by CD Reiss
“Really? Well, you can see if there’re any tools in the shed.” She handed me a towel. “When are you leaving, Mr. Harden?”
She didn’t sound cruel or rude. Her tone barely moved.
I wiped my hands, wishing I had an answer. “I keep trying to.”
The eggs were still warm. I tried not to shovel them, but I was starving.
“I want you to think about taking Harper with you.” Catherine sat across from me, cradling her coffee mug.
Did she know her sister was a hacker? Did she know her sister was inches away from ruining me?
“Excuse me?”
“She’s dying here, and she won’t leave. The longer she stays, well, you know what happens.”
She didn’t know. She thought Harper was just her smart sister.
“To be honest, I don’t know what happens.”
“She made it to twenty-five without having kids. Most girls around here start at eighteen. She’s going to be an old maid like me unless she finds a man who can match her.” Catherine didn’t look as if she’d hit thirty. Hardly an old maid. “I think where you are, she might find happiness.”
In Silicon Valley, a girl like Harper would get swooped up like a steak in a wolf’s den. She’d have her pick of rich and talented men. The fact that what she’d done to QI4 would make her a talent commodity was an oddly secondary concern.
“She can go where she wants.”
“No, I mean… you could introduce her around. Be her friend.”
My reflection stared back at me from the black surface of my coffee. “I could. But where I’m from, no one really likes me. Right now, my company’s under attack, and outside the people who work for me, everyone thinks it’s funny, or cool, or they’re somehow vindicated. The whole world watched me burn, and now you know what they’re disappointed about? Not that my creation crashed. They’re disappointed that they won’t get to be the ones to take me down. They won’t get the glory. Someone beat them to it. So I’d love to help Harper, but if I brought her back with me, they’d hate her too.”
“I doubt everyone hates you.”
“Believe it. I can show you tweets that would make your hair turn red.”
She blew on her coffee and sipped it. Tapped the edge. “She’s had a rough time.”
“I know.”
“When our father died, she was supposed to take time off school and go back. But our mother…” Catherine shook her head pensively. “She took a mortgage out on the factory, defaulted first chance she got, and left with everything. Just. Gone.”
“I’m sorry.”
She waved as if it was old news. “There was a man involved. Of course. Had been for a while. She was waiting for our father to die so she could leave.”
“So you started selling furniture.”
She smiled at some foolishness then sighed. “I hear someone has a problem… if all I have to do is give them an antique to sell, I give it to them. That’s all they’ll take. An object or work. No one accepts a handout.”
“It’s a big house. That’s a lot of problems.”
“It is.” She gathered the plates and brought them to the sink. “And there are more. Always. The furniture’s gone, and I’m running out of projects around here.”
I couldn’t imagine her sacrifice. Richest girl in town with a father who owned the primary place of employment reduced to poverty by her own mother.
“Do you have tools around? Hand tools? Stuff like that?” I asked.
“In the shed out back. We’ve loaned a lot out and sold some, but the basics should be there.”
“Okay, to your first question, I don’t know when I’m leaving. Harper and I have some things to work out.”
“What things?” Her voice was all hope wrapped in surprise.
“Just things. Let me fix that hole in the wall first.”
XXV
I found the shed to the right of the thorny bed of bushes. It was a rotted-out mess. The door nearly came off when I opened it, and dozens of crickets jumped whenever I moved something. How did these women decide what got attention and what didn’t? Was it money? Time? Materials?
The tool bench was tidy but dirty with disuse. Some of the metal jar tops screwed into the ceiling had glass jars of nails threaded in; some were just circles waiting to be used. This had been someone’s special place. They’d kept pictures of boats, model planes, vintage cola signs, and wooden boxes that probably held treasures I had the curiosity but not the courage to open.
A hole in the roof had let water in, rusting everything. A hoe with the grey handle. A sledgehammer with the handle half broken off. A pair of pliers screamed in a permanent open state.
I found a box of old scrapers crusted in plaster. I found three containers of joint compound. I could only get one open. After working past an inch of dried crust, I found a pocket still wet enough to use.
Back upstairs, I scraped off the mushroom and plastered over the crack, laying the compound on as smoothly as I could. It stuck and shifted on the cracking plaster, and I ended up with a larger patch than I wanted. Eradicating the mushroom meant ripping out the mycelium, which was probably in the wood on two of the walls and the bedroom adjacent. No one had time for that.
“Taylor?” Harper’s voice came from the open French doors.
I checked my watch, but it was gone. Once I was on the balcony, the breeze cooled the moisture on my skin. The sun came in at an angle, and I was a little hungry.
Harper looked up from ground level, shielding her eyes from the sun. Her hair was in a loose ponytail at the back of her neck.
“What are you doing?” she called.
“I’m not leaving until you give me what you took, and the mushrooms were making me crazy. They grow behind the walls. It’s… unnerving.”
“Unnerving?”
I gripped the railing. Are you doing this or not? “Come up here, Harper.”
I’d decided. I was doing this.
I pointed toward the doors on the other side of the balcony that led to the room I’d slept in the night before. I did not say please, and I did not ask a question. One of us was in charge, and it wasn’t her. Even if she had the keys to my life on the little ring in her head, this wasn’t working if she was the one calling the shots.
I washed my hands in the mycelium-free bathroom by my room. No time for a shower.
The stairs creaked. A pressure grew behind my balls because I knew what was coming.
She stood at the end of the hall, hand draped on the bannister. Branches of hair had escaped her ponytail and dropped to either cheek. I pointed at a spot on the floor in front of me. She scratched a spot on her neck, which was unremarkable except for her hand. It looked as if it had been rinsed in light blue paint and scrubbed. The tinge was in the corners of the nails and the deep lines in her wrist.
“Come into my room and close the door,” I said.
“You’re all sweaty.”
“You want to do this or not?”
If I had been trying to scare her, I’d failed. She practically skipped into the room.
“Close the door,” I commanded again. She did it. “I want to set the rules right off.”
“Okay.”
“You won’t tell me why you want this or why you went to all the trouble, but if you’re trying to trap me into marriage or some shit—”
She laughed derisively. “Yeah. No.”
My feelings were not hurt.
Nope.
Not one bit.
“Condoms.” I put up a finger. “Every time.”
“Yes.”
I put up a second finger. “Don’t come to me with emotional attachment. I’m not interested.”
“Me neither.”
My third finger made a W. “This has to be done in nine days. If it’s not, I’m leaving, and I’ll just deal with the consequences.”
“It won’t take longer than that. I told you. I’m a really good student.”
“All right. Let’s get this show
on the road.”
I dug my thumb into my other palm absently, thinking this might not be a bad way to spend a few days. QI4 would be back, Deepak would spin it into a learning experience; we’d work on manufacturing our own goddamn monitors and BIOS. I could just go back to the way things were. That alone was enough to give me serious wood.
“Take your clothes off, Harper.”
* * *
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Keep reading for chapters from Keaton’s book - Prince Charming!
Prince Charming
A bunch of chapters about a British computer hacker and the FBI Agent he’s about to fall for.
Chapter 1
CASSIE
I trust men I’m attracted to about as far as I can throw them, which is surprisingly far if I have good leverage and mobility in my lower body, but not far enough to give them the time of day or half a chicken sandwich.
You don’t have to like it, but I’m not going to argue with at least four generations of family history. Once I feel that little buzz in the sexual part of my brain, it’s a four-alarm fire in there. Klaxons. Red flags. Lines in the sand. The guy can be a crown prince anointed by the good Lord himself and there’s nothing he can do to get more than a few months out of me. It’s not his fault. It’s mine, and I’m all right with that. It’s gotten me pretty far.
Then this morning happened.
We intercepted Keaton Bridge at a factory he’s opening in the next town over and took him in for questioning. When he looked me in the eye, I went to DEFCON One. Code Red. My body began staging a bloodless coup while my mind lost its flank support.
He has the body and the eyes of a predator, silken movements and a churning, twisting mind that calculates ten steps ahead. I can feel it working, and it turns me on.
I don’t know him. Nobody does. Trust isn’t on the table, but I’m drawn in his direction as if the earth suddenly tilted and all the water of my attention is flowing downhill, toward him.
He’s seen things, but no one’s ever proven he’s done anything.
He knows things, but we don’t know exactly what.
He’s immune to bluffing apparently. We’ve had him in interrogation for two hours and he hasn’t even asked for a lawyer.
Most black hat hackers have confidence deficits they cover in layers of bling and swagger. They compensate for social awkwardness with tough-sounding names and facility with numbers. Some have a talent for the long con until they have to look someone in the eye. Some are straight up sociopaths.
When we picked up Keaton Bridge—a.k.a. Alpha Wolf, though no one’s proven it—I’d profiled him as the latter. He and his partner, Taylor Harden, are opening the first quantum-chip manufacturer in the world. The risk is enormous. Either his guts are made of stainless steel or he doesn’t have a sliver of human emotion.
Then I met him. My name had barely passed my lips before I knew he wasn’t a sociopath. He had emotions, tons of them, and they were complex, real, and intense.
I watch Ken interview him through the mirror. Both men are in profile.
Bridge waits two full seconds before answering any question. His hands rest flat on the table in front of him, and he’s perfectly still. It’s as if he knows any movement can be a tell, so he makes none at all.
Those emotions I sensed? He has control over them. His self-awareness is frightening and exhilarating. His voice has a British lilt that’s masculine, confident, educated without being snotty.
The dimples in his cheeks are a trick. The smile lines are a hoax. His voice, his looks, the leathery scent that filled the car on the way in; all of it is a long con game.
“I haven’t a clue,” he says over the speakers in the dark observation room.
“But you are Alpha Wolf?” Ken replies, referring to one of the three most powerful figures on the dark web.
One-Mississippi.
Google can’t find the dark web. The only browser that will take you there hides your activity in so many layers of encryption, you can peel them like an onion and never find the center.
Criminals trade credit card data, guns, drugs, people.
The FBI has a presence there. We use it to speak to informants and assets. Journalists use it to contact anonymous whistleblowers.
Two-Mississippi.
“It’s quite funny, that.”
“That what?” Ken asks.
One-Mississippi.
There’s no official or provable connection between Keaton Bridge and Alpha Wolf. But that’s the thing about covered tracks. Cleanliness has its own stink.
Two-Mississippi.
“That stupid fucking assumption.”
Between Ken and Keaton Bridge, one of them is a federal agent. One of them has the power in the relationship. And one of them is making stupid fucking assumptions.
“Are you the same Alpha Wolf who maintains a relationship with Keyser Kaos?”
One-Mississippi. Two-Mississippi.
“You’re a very insistent chap.”
Ken opens a folder. It looks like a complete dossier, but in fact, it contains cherry-picked items from a two-terabyte hard drive on Alpha Wolf and Kaos. “Is this you?”
One-Mississippi.
Bridge glances over the paper Ken hands him. It’s not a photo of a person. It’s a screenshot of a post on a dark web onion thread.
Two-Mississippi.
The screenshot Bridge looks over is a normal Keyser Kaos /Alpha Wolf chat about how much they’d charge to dox a female gamer. This is the least of their infractions, and he knows it.
It’s proof of nothing, and he knows it.
Bridge puts the page down, then leans back. He and Ken share a moment in profile.
Three-Mississippi.
I’m in the observation room because I asked Ken for a change in strategy. I wasn’t convinced I wouldn’t be railroaded by my body’s reaction to Bridge or that my mind’s alarm bells wouldn’t distract me. Now I’m not sure I did the right thing.
Four-Mississippi.
Though Keaton was intimidating at first sight, with his perfect suit, open collar, broad shoulders, and chiseled jaw, he wasn’t cold. He saw me before he saw my badge, as if he’d whipped away my cloak of invisibility.
I hadn’t felt naked. I’d felt noticed.
Then Keaton had glanced to my right, where Taylor Harden stood. Without saying a word, he apologized to his partner.
Fascinating. He was fascinating.
Five-Mississippi.
Through the mirror, Bridge turns and looks straight at me. His eyes are the color of the seven o’clock sky and they can’t see me, but they do. He sees everything. He sees how I tap my fingers to count the seconds. He sees the lint on my jacket.
I can’t move. I am sealed in my rigid skin. Joints locked. Muscles frozen. He sees the spit dry on my tongue, the callouses on my hands, the tightening of my jaw. He sees the nights I was up with firearm fist, and the mornings Mom counted my night’s haul.
He hears the cacophony in my head.
Six-Mississippi.
He sees so deep into my loneliness that a huh escapes my throat, then he speaks.
“Won’t you join us, Agent Grinstead?”
Chapter 2
KEATON
Agent Rotter won’t let it go. He thinks I spent sixteen years covering my tracks to be intimidated in a little room by a little fucking prat.
“You’re a very insistent chap.”
Rotter opens a folder and flips through the pages. It’s all for show. I don’t look at what he’s flipping through because he has fuck-all on me.
He spins the folder to face me and taps the page he’s found. “Is this you?”
I will not be rushed.
I will not be coerced.
I will not be strong-armed into risking QI4.
I don’t care about the company itself. Don’t give a flying fuck about quantum mechanics or changing the world blah blah blah. I don’t even give a shit about money anymore. They can have it, th
e whole rotten lot of them.
I push away the folder. This entire drama’s put me off my lunch. Agent Rotter’s bloody smirk is going to get him a mouthful of fist one of these days.
But not today.
I promised Taylor I’d be there today, and I will be.
Taylor could have turned over on me a hundred times. But he didn’t. And when I told him I was looking to go straight, he partnered with me, knowing I was a risk. He could have gotten plenty of investors.
I’m not going to be late thanks to the rotter here. But for the bird?
Where is Agent Bird?
Someone’s on the other side of the mirror on my left, and if I’m any judge, the woman who helped drive me here from Barrington is watching five feet away, on the other side. She’s distractingly beautiful and gloriously proud. As soon as I saw her, I had a vision of her atop a mountain, ruling the world, and a second vision quickly followed. Her under me, begging, with my name on her lips, over and over, pride shattered.
I feel her watching from the other side of the mirror. It’s not an unpleasant feeling. It is, however, inadequate. I want to see her again. I want to see if I saw something that wasn’t there. I want to regain control of the situation.
Turning to the mirror, I make my request. “Won’t you join us, Agent Grinstead?”
Agent Rotter clears his throat. On the other side of the mirror, we hear a door open, then close.
Taylor’s going to get on my arse for bringing the FBI calling. I’m going to have to convince him they were jagging off into their little files, trying to get me to turn on Keyser Kaos. They brought me all the way to Doverton to see if I have a death wish.
When the door opens and she comes into the interrogation room, I smell her perfume. It’s lavender, calming, and I know the scent isn’t to calm her but to lull me.
I’m not lulled. I’m physically aroused in a way I have no control over.
“Mr. Bridge.” She stands astride the FBI action doll of a man.
