Merrill will monitor the radar to see if the storm activity stops for fifteen minutes.”
