by Zoe Forward
Ka-boom.
“Something.” Didn’t come any lamer than that.
“Something? What kind of something? When a story like this headlines on CNN, paparazzi will hit the trail. They’ll be on your ass every second until they figure out the identity of the woman in the Leia outfit.”
“That sounds annoying,” he said without emotion.
Noah’s puzzled glower conveyed a big what’s wrong with you?
Jake sucked in a deep breath, readying for a fight. “We were together.”
“Obviously, you were together at the same place to get that picture taken.”
“No, I mean we slept together after the wedding.” And before.
Noah grunted and shot him the evil eye. “Not only was my sister forced to use subversive technology to hack our system, but also you seduced her? Talk about a weekend from hell for her.”
That hurt. “I did not seduce her. She’s the one who was all over me.”
Oops. Wrong thing to stay.
Noah circled the desk and yanked him out of the chair to slam him against the wall with a mid-chest thrust. “Don’t ever talk about my sister like that.”
When Noah didn’t move a muscle to attack further, Jake asked, “Don’t you want to hit me?”
“I’m not sure yet.”
Jake pushed him off and backed a few feet away, smoothing his shirt. “Jesus, Noah. This is Becca we’re talking about. She’s the world’s most stubborn woman. There’s no taking advantage of her.”
Noah’s eyes narrowed to pissed off. “You let something start between you two. That meant you deliberated, weighed the risks of angering me and its effect on our working relationship, then went for it. Where’d you see it going after last weekend?”
“I swear I didn’t mean for it to happen. She’s the one who walked away. Probably for the best. Continuing anything would mess her up. I’m a user. No heart. No soul. And all that shit.”
“You like to tell yourself that, but it’s bullshit.”
“I could never give Becca what she deserves. Now she disappeared. I found her, but she slipped away.”
Noah rocked back onto his heels. Softly, he asked, “What do you think my sister deserves?”
“Long-term. Togetherness stuff. Shit I can’t do.” He felt like a total dick. “I wish you’d go ahead and hit me.”
“Is this you channeling your father, or was it something he said to make you believe this?”
Jake fiddled with a pen on the edge of his desk. “So far, he’s been right. I’m not wired for long-term.”
“You’d never treat my sister like your father treated your mother. You treat the women you date better than your father treated your mother. That proves you’re not like him. You also recognize what my sister needs.”
“I can’t be that person for her. Even if we find her… I’m not that guy.”
“Can’t or won’t? Wasn’t it you who famously said ‘can’t isn’t in my vocabulary’ when you convinced me to use the rest of my college fund to set up this company? It was you who said no to Apple buying us out not once, but twice. We could’ve been rich.”
Jake huffed out a half-hearted laugh. “If we sold to Apple we would’ve been bored out of our skulls. We’d have a new company going in months. Besides, we already have plenty of money.”
“True. I’m tired of you walking around with your head in your ass about relationships.”
“Christ, man.” Jake dropped his head to his chest and blew out a long breath. “When I try to stick around, that’s when it gets bad for me. That’s when I fuck up. I tried it once. It didn’t work.”
“Once? In thirty-one years, you tried to see someone more than one or two times once?” Noah rolled his eyes. “How exactly long-term was this once?”
Jake sucked his lips through his teeth. “Three weeks.”
“You’ve got to be shitting me,” he muttered. Sarcastically, he said, “Well, if you can’t make it happen in three weeks, then you must be unable to do it. Three weeks? Everyone screws up once or twice at a relationship. It’s called experience. Did you break off this so-called long-term relationship because you became abusive like your father?”
He shook his head. “Things just fizzled.”
“Did you feel tempted to hurt her, and that made you push her away?”
Jake shook his head. Never any anger. Only disappointment and boredom.
Noah slapped his hand on the desk.
Jake jumped.
Noah yelled, “You’re not your father!”
“It’s inevitable. I’ll become him.”
“You’ve been dealing with women for decades, even if you never attempted anything longer than a few weeks. You’ve never physically hurt a girl. Or am I wrong, and you have?”
“No, never. But I could become like him if pushed. If I drink. He said it would happen. I can’t… If it was Becca and I lost it, I couldn’t live with myself.” Bitterness flooded his mouth. He cast a glance around to confirm the location of his trashcan.
“You have something your jackass of a father never had. Empathy. You have asshole moments once in a while, but the majority of the time you’re not a selfish prick. You protected your mother when the woman should’ve taken you and run. She should’ve gotten a restraining order against that alcoholic psycho and divorced him.” He closed in on Jake. “That photo says you’ve got some serious feelings for my sister. I don’t like it.” Noah decked him, missing his nose by millimeters.
Jake cradled his smarting jaw.
Noah opened and shut his hand a couple of times, then shook it. “You’re not going to screw up, not this time. We’re going to find Becca. If she’ll give you a chance, you’re going to fix whatever is going on in that picture. You will not become a third wheel in my marriage for the rest of my life.”
“That’s low. I’ve never been a third wheel in your marriage. If it goes south with Becca and you and Michael had to pick sides, you’d choose hers. I’m not willing to risk losing the only family I’ve ever had.”
Noah sat down on the opposite side of the desk. They stared at each other across the expanse of scattered papers and his laptop. “Sometimes, there are things worth the risk.”
“Is my nose bleeding?” Jake finally asked.
“No. But I’m thinking I need to break it so your face will be so ugly she wouldn’t even think of taking you back.”
Hours later, Jake burst through the door of the coffee shop up the street from his office building, setting his umbrella by the door next to the ten or twelve others. Each step to the counter was a soggy squish of cold wetness from the rain puddles that had saturated his shoes. It took every ounce of his self-control not to snap at the familiar barista who gave him a weary smile when he ordered his usual black iced coffee. He calmly selected a straw, sliding off its plastic wrapper.
His lunch meeting with the movie people had gone south. So far south he was shivering it up in Antarctica. Before they committed to the project, they wanted a demo of the virtual reality goggles, to see them integrated in a movie theater—the next wave in movie viewing. He couldn’t provide a demo since no movies had been converted yet to mesh with the technology. They didn’t buy his assurances it could be done.
Then his car’s “check engine” light came on during the drive back to the office. He had it towed, sending Emma to deal with it. He didn’t have time to sit and wait. He had an impending phone call from Japan within the hour and a team meeting in two hours to discuss the launch tomorrow. No reason to waste money on a cab when he was only three blocks away. He’d run the three blocks through the atypical nor’easter whipping the city.
In retrospect, he should’ve been patient and waited for a cab.
He scrolled through his email inbox on his phone, hoping for news on Becca. Seventy-two messages in two hours? He opened one. All hell was breaking loose at work between his Comic-Con pictures on the internet and the goggles release tomorrow. He closed email.
“Jake?” ask
ed an unfamiliar woman’s voice.
He glanced around, catching himself before he recoiled. It was the woman from Comic-Con who’d helped Becca. Only, she was no longer dressed in Goth. Her makeup was toned down to highlight extra-long eyelashes and puffy red lips. She wore wire-rim glasses that made her a better fit for her profile as a hacker. Her tight shirt showed off breasts too perfectly round for her petite body.
Her here wasn’t a coincidence. Ambushes soured him to a person, whether it be a woman stalking him for sex, or a business contact desperate to push a sales pitch.
“Remember me?” she asked. “California. I helped that friend of yours. My name is Lisi.”
Jake cleared his throat when he realized he was staring. “What’re you doing here?”
“I was actually here to try to find you. See if you’d take a meeting with me. Bit jet lagged, though, and needed caffeine. Do you have a minute to sit down and talk? I’m worried about your friend.”
Too strange. “I’ve got a meeting in a few minutes, but I’ll give you five minutes.”
“Great. Thanks.” She snagged a drink off the counter and sat at one of the two free tables.
Jake wondered if she’d ordered the drink or stolen it. He hadn’t seen her in line to order or at the counter waiting to pick up a drink when he entered. The place was packed so he might’ve missed her.
He texted Noah: That Lisi person ambushed me at the coffee house next door. Weird. Giving her five minutes to talk. If I don’t turn up…send everyone to find me.
Jake sat across from her and waited for her to speak.
“I picked up some chatter that Symphis knows she came to me to get free of the Stadium and the whole thing. I think he’s going to retaliate.”
“How do you think he’ll retaliate?” Remain objective. Great goal, but impossible when the thought of Becca with a psycho after her terrified him.
“I thought you might know where she is so you can warn her.” She pushed her glasses up her nose.
“Why not call me? Or text? Or let the FBI know? This isn’t something you had to do in person.”
“I was coming out here today anyway.” Lisi nibbled on her puffy lower lip as if worried or insecure, but the act didn’t come off as genuine. Or maybe he was skeptical of her in general.
Her hand shot out to touch his. The coolness of her fingers surprised him. He held still, fighting the urge to yank his hand from hers when her long nails scraped his skin.
“I was worried about her. Us gamer girls gotta stick together, you know. So few of us.” Lisi met his gaze with what he interpreted as earnest, maybe concerned. She removed her hand from his, glanced out the window at the rain. “Miserable weather.”
Weird. Awkward. Those words barely described what fueled his itch to leave.
“If you’re in trouble call Agent Reynolds. There’s nothing I can do. I don’t know where she is. I’ve got to go.” He pushed his chair back from the table.
She stood as he passed and wrapped her hands around his arm. With a seductive smile, she glanced up at him. “Thanks.”
He extricated himself from her, wishing Emma here so she could handle getting Lisi away from him. “Gotta go.”
She called out as he exited, “I’ll be around if you need something.”
24
Jake exited the elevator of his apartment building onto the top floor in a haze. He shuffled toward his door, one foot in front of the other across the shiny linoleum floor. Was it only nine thirty? Felt like midnight. The stress of the day before a game release, the weirdness of that exchange with Lisi, and Becca still missing in addition to no sleep in days pushed him to the point of full body exhaustion.
As he shoved his key into the lock, he heard, “What the hell were you doing having a coffee date with that woman?”
He whirled.
Becca emerged from the shadows, her hair plastered to her head from dampness, probably rain. An oversized bulky jacket dwarfed her. “That woman at the coffeehouse. She had her hands all over you.”
“Where’d you come from? How did you get into my building?” He glanced up and down the hallway.
“The attendant remembered me. You shouldn’t trust the woman from Comic-Con. You especially shouldn’t get involved with her.”
“She came out of nowhere.”
Jake snagged Becca around the waist and pulled her into his place. He plugged in his alarm code without releasing her and reactivated it. “Where’ve you been?”
“I was trying to disappear.” She wriggled until he let go and backed up a few steps. “Then I got worried about you. So I flew here. And what do I find? You and her getting it on in a coffeehouse.”
“We weren’t getting anything on. She stalked me out of concern for your safety, then got all touchy-feely.”
“Who knows if that’s true. I don’t trust her. I don’t get why she’s interested in you. I mean, you’re hot, but I’m not sure she’d think you’re hot enough to fly across the country.” She unzipped the bulky coat and hung it over a chair.
Jake massaged his forehead to ease his burgeoning headache. “Becca, why are you here? Is this about jealousy, or is this another part of some complicated plan you won’t share with me? I can’t keep up with what’s going on. It’s been a hellacious day, and I have to prepare for the launch tomorrow.”
She stepped into him and stared into his eyes. “I’m jealous as hell.”
With a sardonic smile, he murmured, “Hot enough to fly across the country for, huh?”
“Shut up.” She pulled his mouth down to hers.
A groan of relief and need rose in the back of his throat. His tongue dove into her mouth, and she met the thrust, clenching his shirt to the point her nails cut into his back.
He tightened his arm across her lower back, fitting his erection into the supple muscle of her lower belly, and tilted her head to taste her throat. She rocked her hips against his. He moaned and gripped her ass with his free hand to steady her.
“No. Not like this.” He pushed her away to have some space between them and blinked to clear his head. “I can’t tell what’s real anymore. I’m not sure why you’re here. Maybe Symphis found you and forced you to confront me in some sort of plan to do something else to me or the company. Hell, I haven’t slept in so long that I can’t think it through without paranoia. You and I felt pretty real last weekend, but it turned out to be part of a plot someone coerced you into.”
“I was supposed to hack into NJ Legacy’s system. No one told me to sleep with you. That was my decision. There are still no strings. So, no reason for you to freak out that I want more than a one-time repeat.”
“Maybe I want strings, baby. You consider that?”
Her mouth dropped open as wonder filled her eyes. “You do?”
“I don’t know.” He massaged his forehead. “Hell, I don’t know what I want right now.”
“I have to stay off the radar because I want to keep his focus off you and my family, although me here in your place is pretty stupid.”
“I don’t care about the focus on me. Neither does your brother.” He leaned down, his nose inches from hers, his anger riding the oxygen around them. “I’ve studied this asshole for over a year alongside FBI and NSA agents, and other contract experts. He’s not going to kill me or Noah. He didn’t kill Tori, even though he threatened it multiple times. He likes to push buttons and play psychological games to torture people until they commit crimes for him. Crimes that make him rich.”
“I’m not under the influence of Symphis to be here. You have to believe me. I’m still running. Trying to hide. That woman from Comic-Con seems to have done a good job erasing me from the system. I had a way to check and got it confirmed that I was out, but I don’t trust her. Quan thinks Symphis is a woman. I wonder if it’s her.” Her lip quivered, and she bit down on it. So soft he almost didn’t hear she muttered, “He…or she doesn’t like loose ends though. She probably assumed I’d circle back to you. What better way to find me
than stalk you?”
Her fear activated his need to protect her. But he didn’t know how to keep her safe. He was a video game programmer and an office jockey. He shot a gun once eons ago with a friend but didn’t have one, and he had no combat training or even much self-defense. Sure, he could scrap hard in a fight, but he couldn’t guarantee he’d win.
He could hire someone to protect her, but that took time to find someone vetted to be a good fit.
He asked, “Is there more you need to tell me? Because if you and I are going to have any sort of relationship, even friendship, there’s got to be honesty starting right now.”
She swallowed hard enough he saw it. “I do have a plan. I’ll be the bait to draw him or her out.”
“Draw out who? Symphis?” Jake asked. That tone—low and filled with anger—zinged through her body.
Her legs trembled with the urge to take a step back, but she held her position. “I have to catch him. To stop him. This is for you and Noah. For Kaleb. And for all the gamers who’re stuck in the vicious cycle of the Stadium and game play. It has to end.”
“Ending everything isn’t your job. Let the FBI and people with training deal with it.” He closed in on her. “Don’t do whatever new idea you’ve concocted.”
“I’m scared. But you’re right. There’s something between us. It’s always been there. But now isn’t the right time for it. Seems like there may never be a right time.” She turned toward the door. “I shouldn’t be here. I went a little nuts seeing her with you.”
He moved. Fast. He picked her up and carried her toward the bedroom with such speed that her legs automatically would around to clasp his midsection. By the time she sucked air to protest, he’d flattened himself over her on his bed. She squirmed against him.
His mouth crushed hers, and she stilled. He held nothing back, kissing her hard, pressing her head into the comforter. His tongue worked against hers, his powerful body surrounding her, and his hands dug into her hair to hold her in place.
She shifted against him, closing her eyes to kiss him back. This was what she’d wanted coming here. So much this.
