About That Night (6 page)

On the fourth night of her trip, he finally got a response.

Via Twitter.

@KyleRhodes Sorry not going 2 work out 4 us. Going 2 chill in LA with someone I met. I think U R sweet but U talk too much about computers.

Kyle had to give her credit; it took skill—plus no heart and a serious abuse of the English language—to break up with someone in fewer than 140 characters. She didn’t even have the decency to send him a private message; nope, she’d just tweeted that sucker for anyone and everyone on Twitter to see. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Twenty minutes later, Daniela posted another tweet, this time with a link to a video of her making out with movie star Scott Casey in a hot tub.

That sucked.

Kyle felt like he’d been punched in the gut when he saw
the video. He knew they’d had their problems, but what Daniela had done was just so…heartless. Particularly since she’d managed to make him look like a complete and utter fool. He could just see the tabloids:

STEAMY SAUNA SCANDAL!!!
Supermodel Cheats on Billionaire Heir

He worked in computers, he knew what would happen—the video would go viral within minutes. Between the wet supermodel in her skimpy bikini, the movie star, and the fact that the damn thing was even cinematically pleasing with the sweeping views of the Hollywood Hills in the background—
everyone
was going to see it.

Not on his watch.

Kyle grabbed the bottle of Scotch from the bar he kept in his home office and slammed a shot. And four more after that for good measure. One thought kept ringing through his head.

Fuck
Daniela.

He may not have been a movie star, or the CEO of a billion-dollar corporation, or on the cover of
Time
and
Newsweek
, but he was not some also-ran. He was Kyle Rhodes, and he was a tech god. His specialty was network security, for chrissakes—he could simply hack into Twitter and delete Daniela’s tweets and the video from the site, and no one would ever be the wiser.

And he might have gotten away with the whole thing if only he’d stopped there.

But somewhere along the way, as he sat at his computer with his glass in hand, intoxicated and furious, staring at that tweet—that stupid it-was-fun-while-it-lasted-but-fuck-you of a tweet—he had a moment of Scotch-induced clarity. He realized that the true problem lay with social media itself, the perpetuation of a world in which people had become so wholly
un
social that they believed 140-character breakups were acceptable.

So he took down the whole site.

Actually, it wasn’t all that difficult. For him, anyway. All
he needed was one clever computer virus and about fifty thousand unknowingly infected computers, and he was good to go.

Take that, tweeple.

After he crashed the site, he decided to cut loose. He threw his laptop, his passport, and a change of clothes into a backpack, hopped on a red-eye flight to Tijuana, and proceeded to get shit-faced drunk on cheap tequila for the next two days.

“Why Tijuana?” Jordan had asked him during the brouhaha that followed his arrest.

“It seemed like the kind of place a person could go without being asked any questions,” he’d explained with a shrug.

And indeed, it was that. In Tijuana, no one knew, or cared, who he was. He wasn’t a guy who’d been cheated on by his supermodel ex-girlfriend. He wasn’t an heir, a tech geek, a businessman, a son, or a brother. He was no one, and he loved all forty-eight hours of the anonymity—being the son of a billionaire had deprived him of that freedom long ago.

On the second night of his trip, Kyle had been sitting at the bar he’d made his home for the last two days, nursing what he had decided would be his last shot of the night. He’d never been on a bender before and, like most men, had found it to be an effective way to deal with his problems. But sooner or later, he had to get back to the real world.

The bartender, Esteban, shot Kyle a sideways look as he cleaned some glasses. “You think they’re going to catch this guy?” he asked in a heavy Mexican accent.

Kyle blinked in surprise. That was more words than Esteban had uttered to him in two days. He momentarily debated whether this query violated his no-questions policy, then ultimately found it to be acceptable. After all, it wasn’t like they were talking about
him.

“What guy?” he asked.

“This tweeder terrorist,” Esteban said.

Kyle waved his glass in front of him. “No clue what a tweeder is, or how you terrorize one, but it sounds like a hell of a story, amigo.”

“Oh, you’re a funny guy, eh?” Esteban pointed to a television mounted to the wall behind Kyle. “Twee-ter,
pendejo
.”

Out of curiosity, Kyle looked over at the television and saw a Mexican news program. His four years of high school Spanish was little help; the female reporter was speaking too fast for him to understand what she was saying. But three words written in bold letters across the bottom of the television screen needed no translation.

El Twitter Terrorista

Kyle choked on his tequila.

Oh
…shit.

He stared at the television screen with growing frustration as he tried to understand what the reporter was saying. It was tough, particularly given the fact that he was about six sheets to the wind, but he did manage to catch the words
policia
and
FBI
.

His stomach churned, and he barely made it out of the bar before he bent over and threw up seven shots of tequila, impaling his forehead on a heretofore unseen cactus in the process.

That sobered him up right quick.

In a panic, he made his way back to the cheap posada that had rented him a room on a cash, no-ID-required basis, and called the one person he could count on when shit-face drunk in Tijuana, bleeding from his forehead, and wanted by the FBI.

“Jordo, I fucked up,” he said as soon as she answered the phone.

Likely hearing the anxiety in his voice, she’d gotten right to the heart of the matter. “Can you fix it?”

Kyle knew he had to—ASAP. So as soon as he hung up the phone, he fired up his laptop and stopped the botnet’s denial of service attack.

There was only one problem: this time the FBI was waiting for him.

And they had computer geeks, too.

The next morning, sobered and chagrined, Kyle loaded up his backpack and took a taxi to the Tijuana airport. There
was a moment before boarding, as he handed over his ticket to the Aeromexico flight attendant, when he thought,
I don’t have to go back.
But running wasn’t the answer. He figured a man needed to own up to those moments in life when he acted like a complete dickhead, come what may.

When the plane landed at O’Hare Airport, the flight attendants asked the passengers to remain in their seats. Sitting eight rows back, Kyle watched as two men wearing standard-issue government suits—clearly FBI agents—boarded the plane and handed over a document to the pilot.

“Yep, that would be me,” Kyle said, grabbing his backpack from underneath the seat in front of him.

The elderly Hispanic man sitting next to him lowered his voice to a whisper. “Drugs?”

“Twitter,” Kyle whispered back.

He stood up, backpack in hand, and nodded at the FBI agents that had stopped at his row. “Morning, gentlemen.”

The younger agent held out his hand, all business. “Hand over the computer, Rhodes.”

“I guess we’re skipping the pleasantries,” Kyle said, handing over his backpack.

The older agent yanked Kyle’s arms behind his back and slapped handcuffs on him. As they read him his rights, Kyle caught a glimpse of what had to be fifty passengers taking photos of him with their camera phones, photos that would later be blasted all over the Internet.

And from that moment on, he ceased being Kyle Rhodes, the billionaire’s son, and became Kyle Rhodes, the Twitter Terrorist.

Probably not the best way to make a name for himself.

They brought him to the FBI’s offices downtown and left him in an interview room for two hours. He called his lawyers, who arrived posthaste and gravely laid out the charges the FBI planned to bring to the U.S. Attorney’s Office. A half hour after his lawyers left, he was transferred to Metropolitan Correctional Center for booking.

“You’ve got a visitor, Rhodes,” the guard said later that afternoon.

They led him to a holding cell, where he waited at a steel table while trying to get used to the sight of himself in an orange jumpsuit and handcuffs. When the door opened and his sister walked in, he smiled sheepishly.

“Jordo,” he said, his nickname for her since they were kids.

She hurried over and hugged him tightly, a somewhat awkward exercise with the handcuffs. Then she pulled back and thunked him on the forehead with the palm of her hand. “You
idiot
.”

Kyle rubbed his forehead. “Ouch. That’s right where the cactus got me.”

“What were you thinking?” she demanded.

Over the course of the next couple weeks, that was the question Kyle would be asked hundreds of times by friends, family, his lawyers, the press, and just about anyone who passed him in the street. He could say that it had something to do with pride, or his ego, or the fact that he’d always been somewhat hot-tempered when provoked. But in the end, it really came down to one thing.

“I just…made a mistake,” he told his sister honestly. He wasn’t the first man to overreact when he discovered his girl was cheating on him, nor would he be the last. Unfortunately, he’d simply been in the unique position to screw up on a global level.

“I told the lawyers that I’m going to plead guilty,” he said. No sense wasting the taxpayers’ money for a sham of a trial, or wasting his own money in extra legal fees. Especially since he didn’t have a defense.

“They’re saying on the news that you’ll probably go to prison.” Jordan’s voice cracked on the last word, and her lip trembled.

Hell, no.
The last time Kyle had seen his sister cry was nine years ago after their mother’s death, and he’d be damned if he let her do that now. He pointed for emphasis. “You listen to me, Jordo, because this is the only time I’m going to say this. Mock me, make all the jokes you want, call me an idiot, but you will not shed a tear over this. Understood? Whatever happens, I will handle it.”

Jordan nodded and took a deep breath. “Okay.” She looked him over, taking in the orange jumpsuit and handcuffs. Then she cocked her head questioningly. “So how was Mexico?”

Kyle grinned and chucked her under the chin. “That’s better.” He turned to the subject he’d avoided thinking about since his arrest. “How’s Dad taking the news?”

Jordan threw him a familiar you-are-so-busted look. “Remember sophomore year, the night you climbed out the kitchen window to go to Jenny Garrett’s party?”

Kyle winced. Did he ever. He’d left the window open so that he would have easy access back in, and their dad had come downstairs to investigate after hearing a strange noise. He’d found Kyle missing and a raccoon eating Cocoa Puffs in the pantry. “That bad, huh?”

Jordan squeezed his shoulder. “I’d say about twenty times worse.”

Damn.

AFTER FINISHING his review of the evening news, Kyle made the mistake of checking his e-mail. His e-mail address at Rhodes Corporation had been accessible via the website, and though he no longer worked for the company—having turned in his resignation the day he’d been released on bond and thus sparing his father the awkwardness of having to fire him—the messages he received there were forwarded to his personal account.

Every day since he’d been released, he had received hundreds of messages: interview requests from the press, hate mail from some very angry people who seriously needed to take a break from Twitter (
Hey @KyleRhodes—you SUCK, dickwad!!!!!
), and oddly flirtatious overtures from random women who sounded a tad too interested in meeting an ex-con.

After checking to make sure there was nothing of actual importance he needed to respond to, Kyle deleted the entire lot of e-mails. He didn’t do interviews, the hate mail wasn’t worth answering, and although he may have been in prison for four months and thus in the midst of the longest period of
celibacy of his adult life, he found it generally prudent to avoid having sex with
crazy
people.

His home phone rang, interrupting his thoughts. It was a double ring, indicating that the call came from the security desk in the lobby downstairs.

“Dex is here to see you,” Miles the doorman said when Kyle answered the phone, referring to Kyle’s best friend, Gavin Dexter. Dex was a frequent visitor to Casa Rhodes, and Miles had consequently dropped the “Mr. Dexter” routine ages ago.

“And he has several friends with him,” Miles continued with a note of amusement.

“Thanks, Miles. Send them up.”

Two minutes later, Kyle opened the door and found his best friend and a group of at least twenty people standing on his doorstep. The crowd let out a loud cheer when they saw him.

Dex grinned. “If Kyle Rhodes can’t come to the party, then the party will come to Kyle Rhodes.” He slapped Kyle on the shoulder, hearty man-style. “Welcome home, buddy.”

SOMEWHERE AROUND MIDNIGHT, Kyle finally got a chance to slip away from the crowd. His twenty-one guests had nearly tripled, and the penthouse was now packed.

Needing a few moments alone, Kyle stole away to his office, where he kept a small bar, and poured himself a glass of bourbon. He took a sip and closed his eyes, savoring the time before he needed to return to the party. To his so-called friends.

Not a single one of whom, except Dex, had once bothered to visit him in prison.

Metropolitan Correctional Center—or MCC, as the inmates referred to it—was conveniently located in the middle of downtown Chicago, and Kyle had been there for
four
months. Yet the entire time, only three people had come to visit him: his father, his sister, and Dex. For everyone else, he’d been out of sight, out of mind.

Apparently, Kyle Rhodes wasn’t the proverbial man of the hour when he lived in the Big House instead of a penthouse.