by Zoe Forward
“I need water,” Jake said.
Emma produced a bottled water from her purse. Jake unscrewed the top and guzzled half the oversized bottle.
Emma directed her to a seat just off-stage, behind the curtains close to the exit door. The position meant when Jake was on stage he could see her, but the audience couldn’t. She could just sneak out…
“Don’t even think about it,” Emma hissed. “If you walk out that door, I guarantee he will lose his momentum. He might even make a scene to go after you.”
“No, he wouldn’t. Listen, Emma, this is serious. I have to get out of here. I’m in the middle of something big. Something to keep my family safe, Jake safe, you…everyone. I have to get free.”
“Don’t move.” Emma pressed an earbud tight to her ear and signaled to the stage.
The lights dimmed.
Emma whispered to her, “If you exited the room right now, he’d go after you. You’ll sit your ass down because Symphis is not going mess up the biggest moment in NJ Legacy history.”
Jake walked out on the stage. The audience went wild. He launched into his talk, with breath-taking visuals.
Her mind spun on the possibilities. There were no maybes in this situation. There was her walking out that door. Time tick-tocked. The person at the booth would be there for a half hour.
Jake mesmerized the audience and her. Although she knew he planned out exactly how everything was going to go and precisely what he’d say, he made it look effortless, as if he spoke off the cuff. By the time they cued a video of the goggles and Tori’s fantasy game, even she was ready to preorder both online.
Emma leaned over and whispered again, “The FBI’s on their way here. They didn’t expect a need to be at the convention. You’re going to hold tight here until they arrive.”
“They can’t keep me safe. We both know that.”
Emma squeezed her arm.
When Jake finished the closing video, Emma stood and signaled some guys in the shadows. Several burly bodyguards closed in on Jake as he exited the stage. The crowd began to swarm. Emma got pulled away by a group of teeming people.
Alone, Becca scooted out the exit with the flood of people pressing through the double doors. She wove through the crush of the overly enthused, the curious, and the avid fans toward Artist’s Alley where artists from every genre of comics and illustrated fiction presented their wares. The number of people was thinner in this area than out in the main hall, but the high noise level and constantly bumping into people had her feeling dizzy by the time she made it to the designated booth.
The booth was small, in a corner, and relatively private. Wild, colorful prints with a heavy anime influence hung or sat on every available surface. The artist’s name wasn’t familiar to her, which wasn’t saying much since she wasn’t a comic book or graphic art aficionado. A stunning brunette with several facial piercings and colorful tattoos on display in her skimpy halter-top drummed her fingers on the top of a pile of plastic-wrapped prints. A light weaving of gold extensions sparkled in her hair.
“You made it.” The brunette smiled a wide expanse of white teeth that wasn’t friendly but instead was an eerie spread of her darkly lined lips.
“Stardust?”
She nodded.
“How do you know who I am?” Becca asked.
“You’re cute, Rebecca. If I can pull off what you’re here to request, then you have to believe I know exactly who you are and everywhere you’ve been in the convention center since you stepped foot in here sixty-two minutes ago.” Her dark, heavily lined eyes conveyed a vacancy of emotion, not boredom.
“How do I know you’re who you say you are?”
“I guess you’ll have to trust me.”
Becca snort-laughed. “Right. If you were a part of the Stadium operation, how’d you get free enough to be able to have a second career as an artist?”
“Because I’m that good. I got out in the early days when it was less complicated. Less global. At first when I played in the Stadium, I kind of liked it but then…too much misogynistic bullshit. No one believed a girl could be as good as a guy when it came to gaming. Assholes.” Her bony shoulders lifted and dropped, shutting off the brief surge of emotion. “They weren’t heartbroken when the sole girl wrote herself out and disappeared. Maybe they assumed I OD’ed or something.”
“How much do you want for this?” Becca pulled her backpack around to her front and unzipped.
“Money? Nah, I have more than I need. My price is something more valuable.” She leaned forward, which launched a cloying perfume up Becca’s nostrils. A long fingernail with dark blue sparkly polish tapped a slow beat on the top of the prints pile.
This wasn’t part of the deal. “What are you asking for if you don’t want money?”
“What’d Symphis force you to do that was so bad you’d stay in?”
“That’s your price? You want me to tell you what they’re using as blackmail?” Becca glanced around with a creepy sensation of being watched by someone. No one around.
She rolled her balance back to sit upright on her stool. “Nah. Just curious. You seem smart. Seems like it’d have to be something pretty big to keep you locked in.”
“It was.”
“Was, meaning you don’t care about it anymore?” Becca didn’t like this. Seemed like she was delaying for some reason. “Can we cut to the chase so I can get out of here?”
“You want me to erase you from Symphis’s system? Then in exchange, you’ll give me Jake Allen.”
“I can’t give you another person, especially him.” She sure as hell didn’t want this woman’s blue talons anywhere near Jake.
“Based on your reaction, that’s my price.” She sat provocatively on a stool, swirling a finger across the mouse pad of a laptop. “Such a tasty morsel of a man. I think he might be worthy of a spin or two.” Her eyes held challenge, as if she expected Becca to balk.
Bile singed the back of Becca’s throat. She had to get through this without puking. And she had to trust Jake wouldn’t be so stupid as to jump into bed with this woman. “How exactly am I supposed to deliver him to you? You want a personal introduction? Fair warning, I think it’s best if I don’t see him in-person again today. He’s pretty pissed at me.”
“I’ll do my clickety-click magic to put through your request if you text Jake. Tell him I’m the one who helped you. Then you give me your phone. To keep. No texts after this to him…ever. If you do, I’ll know, and I’ll let some of your information slip back into the system. Like your current location.” Her lips teased upward. “Guarantee one text to Jake right now will have him on me faster than a stud on a bitch in heat.”
“Why do you want the phone? I don’t have any plans to speak with him or my brother again any time soon.” She didn’t want Jake near this predator, nor did she want to give up the burner phone. Phones weren’t cheap.
“It’s my price.” The woman resumed drumming her nails on the table.
Becca excavated the phone from the backpack and typed to Jake: This is Becca. Booth 416 helped me. Good-bye.
“Show me what you typed before you send it,” the woman demanded.
Becca rotated the phone’s face toward her.
“Guess that’ll work.” She squinted at her for a few seconds. Then typed on her laptop. “You’re out.”
“You can guarantee there’s no record of me anywhere in his system? It’s vast and complex. He has pretty good people who built those firewalls and other protections on it.”
“You’re out.” Somehow it felt more like the woman was saying she’d played her part in some sort of game rather than an illicit operation to hack Symphis’s system. Since there was no other option, she’d have to trust her.
Time to move on to phase two of her escape.
22
Becca tossed the Leia mask, wig, and dress into the restroom trashcan. She pulled her hair into a ponytail, smoothed her leggings and T-shirt, then exited the side door of the convention cent
er. She limped as fast as possible across the street past groups of cosplay enthusiasts and up a block into downtown. The blue Toyota sedan sat parked right where Quan promised. She hopped into the passenger seat.
“You in?” she asked.
Quan glanced up from his laptop with a shit-eating grin. “Like magic. There’s a gold mine on this computer. I’ve never seen a program that can get me into another’s system past the security remotely. There’s loads of impressive security on this hard drive, but your little program just ate through them. You’re a genius to have written this. I’m a pretty good hacker, but this? Wow.”
“I didn’t write it by myself.” Thoughts of Stuart saddened her. “But I did do a lot of it. You better grab everything you can before she turns off the laptop.”
“Almost got all these files. Crap, it went black.” Quan typed fast. “Nothing.”
“She must’ve shut off the computer. The contact was a psychopathic woman. She didn’t want money.”
Quan’s forehead wrinkled. “No money. That’s weird for something so dangerous. What’d she want?”
“An introduction to Jake Allen. Made it sound like she wanted to sleep with him, but I didn’t get the feeling she likes men much. Nothing about what just happened made sense.” She wondered if Symphis let her escape, which creeped her out more than the woman she’d just met.
“Nothing about this is what it seems. I agree.” Quan resumed interest in the computer. “It’s going to take a while to weed through what I got here, but there’s a lot about Stadiums across the world.”
“We need to get back to New York. I’ll bet Jake’s flying out this afternoon. I feel like I should warn him about the woman. I don’t want to see him become collateral damage.”
“Are you sure it’s smart to return right now? Staying low might be best. I can let you know if they need you back in the city.” Quan cranked the car.
“The stuff Symphis asked me to steal from NJ Legacy was serious. Maybe if I’m back in New York, I can figure out what he’s up to.”
Quan pulled out into traffic. “What exactly did he ask you to take? I wanted to ask before, but we were so rushed to get all this into play today. I forgot.”
“Financial data.”
Quan whistled. “Jesus. That’s not good. That must’ve been hard for you to break into NJ Legacy, not to mention the ethics of the whole thing with your brother as CEO.”
“I didn’t have a lot of time to get much.” She nibbled a nail, pondering if Quan was right. Maybe she should stay away from home.
“You simply gave Symphis all the information free and clear like he asked?” Quan glanced her way just as he pulled into a turn lane.
What if someone from the Stadium organization could somehow monitor them? She gazed at all the electronics in the car. Paranoia running high, instinct said not to reveal the truth. “I didn’t send everything I found. I didn’t want to completely screw Jake and Noah.”
“Ah. Smart girl. But don’t you think what you did send might hurt them?”
“I don’t know. It looked like information on ordering.” She’d not only cut stuff out of what was in the files but also modified all of it. She even put in a few backdoor flags that if anyone tried to contact one of the sellers from which those records said NJ Legacy bought, it’d notify her. Then, perhaps, they could trace its source.
“Did you keep an original file of the financials?” The light changed, and he turned to merge onto the highway.
Weird question. This entire conversation had her squirming. A part of her wanted to tell him the truth. No reason not to trust him, but then again, she didn’t know who to fully trust at the moment. “No. I didn’t have much time and had to deal with the original file.”
“Okay. Probably good not to have it. Interesting this woman at Comic-Con decided to involve Jake. Did you get the feeling she did it because it’s the one thing in the universe you didn’t want?”
“Yes.”
“A high price to pay, then. I need to follow her. Fortuitous that she took the phone from you. I can track that.” Quan’s smile was almost zealous.
“You really think this woman can help us get Symphis?”
“Our investigations into the Stadiums in Europe indicate Symphis is a woman. What if it’s this girl? How sociopathic to make you think you’re out when she might actually be the one who’d pranced you about like a puppet?”
She’d had a fleeting thought that Stardust wasn’t legit. The whole interaction didn’t settle right. “I need to be out. I can’t play those stupid video games competitively anymore. I hate working for Pascal. Everything GenShare designs is unnerving. My life’s goal isn’t to make stuff for spy agencies, no insult intended to you and your work.”
Quan shrugged. “Let’s focus on this woman. She may be the only one who knows Symphis’s identity, if it’s not her. Let’s keep our eye on the endgame. This is about a lot more than you and me, or Jake. This is about preventing more deaths and securing the future of video gaming.”
“Where is she?” Jake demanded of the girl identified to him and the five FBI agents as Lisi Jackson.
“She who? You mean the girl in the Leia getup?” The woman’s extra-long eyelashes slow-blinked twice.
“Of course, I’m talking about her.”
Lisi shrugged and pointed up the aisle. “Went that way. We had some business. Did it and now it’s done.”
She was gone. Where would she go? How long had she been planning this? The questions hounded him, like they had been every moment since she’d first disappeared. A sharp pain in his chest hit every time he wondered if Becca planned everything, even them sleeping together. Had he been played?
She wouldn’t use you like that. His heart railed against his brain, demanding that he find her to give her a chance to explain all of this before he jumped to conclusions. Obviously, she’d been cornered and coerced. He needed specific clarification on how far that coercion pushed her.
There’s nothing she wouldn’t have done to keep her family safe, his brain countered. Nothing.
Taking a deep breath, he cleared his mind to focus on Lisi, who might actually give the FBI task force a substantial break in the case against Symphis.
“What kind of business did you transact?” Jake’s mind read and re-read Becca’s message. It contained nothing useful.
“Stand aside, Mr. Allen,” demanded the gray-haired man in a blue bomber jacket, blue chinos, and blasé brown shoes. Everything about the man was forgettable, which was probably a bonus in his line of work. He flashed his FBI badge to Lisi. “I’m Agent Reynolds. You’re going to accompany us and answer some questions.”
Lisi tapped a long blue nail on the badge. “Is that real, or are you jerking my chain?”
“Ma’am, I don’t joke around. If you don’t come willingly, I will be forced to arrest you.”
“That sounds exciting. I do love a decent set of handcuffs. But you don’t have anything to arrest me for, or do you?” The bored expression she gave him seemed artificial, but not something she threw out to hide fear. It came off to Jake as if she forced herself to have emotion.
“You think that will stop me?” Reynolds shot back.
She unfolded her long body from the stool. “Let me close up shop first and pack my computer. So, where’re we going?”
“You’re going to help us find Ms. Harrison and tell us everything you know about Symphis.”
23
In a rotten mood, Jake sipped his coffee to jolt him out of exhaustion after no sleep on the red-eye flight from California.
Noah marched into his office. Him here before seven in the morning during the week when he should be on his honeymoon? Not good.
“Early morning?” Jake asked.
“I went online to see how the media perceived your presentation yesterday at Comic-Con, and I got this.” Noah thrust his iPad in front of him with a picture of Jake carrying Becca in the Leia getup.
“It was Becca.”
; “I heard. From Emma and the FBI. The real question is why the hell didn’t I hear it from you like thirty seconds after you found her? Now she’s missing again. The FBI questioned the woman who helped Becca, although she wasn’t that helpful. All that aside, what’s this picture about?”
Hours ago, Jake contemplated asking one of his best security experts to hack the internet and erase all the images, but he’d been advised more pictures would pop up again within hours.
Both of Noah’s eyebrows were practically in his hairline as he waited for a reply.
Jake set down his coffee. “She hurt her foot. Had a big blister.”
Noah’s nostrils flared, and his eyes widened. He snatched the iPad back and scrolled. Then shoved it in front of Jake again. “That is a hell of a lot more than a toe blister.”
The image of him with Becca in his arms captured him gazing down and her gazing up. Their body language screamed far more than friendship. If he were an outsider, he’d say it was a striking picture and assume the two had some seriously heavy feelings for each other.
He glanced at the URL. CNN. Seriously? This ranked as a top CNN story? The headline read: Sexiest CEO off the market?
“Press, whether good or bad, is still press. Especially on CNN,” said Jake. “That’s a market we couldn’t crack even when we became a big company.”
Noah grabbed back his device. “I’d prefer to have them headlining the goggles launching tomorrow. The article vaguely mentioned it somewhere near the end. Not my sister and you.”
“You can’t tell it’s Becca.” He held his breath, waiting for the bomb to detonate.
“You had her and lost her!” He slammed the iPad down on the table hard enough they both cringed and stared at the device. “Now she’s who knows where doing God knows what stupidity. What happened between you and her to lead to that picture?”
