Glimpse: The Complete Trilogy

by Sara Jamieson

  ~~~~~~~~

  He had been sneaking down the servants’ stairs when the sound of her voice coming from the kitchen had drawn his attention. As he had listened to her lecturing the other women as to why they should care whether the stories of the travelers were true, an odd fluttering had settled on his heart as he recognized that he had stumbled across someone who was kindred. After years of solitarily soldiering on, he was suddenly no longer alone. What he couldn’t decide was whether that realization should leave him comforted or terrified. Connor Ridley, Shadows Fall

  “This was a really bad idea,” the words fell out of her mouth before she could worry about how he might take them. It wasn’t an accusation. He had come to pick up some information from the Lia to Kyle to Anna to Connor game of telephone that they had become invested in, and she had let her frustration boil over.

  “Anna . . . .”

  “Don’t Anna me,” she cut him off quickly. This wasn’t about him. This was about her and how she should have found another way. “I shouldn’t have let you all talk me into this. Kyle shouldn’t be involved in this. He’s just a kid. They’re both just kids. This is my problem to deal with, and I should be the one handling it. We shouldn’t be letting them get drug into it. It’s dangerous.”

  “They both know that,” Connor told her with a small sigh.

  “No, they don’t,” she argued. He couldn’t actually think that that was true. “They think they are playing some game or are caught up in some comic book where they get to be the undercover heroes. This is not a game.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Connor’s voice turned a little harsh. He was taking this personally, and that wasn’t what she had wanted. Couldn’t guys ever just let you vent without analyzing it? “Which is why we have to use whatever means we can.”

  Well, if that wasn’t an opening for what she had been thinking of saying, then she didn’t know what was. There was an easier way. It would effectively keep all aforementioned teenagers out of the line of fire. Just a little work on her part (and a huge, messy uproar, but she wasn’t going to think about that at the moment), and they could avoid including bystanders further.

  “I think that I should scrap it,” the words came out a little more softly than Anna had intended for them to be said. There was something intimidating about finally saying the words out loud. Mostly, she thought because she knew that Connor was likely to disagree with her.

  She didn’t have to tell him. She could just do it, but that seemed unfair somehow. She liked to think that she and Connor were in this together. It was the right thing to do to tell him what she was planning.

  “What?” She wasn’t sure what to make of that “what.” It might be the standard knee jerk response of someone who was trying to buy time while they processed what they had just heard. It might be that he legitimately hadn’t heard what she had said. She tried again.

  “If that’s what it is going to take to stop this, then I’m going to scrap Glimpse.” The words came out stronger this time, and she felt better about them. There was something about the phrasing that made her feel confident. She wasn’t just thinking about it. She was going to do what was necessary. She wasn’t asking Connor’s opinion in a roundabout way of getting his permission. She was telling him how it was going to be.

  She looked up at him to see how he was taking the news, and the weighed down posture that had become his normal state of being over the previous weeks reaffirmed her decision. Why did it always have to be Connor? She was the one who was responsible for the existence of this particular source of part of his worries. She was capable of handling it. She would clean up her own mess.

  “I don’t think you’ve really thought that through.” There was something careful in his tone as if he was wary of what Anna might say next. “There are backup copies. There are design notes.”

  “I know that,” she interrupted. “That’s what I meant. System crashes, turning everything into gibberish, losing the paper notes; I know what all that would entail.” She was getting more and more confident by the minute. It would take some serious effort, and she would have to be very careful that she didn’t miss anything. It might even be more complicated to make the programming disappear than it had been to develop it in the first place. A part of her was excited about the potential challenge involved. She would focus on that. It was better than thinking about the fall out that would descend upon her afterward.

  “You can’t do that,” Connor told her as if he was explaining to a child that she couldn’t jump off of the roof just because she was wearing a cape.

  “Actually, I can,” she told him with a smile. She so could. She was making lists in her head as they spoke.

  “That’s not what I meant,” he was frowning at her. He never did have much of a sense of humor when it came to the finer points of the English language.

  “That’s what you said,” she reminded. She knew she was pushing him, but she really would rather have this conversation than the one he wanted to have.

  “Could we skip the grammar lesson?” He requested. She wished he didn’t look so exhausted. It made it hard to argue with him when all she was thinking about was how much she would like to be able to order him to go take a nap.

  “There is no way that you could make Glimpse not retrievable and make it look like an accident.” There was something cautionary in his voice as if he was asking her without saying the words to not say out loud what he thought that she was thinking. She couldn’t do that. It would be an easy way out, but she still didn’t think it would be fair. She wasn’t going to go behind his back. It wouldn’t accomplish anything if they got into the habit of hiding what they were doing from each other. They had enough problems without taking the chance of the two of them working at cross purposes.

  “I’m aware of that.” She told him making sure that they were making eye contact as she did. He looked sad and maybe a little bit scared. That’s not what she wanted. He needed to let her help. He needed to understand that she was as involved in this as he was.

  “You wouldn’t just lose your job,” he was saying. “There are potential legal ramifications to that type of sabotage. Even if there weren’t, my father would do everything he could to blacklist you through the entire industry.”

  “I’m supposed to let it fall into their hands?” She tried to argue. It was ridiculous that they were arguing about this. They both knew that it was the better option to the alternative.

  “No,” he insisted. “You’re supposed to let me handle it.”

  “Connor.” That’s all she said. She didn’t know what else to add at the moment because his last statement really summed up why they weren’t agreeing on this point. He still thought this was his problem. She knew that they should be beyond that by now. It wasn’t about her plan or its practicality or the potential alternatives. It was about whether or not Connor was going to get it through his head that he wasn’t (and shouldn’t be) on his own.

  “Just promise me that you won’t do anything precipitately drastic,” he had interpreted her silence as a lack of agreement. She was still disagreeing, but that wasn’t why she had been silent. She had been busy pondering Connor’s seeming determination to be a stereotypical loner hero. “Promise me that you will give me a chance to make your plan unnecessary.”

  “You can’t ask me to not have a backup plan,” she insisted.

  “You’re right,” he agreed. “I can’t, but I can ask you to not go jumping to Plan M before we’re even sure Plan A isn’t working.” He looked at her consideringly for a moment. Before Anna could decide what he was considering, he was talking again.

  “Look at what you pulled off with the testing trials, Anna,” he was almost wheedling. It grated on Anna’s nerves. She didn’t need to be wheedled. He wasn’t telling her anything that she didn’t know. Maybe he needed to be filled in on part of the situation that he didn’t know. “There are so
many ways that you could use Glimpse to do good things. Don’t let the threat of Meredyth Lawson and her visions of world domination kill off those possibilities.”

  “Do you know why I created Glimpse?” He needed to know. Maybe it would make a difference. She was honest enough with herself to realize that she needed to tell him for other reasons as well. It was confession time.

  “Huh?” Not a brilliant start, but she hadn’t exactly had high expectations for him following her switch in conversational direction.

  “I’ll take that display of articulation as a no,” she tried to smile, but it didn’t really form correctly. “The truth?” She started making sure that he was paying attention. That was kind of a waste of time (Connor always paid attention), but she needed the moment to take a deep breath and gather her thoughts. “The truth is that I do know all the ways that Glimpse can be used. I didn’t get project approval by shrugging my shoulders and saying ‘hey, maybe this would be fun.’ But, that isn’t why I spent so much time working on it. I had outlines and plans for a long time before I sold it as a potential for RR development,” she took another breath. The sentences were flowing without pauses, and it was making her feel a little winded.

  “The truth is that I worked so hard to turn Glimpse into what it is because I wanted it. Me. Not for some abstract challenge of wanting to see if it could be done. Not because I was thinking that it would turn RR’s contracts into gold. I wanted it for personal reasons. I had an idea that I never could have pulled off on my own. I needed the resources that RR could give me to make it happen. I sold it for all the potential that it could have so that RR would finance my own personal playground.” His expression hadn’t changed. He was still just listening. She kept going.

  “Because I knew I would be in charge of the whole thing and no one else would ever know what I was plugging in to test it. I wanted my parents, Connor. One day they were just gone, and I wanted them back. I wanted to know what they would say about my job. I wanted to be able to look Kyle in the eye and tell him that Mom or Dad would have said this or that about something that he was doing not because I was giving it my best guess, but because I knew because I had asked them.”

  “What exactly are you telling me?” He still had that neutral listening expression. She didn’t want neutral. She wasn’t prepared for neutral. She wasn’t really prepared for anything, but neutral gave her no clues as to what she was dealing with here.

  “I’m telling you exactly what you think I’m telling you,” she stated. Why was he making her spell it out for him? “The first scenarios that I used for parameter setting and debugging were all my own personal ones.”

  “You programmed it with information on your parents?” Hadn’t she just told him that?

  “That’s what I’m saying,” she insisted.

  “And you let it spit back for you how they would react to what’s going on in your and Kyle’s lives?”

  “Yes,” she was starting to feel exasperated. He was still just looking at her.

  “Say something,” she demanded.

  “Does it work?” He asked.

  “That’s all you’re going to say?” What kind of a question was that?

  “Yeah. Does it work?” He repeated.

  “That’s not the issue,” she told him with just a hint of the exasperation she was feeling creeping in (okay, maybe it was more than just a hint).

  “I think it is,” he told her. The calm remained, and it was getting to her. It wasn’t that she wanted him to yell, but she needed some sort of a visible reaction.

  “It usually matches what I think they would say,” she answered tersely. “But that could be user bias because I’m the one who did the programming.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” he smiled at her. It wasn’t his normal smile. It was gentler somehow, but it didn’t cross the line into pitying. That was good. She didn’t think she could keep her temper in check if she saw pity. That wasn’t why she had told him.

  “That’s what you asked.”

  “I asked if it worked,” he elaborated. “As in, does it make you feel better?”

  “Truth?”

  “Always.”

  “No,” she admitted. “Mostly, it just reminds me of what we lost.”

  “Then,” he observed. “Maybe you should stop.”

  “You’re supposed to be mad at me,” she insisted.

  “Why?”

  “I just told you that I used your company to fund a personal mission.” Why was he being so deliberately obtuse? “One, I will point out in case you have forgotten, that has put you in the position of having to defend it from would be evil doers bent on world domination.”

  “It’s your program, Anna.” He was smiling at her. That was nearly as infuriating as the neutralness.

  “It’s Ridley Resources’ program. It can’t exist without the resources part of that.”

  “That’s true,” he agreed. “It was a joint venture, and it needed both halves. That doesn’t change the fact that it is your project. You have had sole discretion from the moment that you got the original okay. My parents even told everyone else in the department to back off and leave it alone because they didn’t want anyone else mucking up your work. Which, by the way, is the only reason your whole destroy all evidence backup plan is even feasible. How you chose to do your project testing is your business. If you chose something personally meaningful, that’s your call.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think the senior Mr. Ridley would share your opinion,” she reflected.

  “I think you’re wrong about that,” he countered. “He wants his employees to be creative. He understands that he can’t micromanage that. It’s part of why this is such a good place to work. He let you have carte blanche, and he wouldn’t go back on that unless there were some serious ethical infringements or a legal problem.”

  “But he and your mom . . . .” He didn’t let her finish.

  “I’m a different subclass of employee,” he told her. “Could we not discuss this?” She nodded. He didn’t need to give her all of the details of his relationship with his parents -- no matter how much she thought it would do him good to talk to someone about the tension that always seemed to flow between the three of them. “Thanks.”

  “So,” he executed a topic change. “What point were you attempting to make with my education on Glimpse’s origins?”

  “You were supposed to understand that I’m not some ignorant innocent that you have to protect all the time,” she explained hoping that it made as much sense to him when she said it out loud as it made when she was thinking it in her head. “I made this an available option for the Lawson/Walsh plotting duo, and I’m willing to take the hit to stop that from being a possibility.”

  “It’s not a question of you being willing, Anna. It’s a question of there not being a reason for you to be.” She couldn’t agree with his logic on that, but she supposed that it made sense to him.

  “We can’t let them have it, Connor. Not just you, we.” She was going to get that point through his head -- even if nothing else came of this conversation.

  “You aren’t giving up that point, are you?” He was, at least, smiling his normal smile.

  “Not a chance,” she agreed. They were both smiling, and that was good. It was progress. They might not have settled anything. They might still be facing the same issues, but the talking had made things better. They both knew where they were.

  “Fine,” he agreed with a roll of his eyes. “We will not let that happen. We will just let me do my best before we check out more drastic measures. Then, if, and only if, we are backed into a corner, you can step in and save the day. Do we have a deal?” He inquired.

  “You needn’t look so unhappy about it,” she replied. It was the concession that she had been looking for even if it wasn’t necessary for her to have it. It would still be better if he didn’t sound so reluctant about i
t, but she would take what she could get (for now).

  “I’m not unhappy,” he countered. “Why would I be unhappy about having a safety net?” There were so many things that she could say in response to that, but she opted to go for the simple and obvious.

  “You are a liar.” She hoped that he would take it in the good humored way that she meant it. They had both been so stressed out lately. It was nice to be light hearted about something.

  “It’s not that I object to having you watch my back,” he was being absolutely serious. “It’s that I object to it being necessary in the first place. Does that make sense?” She wasn’t used to thinking of Connor as vulnerable (mostly, because it was something that he didn’t seem to let himself be), but it was the only word she could conjure in reference to the look that he was giving her.

  “In a messed up, Connor Ridley kind of a way, yes.” It was the truth. The more she tried to understand Connor, the more it became clear to her how unsure of his ability to control the situation that he must have been when he came to her in the first place. If he had had his preference, she never would have known that there was even a possibility that Glimpse was the motivation for WIS’s interest in partnering with RR. Maybe someday he would tell her why he had developed such a belief in his having to go everything alone. Maybe he himself didn’t even know.

  “So we’re agreed?” She recognized what he was doing. He was making sure that she couldn’t pull the “you said and I nodded” card later.

  “We’re agreed,” she conceded before adding to it. “I want you to know that that doesn’t mean that I won’t be doing just in case prep work.”

  “I figured.”

  “Connor?” She probably shouldn’t ask. There was a lot she didn’t understand about their relationship, but she knew enough to know it wasn’t a pleasant subject. She was still going to ask it. He could always tell her to mind her own business.

  “Yeah?”

  “Why don’t you tell your parents?”

  “Tell them what?” He actually sounded genuinely confused.

  “What’s happening? Why you’re worried? They could block it.” It would have been her first move.

  “I don’t think I can answer that question for you.” He wasn’t blowing her off; she could tell that he really believed that.

  “Why not?” She persisted.

  “Because the answer won’t make any sense to you,” he told her.

  “Why?” She felt like a broken record (or a particularly annoying child on a lengthy car trip).

  “Because you’ve only dealt with my parents as their employee,” he looked like he was struggling for words. “You are a part of their world. They understand you. They like you. You match up with their expectations.”

  She just looked at him and waited for him to continue.

  “It won’t make any sense to you because you’ve never dealt with them as their disappointing child.” What was she supposed to say in response to that? He didn’t give her enough time to figure it out.

  “Will you trust me that my parents are not located in the asset column when it comes to us dealing with all things Meredyth Lawson?”

  “When do I ever not trust you?” She tried to inject some humor into her tone, but it was fairly accurate. She had a sneaking suspicion that not everyone would have been quite as receptive as she had been when he first appeared with his story (not that he had thrown the whole thing at her at once, it was probably best that he had been semi gradual about it). “If you say that’s the way it is, then that’s the way it is.”

  “On this you listen to me.” She wasn’t sure whether the masking the serious with humor thing they had going on was a good idea or not. There was some potential for some passive aggressiveness there, but she liked to think they were beyond that.

  “I always listen,” she informed him. “That doesn’t mean I’m always going to just blindly follow.”

  “That is a very good reason for why you and Meredyth will never be the best of friends,” he deadpanned. She fought the urge to laugh; she wasn’t sure why.

  “I think I’ll survive the disappointment.”

  “Probably, although I seem to recall the fundraisers having really nice dessert selections.” She wasn’t sure what to make of the wistful expression that Connor displayed as he made the comment. In a lot of ways, he was really easy to pin down. In others, he was almost impossible to figure.

  “Do you have those invoices checked?” It took her a moment to follow his jump. She had forgotten about those. Technically, it was a legitimate part of his job, but coming to get them in person was reaching a bit. It had been the best defense that they could come up with in case his father was ever on his case again about him being around her office. There was always some piece of paperwork or other to be delivered or collected, and not everything that the two of them needed to talk about always fit nicely into a no one else around to notice kind of a schedule.

  “Have I mentioned how much I don’t appreciate the whole pretense for you being in here thing?”

  “I think maybe once or twice,” he winked at her. That was new.

  “Well, I don’t like it,” she repeated for good measure.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he told her with a shrug, but she could see his shoulders tensing as if he was getting ready to settle into a defensive stance.

  “That’s because you are taking it as a personal insult,” she waved off his complacence. “And you always brush those off.”

  “How should I be taking it?”

  “Not you,” she clarified. “Me. I’m insulted. It’s not like I need somebody else to order you away from me. I could so kick you out of here anytime I wanted to, and, I will point out, I have done so before.”

  “You have,” she thought she caught the faintest sound of a chuckle. She hadn’t always been very personable when she wanted him out of her way. If he thought that was amusing, then so be it. “Did you get a chance to look through that file that I gave you about the Kline case?” There he went with the topic jumping again. He was lucky she was pretty quick on the uptake. He could turn on a dime and not even realize that not everyone else was functioning on the same wavelength.

  “I scanned it,” she told him. She had done a little more than scanning, but she hadn’t studied it in detail either. She really hadn’t had much time.

  “Any thoughts to share?” Not really. He had obviously seen something that she had missed.

  “It looks like a sloppy kidnapping attempt,” she offered. “I’m guessing that you have other thoughts, or you wouldn’t have had me look at it.”

  “That’s the issue -- it only looks like it was sloppy because it failed,” he took the opening and was off with a rush. “I don’t think it was sloppy so much as it was hurried. Hurried always leaves room for more unexpected variables. If the perpetrator hadn’t run into trouble in the actual room itself, then would he have gotten away?” He looked at her, but she didn’t have an answer to that. She hadn’t thought about it. He didn’t seem to require an answer. He had obviously given this a lot of thought, and he was eager to share.

  “I would give him an 80 percent chance of successfully getting out of the building. That tells me we were dealing with something Wyatt cooked up on the spur of the moment. I’m guessing that Wyatt knows that Meredyth wants leverage on the Governor. I’m also guessing that she hasn’t shared any details of any of her plans for getting it. He saw an opportunity, and he ran with it. He was going to show her that he can handle things without her input.” He winced a little as he finished off his series of assertions. “She’s probably correcting his presumption as we speak.”

  “You really think it was them?” She wondered if her voice gave away the fact that the possibility had never even occurred to her. Sometimes, Anna forgot that it wasn’t all about Glimpse and the fact that they wanted it. There were other plans and schemes and maneuverings going on
all of the time, and Connor dutifully kept an eye on all of them. How he did that was a question she had never taken the time to ponder; no wonder he looked the way that he did.

  “I really think it was him,” Connor reiterated. “I don’t think Meredyth knew anything about it until it was all over. She wouldn’t have accepted such a high possibility of failure -- not when she thinks she’s getting her hands on an improvement of her odds very shortly. That’s not her kind of risk. She may not like to wait, but she knows how to be patient if it’s going to pay off in the long run.”

  “You’re assuming that you still know her as well as you used to years ago.” Anna reminded him. It wasn’t like she wanted to be the dark rain cloud here, but it looked to her like he was making a lot of assumptions to bring about his conclusion of what had prompted the attempted kidnapping of the Governor’s son from his hospital room.