Broken Build (2 page)

Claire Tyler popped the locks. Dave crossed to the passenger side and pushed a button to bring the seat all the way back. Claire leaned over, and he graced her with an air kiss. No sense messing up her finely traced lipstick. He had plenty of time to do that after dinner.

She turned the Benz onto Highway 101. “Practice the pitch with me again?”

He swept dark-brown hair from his forehead. “Social shopping combines the power of group buying in a competitive bidding environment. Grow your flock’s influence and be rewarded with lower prices. But bid too low and run the risk of losing the deal and your flock members. Our system allows merchants to optimize the capture of consumer demand by spurring sales at higher price points than a flat-out lowball price.”

Claire fondled his knee while merging to the fast lane. “Cutie, you sound like a schoolboy reciting his lines. So how’s the code scaling? I heard you had glitches with reordering the price queues.”

Gee, had she been talking to his Director of Engineering? Dave rubbed the back of his neck. He was close. If the Black Friday field trial went well, he’d receive contracts and a loan extension with a chance to go public the following year. But if not, he would have to lay off staff right before the holidays.

Claire pinched his thigh. “You’ve gone awfully quiet.”

“It’s timing, that’s all.”

“Yevita or Adventurine?” She named two high-class restaurants and took the exit to University Avenue.

“How about Italian? Il Forno. My treat.” He tugged at his tie. The management and wait staff there were known for their discretion.

Claire took a wide turn and pulled in front of valet parking. Minutes later, Dave escorted her through the front door. She nodded to the maître d’, and they were seated immediately.

While she went to freshen up, Dave scrolled through the disturbing flood of messages on his Blackberry. He pressed the speed dial to Greta, the Director of Engineering. She answered on the first ring.

“Why’s the build broken?” He gestured to the waiter. “Drink menu?”

“We had some last minute fixes,” Greta said.

“I want a good build by midnight. I can’t emphasize how important it is.” He hung up before hearing her reply.

Claire swept into the booth and flashed him a million dollar smile. Three million to be exact. To make payroll, he’d first have to make her pant and scream. He rummaged in his pocket and found a breath mint.

“This place has gotten a bit shabby.” She brushed the lapel of her linen jacket and glanced at the young couple across from them.

Dave followed her gaze. A young woman stared into her iPad while her gangbanger boyfriend picked at his tribal tattoo. His muscle shirt stretched too tightly, he snapped his fingers trying to get her attention.

Her face was furrowed in concentration. Warmth spread over Dave’s chest, and he swallowed. The woman had the bone structure of a model. She looked vaguely familiar—long milk-chocolate hair, elegant eyebrows, and lush lips. Dressed in a rumpled, oversized sweater and faded jeans, she was possibly an engineer. Silicon Valley was full of them: never tiring, endlessly working, all for a shot at the elusive stock offering. Her jaw was set tightly, but her eyes held a sad story, blinking a little too fast. What was she doing with the brute whose fists were clenched below the table?

Claire kicked his shin, reminding him of his price tag. The rest of the evening, he spent engrossed in complimenting her taste, her beauty, and her impeccable style. Married to one of the wealthiest men in the Valley, she was not averse to providing a little angel investing on the side. He took her hand across the table and caressed it, fixing her with eyes he hoped were full of desire.

“Damn!” A sharp voice emitted from the next table. “The fuckin’ build’s broken.”

Claire glared over her tiramisu. “This is the last time I’m slumming here with you.”

Dave winced and looked over. The young woman closed the cover on her iPad. “I have to go. The servers need rebooting.”

“You can’t do it remotely?” The boyfriend pushed his chair back and shoved something into his pocket.

“Security disabled it. Idiots.” The woman threw a wad of bills on the table and hurried out. Her boyfriend followed in a slow gait, but not before plucking a bill off the table.

Claire shuddered. “Such a foul mouth.”

Dave pulled out his wallet and signaled the waiter. He rolled a slow kiss across Claire’s palm. “Let’s take a bottle of Brunello back to my place.”

 * * *

Jen rushed toward Rey’s car while instant messaging with Greta, her boss. The engineers had another fix, but the build servers were unresponsive.
Yes, yes, she was on her way. No, she couldn’t find her cell phone. Sorry. Yes. On the way.

Rey set the course on his GPS. A nerve rattled at the base of Jen’s neck. Shopahol was saved to his ‘Favorite Places’ list.

The muscle car roared onto the freeway. Rey tapped her. “Is this what it’d be like married to you?”

Jen stared at her iPad. His earlier attempt at proposing was insulting, ‘After all, no one would turn in his own wife,’ followed by a smooching sound. He hadn’t even bothered with a ring. Not that she wanted one. The blackmail and constant innuendo was enough of a bother. How would she ever get rid of him?

He jerked the steering wheel. “Bitch in the black Mercedes cut us off.”

Shaking his fist, he gunned his motor, passed them, and tapped the brakes.

“Can you stop playing games?” Jen typed on the virtual keyboard. “Greta’s going ballistic. Automation can’t run until the build is done.”

Rey lightened his foot from the gas pedal. “I asked you to marry me. You haven’t answered me.”

“You can’t be serious. You barely know me. Drive faster.”

“Don’t order me around.” He cut across three lanes of the freeway and exited on Shoreline Drive.

“This isn’t the way.” Jen pointed to the sign. The road grew darker, the GPS recalculating at every corner.

Rey meandered past deserted parking lots. Jen’s chest tightened. She searched for another car, anyone, her heart pounding furiously.
Keep calm. He’s traumatized from the war, going into extreme mode; let him drive it off.

He pulled the car off the pavement near a soccer field, leaving the lights on and the engine idling. Jen unbelted herself and cracked the door open. Rey twisted her wrist.

Pain shot up her arm. “Ow, ow. Let go.”

He turned her toward him. His breath hissed through clenched teeth. Rey’s face, so much like Rodrigo’s, loomed over her. But where Rodrigo’s eyes had been soft, Rey’s were hardened pinpoints of steel. Rey had been to Iraq and discharged for psychiatric stress.

Jen craned her neck, darting her gaze toward the open door. A single set of headlights lit the dark road and approached the field.

“Shit.” Rey reached to his left for the headlamp switch while cutting the ignition. Jen swung her right leg out the door, but Rey yanked her hair and clamped her neck in a rear chokehold.

The other car’s tires crunched on the gravel behind them. Jen thrashed and kicked the door wide open. But the moving car turned around, and the engine sounds faded into the night air. Her pulse crashing in her head, Jen dug her fingernails into his forearms.

Oh, God, help me.

Rey pinned his hardened face against hers. “You didn’t deny my brother. Answer me.”

Jen whimpered, begging for the tiniest sliver of air. A taste like burnt leaves gagged the back of her throat and jagged flashes doused her vision.

Chapter 2

Someone shook Jen, this time more gently. She opened her eyes and shut them immediately. Rey brushed the hair from her face. Her heartbeat skipped helter-skelter, but she held her breath and counted to ten.

“Hey, you’re okay,” he said. “You fainted.”

Fainted? He practically choked the life out of her. But she would not panic. Jen touched her aching neck and swallowed with difficulty, her throat dry and sore. “W-where are we?”

“Around the corner from your company. I’ll walk you to the door.”

Jen blinked and focused. He was still staring at her, but the harshness on his face was gone.

“The car pissed me off,” he said. “Triggered the war zone and… well... you wouldn’t cooperate. You’re not scared of me, are you?”

“I-I don’t know what to say.” She swallowed the panic in her throat.

“I’m sorry I hurt you.” He caressed her face and handed her a memory stick. “The code. Any mobile app would do, but iPhone would be better since I have one and can test it before turning it in.”

“I could be fired.”

“Better than scrubbing toilets at Chowchilla.” His wink lifted one side of his face into a snarl.

“Sending me to jail won’t help you find a job or pass any classes. Why are you doing this?” Jen couldn’t keep the irritation out of her voice.

Rey stared straight over the steering wheel. “It’s for my daughter.”

“You have a daughter?”

“It’s complicated. Rod didn’t tell you?”

Her throat clenched at the mention of his brother. “He stopped talking to me long before he died. Why, what’s up?”

More like he had told her to stay away when all she wanted were answers. That had been six years and sixty pounds ago. The next time she saw him was at his funeral.

Rey scratched his left cheek. “Everything’s screwed up. What can I do to gain custody?”

She could think of several smart remarks. But the ringing in her ears and the condition of her throat reminded her to be wise. There was real pain in his voice. Maybe he wanted to marry her to show he could provide a good home.

“It’ll be best to get back together with her mother,” Jen suggested.

He shook his head and drummed the steering wheel with his fingers.

“Look, Rey. You don’t really want to marry me. I get you the code, and you’ll leave. Like everyone else.” She hoped he’d take the hint. She pocketed the memory stick, picked up her iPad, and opened the car door.

He walked her to the lobby door, his hands in the pockets of his baggy pants. “I’ll wait for you.”

“Okay, but it might be awhile.” Jen waved her badge over the reader and unlocked the door.

He shuffled his feet, his shoulders slumped. “Rodrigo’s death wasn’t an accident.”

A flurry of chills grazed her scalp. She had heard how he died—crushed in a metal compactor at the scrap yard he owned. “But that’s what the police said it was.”

“How would they know?” He glanced toward the parking lot.

“Who’d want him dead?”

“Did you?” His lips compressed as if he were about to blow taps on a bugle, and he turned away before she could answer.

What was that about?
Jen stepped into the building and pushed the door shut. She hurried through the corridor of cubicles to the double doors of the lab. A cloak of safety wrapped around her when the steel doors shut behind her. The rows of servers and switches, humming and blinking green and blue, welcomed her with familiarity.

Jen set her iPad on the lab bench and flipped on the lights. A stinging, electric smell came from the last row where her build servers lay. She wavered. Run and call for help? No time to lose. Greta wanted a new build by midnight. She unstrapped the fire extinguisher and ran toward the last row.

The servers were dark with no blinking lights. A wavy grey smoke simmered from the giant power supply—the new ‘uninterruptible’ unit that Bruce, the lab technician, had installed on Friday.

She pulled the trigger and sprayed them. Maybe overkill, because the fuses had blown, but she felt better covering the smell with halon. Fortunately, Bruce had left the old unit in the corner. Re-racking and re-cabling took her a good hour. After all the servers blinked green, she sent a message to the team, checked her email and restarted the build.

Now for Rey’s business.
Jen took Rey’s memory stick to an old LINUX system sitting under a bench. All the new employee laptops were encryption shielded to guard against unauthorized file copying. No one remembered the server virtualization appliance left over from a beta trial.

Jen stepped between the mass of wires and whirring machinery. She peered over her shoulder, feeling as if someone watched her. What did Rey mean about wanting Rodrigo dead?

Her eyes moistened. Rod had been crushed like an aluminum can. What pain and panic he must have felt. She bent under the table, trying to wiggle the stick into the slot. Dang! It fell beneath the grate into a jumble of wires and conduits.

She shouldn’t have attended Rodrigo’s funeral. That had led to Rey coming around insinuating things. Jen rummaged around the lab desk. No flashlight. She opened the supply cabinet and found a memory stick used to make dongles. She inserted the stick and located an outdated snippet of code, enough to help him understand the conceptual design and create a working executable but incompatible with the current release.

This blackmailing had to stop now, tonight. She’d expose him for plagiarism and get him kicked out of San José State if he breathed a word of her past. And she’d convince him he had to be a model citizen if he wanted anything to do with his daughter. She pressed around her neck, wincing. Yep, she had enough for a restraining order.

But then, she’d have to go to the cops, and they might reopen their investigation. Her stomach ground against her diaphragm. She needed this job, and if the CEO of her company recognized her from his past…

She finished doctoring the code and pocketed the stick. It had taken longer because of the power supply swap. Who knew what kind of mood Rey would be in after waiting so long?

Jen checked the build log one more time and exited the lab. The empty lobby was lit by a single blue emergency light near the phone. She took the memory stick out of her pocket and opened the front door a crack. “Rey? You there?”

Wind swirled through her hair, but no Rey. Moonlight cast moving shadows through the trees surrounding the parking lot. No one there. She walked around the corner to where Rey had left his car.

Gone. Strange. Guess the code wasn’t so important after all. Mark that
she
wasn’t important either. So much for saying he’d wait.