Wire (Pierce Securities Book 2) (10 page)

The next morning, Evan sat at his desk, watching one laptop run code, trying to extricate The Crimson Lady. Pounding keys on another, he ran through Paige’s associates, trying not to think too hard on this morning’s news.

Another kid had been caught beating up a homeless man on Congress Avenue, down the street from Paige’s condo. Caught in the act, the sixteen-year-old had admitted The Crimson Lady had told him to do it, and where. An avid
Realm of Worlds
player, he’d freely admitted to having multiple conversations with the woman, describing in detail what to do. The press didn’t specify where he had the conversations, though, whether they were in the game or another platform altogether.

That meant there were five attacks left. And Evan was convinced Paige would be the last one.

Evan found it incredibly hard to believe that an online game, with the audience it had, would be able to pinpoint one impressionable youth and twist his mind into attacking a defenseless man. Whoever was behind The Crimson Lady must actually communicate with these kids on the site Dan had found. Of course, the FBI would be confiscating the kid’s computer, so he wouldn’t be able to look there for a chat history. Unless he did it remotely. He made a mental note to call in a favor with Kellog.

He was worried about Paige. Since he’d started working here, he’d noticed a deterioration in her physical appearance. His first day at PSL, he’d noticed a difference in Paige and Sandra, but it had gotten worse in the two weeks he’d been here.

She seemed exhausted, her skin waxy looking, and she wore dark, puffy circles under her eyes. Her hair, which before had been smoother than spun silk, was now dry and frizzy. He felt for her, seeing the physical evidence of how hard she was working to keep her company going. Now that The Crimson Lady had struck again, and last night’s breaking news, it was obvious she hadn’t slept a wink. She was probably in her own office working her ass of right this very minute.

Despite his angry words yesterday, he was worried about her. Sure, he was pissed when he’d heard he was nothing more than something to cross off her fucking list of things to do before she died, but her parting shot had cut him deeply. That night meant something to her, and she hadn’t been with anyone since then, either. He didn’t know what to do with that now that she was a client.

A client who needed him. With one more attack under The Crimson Lady’s belt, that brought Paige’s attack that much closer.

Using his tablet, he pulled up The Crimson Lady site that Dan thought was involved, while at the same time, running background checks on Paige’s list of associates and the code on The Lady herself. He was in his element, multi-tasking to the nth degree, fingers flying on one keyboard after another, when Gene stuck his head in the door.

“Hey, you up for Bar Night tonight?”

Bar Night was where Paige said she’d met that one guy. Evan’s eye slid to his notes: Neil Koen. “Yeah, I think I’ll make it this time.” He hadn’t gone last week, because Paige had been avoiding him, and he hadn’t seen a real need to go. This week, though, he wouldn’t miss it for anything.

Gene smiled in response and left him alone again. At least the PA was nice, which was more than he had to say about others. Peggy, whom he’d thought so fondly of when he first met her—because she reminded him of his aunt—was more snide than anything else, despite what Paige thought of her. Larry, the IT guy, obviously thought Evan was out for his job, and Scott, the lawyer, looked at him like he was gathering evidence for a lawsuit at all times. At least Terry seemed like an open book. Evan made himself a mental note to ply her and his PA with drinks to try to get a handle on things.

Looking at The Crimson Lady code, hitting brick wall after brick wall, wasn’t helping any. She didn’t want to let go.

The site was another thing altogether. He decided he needed to look at it closely. But first, he needed to splash some water on his face and grab a cup of coffee.

He stood with a sigh and walked out of his office, carefully locking his door behind him. Gene swiveled in his desk chair and smiled at him.

“Anything I can get you?”

“No, I just need to walk around a bit. Stretch my legs.”

Turning toward the men’s room on the end of the common room where Paige’s office was, Evan saw Neil Koen walk out of her office. When he looked up, his eyes collided with Evan’s and he flashed a cat-who-ate-the-cream smile that churned Evan’s gut.

He ignored the look, focusing instead on the wall behind Neil, walking steadily toward him to the men’s room on the other side.

Nodding, he moved to pass the man, but Neil purposefully jostled him out of the way.

Quelling the insane desire to smash the man’s face in, he said, “Excuse me.” It didn’t sound polite to his own ears, spoken through gritted teeth, but at least he’d controlled the urge to pummel the man.

The weird smile turned to a smirk, and Neil said, “I don’t think we’ve been introduced. I’m Neil. You must be the infamous Evan Rocco.” Hand held out, Evan took it warily. Neil’s words said one thing, but the hard edge to his eyes spoke volumes of something else. Evan’s gut told him this man was malicious, but whether it was purely jealousy over Paige or something far worse was beyond him at this point.

As they clasped hands, Evan realized it was a pissing contest, which he would win. Neil obviously worked out, but not nearly as much as Evan. They both squeezed until their knuckles were white, but Evan smiled while Neil grimaced.

Still crushing his hand, Evan replied, “Hardly infamous, but yes, I’m Evan Rocco.” Evan noticed faint scarring around the edges of the man’s face. He looked like the type for a face-lift, with his designer suit and expensive shoes. Evan didn’t trust this guy and wondered exactly how close he and Paige were.

“Are you here for business or pleasure?” He nodded toward Paige’s office, needing to know if she was more involved with this pussy than she’d let on.

“Definitely pleasure.” Snarling now, Koen had loosened his grip, but Evan gave it one final squeeze which brought a whimper from Neil before letting go.

“I’ll leave you to it then.” He forced an affable smile on his face before walking away to the men’s room.

“You’re not getting her in the sack again, Rocco,” Koen’s parting shot was a shouted whisper, which Evan hoped wasn’t loud enough for others to hear. His step faltered as he thought out what to say, but in the end, he said nothing.

He had no idea how long the asshole stuck around; he managed to kill enough time in the restroom so when he came back out, Koen was gone. Which was good, because Evan needed the time to chill himself out.

Anger raced through his veins at the thought of the slime ball wanting to put his hands on Paige, because it was obvious that’s what he wanted. Paige may be oblivious, with all her ‘strictly platonic’ talk, but it was plain to Evan that Neil Koen had a raging hard on for her. And the thought that Paige had told Koen about their night did more to piss him off than anything else.

Back in his office, he paused the background checks and ran one specifically on one Neil Koen. And then wiped out his bank accounts, donating all of his sizeable account holdings to the homeless in the city, and then ruined his credit record. All within forty seconds of sitting down.

He felt marginally better afterward.

Focusing on the computer with The Crimson Lady site on it, Evan cruised around, finding a lot of cheats and shortcuts. There were some coordinates of hidden caches—food, weapon, and supplies—that players left for others. Evan made a mental note to ask Red_Dawn if he knew about this site. It seemed to be right up his alley—finding life points the easy way. But there was nothing specific to The Crimson Lady other than her own sporadic visits.

He pulled up the code for the site and grunted in surprise. An encrypted, back door, invitation-only chat room came up, nearly identical to code he’d written eight years ago.

He went in.

Immediately, his screen filled with The Crimson Lady’s image, curls of flaming red hair writhing around his monitor like snakes. His graphics weren’t set for gaming on this computer, so the details weren’t pixelated, and he saw her smooth skin, lifelike eyes glittering with amusement, her mouth curling up into a slight smile.

“You are persistent, EmberFalls.”

He was surprised at the use of his gamer persona on his personal computer. He typed in his response, quelling his confusion. “I wanted to see you.”

“You shouldn’t be here,” was her simple reply. Her face remained impassive, still looking amused, but her hair seemed agitated, swirling around her head faster. “You weren’t invited.”

“How do I get invited?” He wanted to know how she targeted the kids, how she got them to do what she wanted. It wasn’t as important as who was behind her, but he didn’t think she’d tell him if he asked.

“You must be younger, for one. And stupider, for another.”

“How do you know how old I am?”

Her face broke into a gleeful smile, and a cackle of laughter flew from her lips. It was odd, and he wished he had headphones. Her voice was sultry, and her laugh was a little sexy. It probably sounded like he had a woman in his office through the closed door.

“Evan Rocco, aged 39, works for Pierce Securities since February of this year, social security number 444-44-4444, address 1328 Sixth Street #32, Austin, TX. Driver’s License number 5844691385. Do you need more?”

“No.” Dumbfounded, he could only stare. Evan was extremely careful with his online information, knowing full well how easy it was to get into the wrong hands. He had never let his online presence be known that much. It terrified him that this malicious entity had it. He could only assume she was hooked into every online database there was. Because there was only one he could think of that would have that much information on him.

NSA.

The face in front of him morphed into a snarling beast, curls turning into actual images of snakes. Her mouth opened into a wide circle, and she screamed at him, “Then GET OUT!” Her scream was shrill and caused him to slam the laptop shut to make it stop. Breathless, he realized he had goose bumps all over his arms.

Fuck. That bitch was scary.

He immediately called his contact at the NSA, worried that if he contacted them, they would make him do something, because that seemed to be the way they worked. But his contact assured him they were monitoring the situation. He could only take that to mean they knew The Crimson Lady hacked them, had his information, and didn’t give a shit. They were probably setting him up.

Super.

Bar Night was actually that night, so after getting pissed at the NSA again, Evan tinkered with The Crimson Lady code until he had calmed down. He eagerly packed it all up and left for the night, anxious to see exactly what Bar Night had in store. Hopefully he could glean some more information about possible suspects, narrow it down or something. If nothing else, he could unwind with a drink or two.

The bar, Stella’s, was a small, dimly lit affair down the street. Evan parked his car out front, under a streetlight, and locked his laptop inside. It wouldn’t do for it to get into the wrong hands, and he was just paranoid enough to believe it could.

It seemed like everyone was there, with the exception of IT. The law department was actually in a different office, so they weren’t there, either, presumably at a more posh, men’s club type place.

Stella’s was a dump. While everything was clean, it had all been painted black, probably with spray cans of flat matte, and even though it was a non-smoking establishment, it didn’t smell that way. But the drinks were cheap and flowing freely. Evan settled in for a night of people watching. Maybe he could derive some sort of divine inspiration from watching them all. Maybe someone would open up to him and brag about creating The Crimson Lady. Because at this point, he had nothing concrete.

Evan leaned back in the seat next to a woman from the design team, sipping his beer and watching the people around him. His focus narrowed on Peggy. She seemed like one of those types of women who put a lot of money into her appearance, and the effect was disastrous. Her fake nails were too long, painted a brash hot pink color which clashed hideously with her brassy blonde hair. She wore it in the same style as Paige, long and wavy down her back, but on her heavily made up face, it had a vastly different look to it. Her hair was fluffy and straw-like, probably due to an enormous amount of product and chemicals, whereas Paige’s was all natural. Her clothes were bright and tight, emphasizing more curves than a man really needed to see, for example, the camel-toe in her skin-tight pants that Evan’s gaze constantly tried to avoid. Like a skirt hiked into panty hose, though, it was damn near impossible not to see. And her perfume… Shit. Peggy dunked herself in the stuff like it was better than bathing.

But she was a person of interest in his investigation, and interesting indeed. In the twenty minutes he watched her, her head swiveled to the door no less than twenty-six times, obviously looking for someone. When she actually asked someone if Paige was coming, Evan knew exactly who she was looking for. He wondered why she was so interested in her.