Or maybe that was her paranoia and guilt talking. But it was a long four hours on the desk, even so. Four hours to beat herself up over the decision not to tell Dru her suspicions. To second-guess herself back and forth and back again until she felt sick and dizzy with indecision.
She wanted nothing more than to finish up her work and hit a club, a party, anywhere with a willing sub who would let her use her heaviest flogger until her arm was sore. But she couldn’t go to Escape, obviously. Not for that, not in front of Dru, not right now. And obviously she couldn’t go to Onyx, where the nefarious Master Cool was no doubt planning to head as soon as he was done with his workday of misogyny and gloating.
By the time she got home that night, she had only one thought in mind. She nuked a frozen vegetarian burrito, sat down at her computer, and started updating her résumé and setting up accounts at every job board she could find.
Inbox zero was a distant memory, something Dru must only have hallucinated in a fever dream. Now it was email after email of everything from polite support—and withdrawal of membership—to flaming anger with threats to sue. Also withdrawal of membership. Some only expressed an intention to stay away “until things die down.” A few offered help.
She’d put up a statement on the main website about the hacking, and sent a longer version of the same statement to everyone on the member list and the extra registration rolls. Careful, neutral, with a lot of “working on the problem” and other meaningless phrases that basically meant they didn’t know much and couldn’t do much at the moment.
That first evening after Gavin called, fewer than two dozen people had showed up to play all night. The next night it was ten. And the next night, when midnight rolled around with no members in the club at all, Dru gathered the staff and dungeon masters around the bar for a meeting.
“I don’t want to do it,” she told them, her throat tight. “But I don’t see any way around it. Even now that registration is back up and running, we have no new signups and nothing but cancellations. Nobody’s coming in the door. I understand the fear, and I don’t blame anyone for wanting to avoid the risk of being outed. But I don’t want any of you to be at risk either. Of disclosure, or of losing the chance to start looking for a new job as soon as possible.”
Jared, the head bartender, slapped his hand on the gleaming wood surface. “This is bullshit. Not you, Dru, we know it isn’t your fault. But the whole thing. Some keyboard-courage asshole can make a threat and put you out of business? That’s what you’re talking about, isn’t it?”
Hating to acknowledge it, but knowing it was time, Dru nodded. “I think I may have to shut down, yes.” She held her hands up to quell the outraged babble. “I could be back up in a week, sooner if we could find out who did this and make sure the person isn’t actually going to follow through on the doxxing threat. But if we can’t . . . The customers are scared. They have every right to be. And without customers, we don’t have a business. I don’t have a business.”
“We,” Jared insisted. “I’m not going anywhere until you know for sure.”
Sweet, but not too practical. “You really should, though.”
“I’m giving it at least a week. Who’s with me?” He looked around at the others. “Hayden, what about you, man? Stop texting, dude, stand with me.”
Hayden, the main bouncer, shoved his phone in his back pocket and glanced around the group, looking for all the world like he was about to cry. He attempted to cross his ridiculously huge arms, failed, and let them fall down in seeming despair. He was a giant, sweet, puppy dog of a sub, as gentle and eager to please as he was enormous and intimidating at the club door. “I don’t want Escape to close.” His voice was uncharacteristically harsh and breathy. “I don’t know what to do though.”
“There’s really nothing you can do, but I appreciate it,” Dru reassured him. “Maybe see if Onyx still has a spot for you.”
“No.” He glared down at the floor, then shook his head. “I can probably find something in the city. But I don’t want to.”
She hadn’t planned to start a movement. Nor did she have the energy to talk down any employees who were as emotional about the whole thing as Hayden seemed to be. Even Jared looked a bit startled at the strength of the big man’s response.
Dru held up her hands again, even though nobody was talking. “For tonight . . . let’s clean up, head out, and everybody watch your email and texts for the next few days to see if we’re going to open again. Tom,” she asked one of the DMs, “can you go to the office and make up a sign to post on the door? ‘Closed until further notice, please see the website for details.’ But, you know, with the URL in there. Jared, pick a helper to get the bar cleaned up and any perishables discarded. Tomorrow you and I can make a plan to restock in a hurry if something changes.” She paused, considering what really needed to be done that night before closing up, and what could wait.
Hayden’s phone buzzed in his pocket, loud enough for everyone to hear it. He yanked it out, clearly embarrassed, and swiped at the screen. “Sorry.”
“Hot date later, big guy?” Jared flicked a towel his way, but he didn’t respond; he was too busy punching in a reply to the text, his enormous fingers moving over the screen with astonishing speed.
Dru continued. “Bathroom duty, checking the playrooms, and sweeping, the rest of you can draw straws for or arm-wrestle, I don’t care, but let’s aim to be out of here in an hour.” She clapped her hands, ending the gathering before any more emotions could be spilled. She was as afraid of her own as anyone else’s. If the club failed, it meant she had failed, and what was left for her in St. Andrews if that was true? Some family she’d never been very close to. A lot of memories that really weren’t much better than the sadness she’d hoped to shake off by leaving Seattle. A weird not-quite-relationship with Amie; there was so much history and baggage involved, Dru still wasn’t sure how she really felt about the whole thing, or how much to factor Amie into her decision-making. Was it worth sticking around to find out? Would Amie even want that, or would it scare her away? It was too soon to know.
It took the solemn group of employees less than an hour to finish the cleanup, and Dru was the last one left after posting the sign on the front entrance and locking it from the inside with the security bar. With her hand on the alarm keypad at the back door, she cursed and turned on her heel. Stalked to her office for the bag of dirty linens—considerably heavier now after all the extra cleaning—and lugged it back to the exit. After tapping in the alarm code, she slapped open the crash bar and stepped out, letting the heavy door close itself.
In the weak glow of the closest streetlight, she saw a hulking figure by the dumpster, batting the lid up enough to push two white gallon-sized jugs over the edge. A few feet away sat a dark-blue sedan with its trunk open.
Hayden. And she recognized those jugs. Cleaning fluid. Two more were still in the trunk.
And she knew none of the current jugs were empty and needed discarding, because she’d had to reorder more after the thing with the cans, and she’d been keeping an eagle eye on the inventory ever since. Locking them up instead of leaving them in cabinets in the bathrooms and the wet playrooms. And she’d explained the reason to the staff, so they could be on the lookout too. She’d never imagined it was an inside job.
Hayden spun around at the noise of the door, and gave a strangled gasp right as Dru said, “Holy shit.”
“It’s not . . . No. It isn’t what you’re thinking.” He walked toward her, putting his hands out, and Dru’s stomach dropped. He was so big. He could break her like a twig without even trying, and if he was the canned goods saboteur, if he was the hacker . . .
“You . . . you stop right there. You stop right now or . . . I’ll . . .”
“But I . . . Really.” He stopped and ducked his head, holding his hands to his sides, as if he were trying to appear smaller and nonthreatening. As if that were even possible. “God. Please. You have to . . . to . . . it wasn’t me.” And
then he started to cry. Big fat tears she could see even in the crappy lighting. Huge sniffles, like a little kid. If it was trickery, this man was the world’s greatest con artist. And while Dru might be willing to believe a lot of people were capable of surprising things, she didn’t for one moment think that Hayden was capable of that.
“Okay, settle down. Hey. Hayden, hey. It’s okay. We’ll figure it out.” She seemed to be saying that a lot lately. “Calm down. Try to take some breaths, all right? Do you . . . Wow, I can’t believe I’m doing this.” She dug in her purse, found a plastic pack of tissues, and slowly descended the back steps, crossing the alleyway toward the dumpster. Hayden took a tissue and thanked her, wiping his eyes and blowing his nose, then tossing the crumpled thing in the trash behind him.
When he turned around, he put his hands in his pockets, hunching miserably. “I’m so sorry.”
“You said it wasn’t you, though,” she reminded him.
“It wasn’t, but it was my fault. It was my ex. I . . . Around the time I quit Onyx to work here, I broke up with him. So now I’m never over there, and I’m happier because that club always seemed to have so much drama. I hated that. But now it’s like it followed me here. He keeps calling and texting me, like, all the time. First he said he was going to get me fired from here. Now he keeps saying that since I’m still here, Escape is going under and then I’ll have no other choice but to go back to Onyx and see him with other subs. I mean I knew he could be kind of a spiteful fuck, but it never seemed this bad when I was with him.”
“It never does.” Dru had never heard Hayden string this many words together. Horrified though she was with the story, she was fascinated by his sudden eloquence, and saw a glimmer of hope that he might know who the culprit was in all their recent troubles.
“Yeah. I think in his mind he feels like Escape somehow seduced me away from him, and if I go back to Onyx, I’ll go back to him. Anyway, today I said if he didn’t stop I was gonna block his number, and he said . . . ‘Like that would change anything.’ Then he said to look in the trunk of my car. And that he could’ve told my boss to look there instead, so I should be thanking him. Here, I’ll show you . . .” Hayden pulled out his phone, fiddled with it for a moment, then handed it to Dru.
The series of texts supported Hayden’s story, and made Dru’s skin crawl. The spelling and grammar were spookily familiar, and when she noticed the name at the top of the screen, she huffed out a disbelieving laugh.
“Chris. Your ex is named Chris.”
“Yeah. Well. Master Cool is his scene name. I guess that’s outing him, I don’t know. But you know what? I’m glad you caught me. I panicked, but if I’d been thinking, I’d have told you. I should’ve. Because I think he did the . . . the computer thing too, right? I’m pretty sure he got somebody to do that. So fuck it if he gets outed, anyway. And you need to know. He shouldn’t get away with it.”
“No, he shouldn’t. So, this Chris . . . Bald, about six inches shorter than you, works at Torque?”
Hayden’s jaw dropped. “You know him?”
“Yeah, I’ve met him, sort of. And Amie works with him.” She’d mentioned him being in the scene, but not that his ex was her bouncer. “She never liked him much either.”
Hayden literally wrung his hands together, pleading. “Please don’t fire me. I really need this job.”
Another thing people kept saying. And there was probably precious little she could do about it at this point; it seemed impossible to rehabilitate the club’s reputation now. But she wasn’t up to delivering that blow to Hayden tonight. “If the club stays open, you’ll still have a job here. And thank you for letting me know about Chris. Hey, do you think you can reach those two bottles you already threw away? We may need them for evidence. Did you touch the other ones already?”
“Oh . . . no! He probably wore gloves, though. That’s what I’d do. So he wouldn’t leave fingerprints.” The dumpster was nearly full; it was an easy retrieval job.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that. Can you do me a favor? Take screenshots of that whole conversation with him and email them to me?”
Her phone buzzed, and she pulled it from her pocket with a sigh. Amie, asking if she could swing by the club for a talk in a few minutes. Dru shot back a quick reply explaining that Escape was closing early, but they could go out or to one of their places to talk.
Hayden spent the time, taking screenshots on his phone. A LOT of screenshots. By the time he was through, Dru’s phone let her know that her email inbox was much further from zero. “I think you’ve probably sent me enough,” she said after a dozen or so. “May I forward them to Gavin? He’s helping me with the hacking thing. And he’s great at problem-solving.”
“Yeah, that’s fine. Uh, what should I do with these cleaner jugs, then? Put them back in my trunk?”
“Um. Pictures, first. Of the remaining two.” Dru snapped a few shots, feeling vaguely ridiculous. “And no, I guess we should get something to pick them up with and put them all in my trunk until we get it sorted out. Grab that grocery bag, that should work.”
Hayden snagged the stray plastic grocery bag that had blown against the side of the dumpster, and used it to pick up each jug and carefully transfer it to Dru’s car, parked half a block down the alley. She threw the laundry in beside them and slammed the hatch shut, brushing her hands together with the sense of having accomplished . . . something.
“So I’m not fired?” Hayden asked again as he held her door open for her.
“No. At least not yet. But, you know. I guess go home and think about what you’ve done?” Dru shrugged. “I wish you’d come to me, even with the panic. If I hadn’t seen you throwing those jugs away, you would’ve left them in there with your fingerprints all over them. Chris knew you were at work when you got the text. Maybe he assumed you’d try to dump the jugs as soon as possible and was planning to frame you.”
Hayden chuckled and shrugged. “I thought about that. But I’m an employee here. I’d just spent an hour cleaning the toilets. How could he prove I didn’t have a legitimate reason to have my fingerprints on bottles of cleaner that had been ordered by the club? Plus . . . you never reported the thing with the food drive cans to the police, right? So he’d be framing me for nothing. Not that he would have realized that, of course. One of the problems with Chris is . . . he’s really not that smart? I know that sounds mean, but it’s true.”
And Hayden, it seemed, was a lot smarter than most people gave him credit for . . . even if he had let anxiety get the best of him. He was a good guy, and it seemed like it had taken a lot of bravery for him to walk away from a harmful relationship. “I am okay with you being mean about this. And I’ll call you tomorrow after I’ve had a chance to talk to Gavin. Let you know what’s going on? In the meantime, stay safe. Go home, lock your doors, block Chris’s number, and try not to stress too much, okay?”
“Okay, ma’am.”
Dru’s phone buzzed again. Amie, saying she’d be waiting at Dru’s place.
She tapped in OMW and started her car, letting Hayden shut the door and wave her off.
Amie hunched over her steering wheel, breathing mindfully, trying to quell the butterflies in her stomach. She’d made the decision to come clean with her suspicion, and she wasn’t about to back down now, but she wasn’t looking forward to it.
Plus whatever was going on with the club closing early tonight. That had to mean even worse attendance, and they’d already been at a ridiculous low the past few nights.
Preoccupied, ignoring the world outside her car, she screeched and jumped when somebody tapped the glass next to her ear. “Jesus Christ.”
Dru. Framed in the window, giving her a sad fingertip wave.
She grabbed her purse and keys, allowing herself a scowl as she exited the car. “You scared the crap outta me.”
“Sorry. I probably should have texted you. Am standing here. Look to your left. Not a scary person. Love, Me.”
Love. She shook
it off and let Dru lead the way to her condo, not wanting to ask about the early closure, not wanting to make Dru think about it. But eventually, once they were inside and settled on the couch with wine, she had to.
“Okay. What was the story with tonight?”
Dru sipped longer than usual, swallowing in one big gulp. “Welp. That’s gonna take a while to tell. So why don’t you say your thing first? While I get more of this wine into me. Because I could really use it.”
“Wow. That’s not like you. Now I’m more curious than ever.” Amie took a wee sip of the wine; it was a nice sauvignon blanc. Not usually her thing. She preferred beer, but Dru had never been much of a beer girl, so Amie knew she was unlikely to have any on hand. “But okay, here goes. And I should have told you this a lot sooner. Except . . . God, I don’t know. Maybe it’s nothing. It’s not proof or anything, only a suspicion, and I felt like for a suspicion it was a big risk to take. But now the whole club’s in danger, and I get more worried every day that this asshole really will doxx everyone. So I figured, if there was even a possibility that I was right, it was more important to tell you than to—”
“Amie.”
“Yeah?”
Dru closed her eyes as if she were in pain. “Could you just . . . tell me whatever it is. Please.”
Amie took a deep breath. Released it. “I think I know who’s behind the hacking. You know Chris, the guy at Torque that I thought was a spy at the demo sessions? He plays at Onyx, too? This sounds so dumb to say out loud, but he misspells ‘gonna’ the same way the hacker did. That whole page read exactly like one of his stupid texts. Which doesn’t prove anything, but . . . it’s a hunch.”
“Okay.” Eyes still closed, Dru took another sip of wine, then continued. “Can you please screen cap a text for me with that misspelling, so I can forward it to Gavin?”
“Um. Yeah.” It only took Amie a few seconds to do it, and when she looked up, Dru’s eyes were open again but she was staring off at the wall over the television screen as if she weren’t seeing anything. “You don’t seem surprised.”
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