Wire (Pierce Securities Book 2) (15 page)

The door had barely closed when Dan came in. “I’ve got the new storyboards for next year’s game, if you want to look at them. I emailed them to you.”

“Sure, I’ll take a look. I could use a break from getting this bitch out of my game.”

Minimizing the code window for
Realm of Worlds
, Paige pulled up her email and browsed through it. Opening the email, there were three files to look at.

The first one was okay, but the low res graphics still needed some work. The images were unrecognizable, and Paige knew serious gamers used them to boost their performance level while playing. The second one had a garish color scheme, in her opinion, but she made a note to have some focus groups look at it, in case it appealed to a different demographic.

The third one looked great, but as she got further into it, the images faded to black and The Crimson Lady popped up, her face taking up the entire screen. Her wiry red curls waved around like Medusa’s snakes, and the eerily intelligent eyes glared back at Paige with malicious intent that made tendrils of dread course through her veins.

“You are mine, Paige Lawson,” she whispered, and then threw her head back, a cackling laugh spilling from her throat, red curls flowing around her head, like she was in a windstorm or her hair was alive. It was chilling, and Paige slammed her laptop shut to end it.

“Dan!” she yelled.

He came back, looking around her office door hesitantly. “Yes?”

“Did you put her in the storyboards?” Her voice shook while her entire body trembled. She didn’t know how much longer she could take this. Even though she told herself she deserved it for getting distracted and not giving The Lady the attention she deserved when she first popped up in her system.

“Who?”

“Who else? The Crimson Lady! Are you playing some sort of crappy joke?”

Dan came into the office fully, wringing his hands. “Of course not. She wasn’t in there when I looked at them this morning.”

“Fuck.” Dropping her head into her hands, Paige wondered if she’d imagined it, or if somehow, somebody had hacked into Dan’s account and put her there. She was willing to bet money on either one.

She hadn’t slept at all last night, and the prospect of imagining things was probable. Evan had filled her thoughts last night, sleep evading her. She’d made him angry.

Her initial reaction to his dictating who her friends were was an over-reaction, and she knew it. He was just looking out for her safety, and if she was honest with herself, Neil wasn’t a super-close friend or anything. She hadn’t known him that long, and she didn’t truly trust him with much. But he was fun to hang out with and a nice distraction from difficult days. She didn’t really understand Evan’s suspicions about him. He certainly didn’t have any motive to hurt her business; he was a lawyer, for crying out loud.

Of course, the phone call that had driven Evan out of her house was simply Neil telling her goodnight. It was a phone call she should have ignored. Nobody needed anything from her.

She’d decided in the wee hours of this morning that Evan was right. She needed to cool things off with Neil while this investigation was ongoing. As long as Evan suspected him, she’d stop hanging around him. She could do that. For Evan.

Not that she could tell Evan that. He’d holed up in his office with his door shut all day. Gene was the only person allowed in. She could always send him an email, but The Crimson Lady’s appearance in what she just opened made her think twice about that. She’d just wait and tell him when the opportunity arose.

She managed to find the guts to open her laptop again, only to find The Crimson Lady gone from her screen. With a sigh of relief, she determined it had been her imagination, caused by a total lack of sleep.

Paige finished answering emails and resumed her attempts to extricate The Crimson Lady from
Realm of Worlds
. She could tell Evan was in his office, doing the same thing, running some pretty complicated code on her. But whoever had programmed her in had made her practically immune to their efforts. Whatever they tried against her, she learned from, and built up defenses against, so they couldn’t use it again. She could hear The Lady laughing at them.

Neil burst in her door, all smiles, about an hour later.

“You ready to go to dinner? I’ve got something really special planned, Paige.” He swooped down to her and dropped a kiss on her cheek before standing and watching her expectantly.

“Um… I can’t.” She pleaded with her eyes, feeling like this was a breakup.

“What do you mean?”

“I’m really, really busy right now. I need to buckle down and get rid of this woman. I don’t have time to do anything fun, Neil.”

“Did you hear what happened today?” At her confused head shake, Neil’s eyes gleamed with excitement. “A seventeen-year-old boy was caught burning a hooker and her John in his car. She was giving a blow job and he poured a bunch of gas and lit ‘em up.”

“Oh my God! How horrible!” She felt sick to her stomach, knowing exactly what Neil would say next.

“Yeah, he admitted The Crimson Lady told him to do it and where to find them and everything. She’s dead, but he’s still living for now.”

“What are you smiling about? Neil, this isn’t good. Not good at all.”

His smile fell, and he replaced it with a properly chagrined look. “I’m sorry, I know it’s not. But you need to get your mind off this stuff. I’ve had some issues, too, with somebody messing up my bank accounts.” His face twisted into a grimace, and Paige felt a shudder course up her spine at the face Neil made. “It’s taken a while to deal with but I finally got it straightened out. Come with me and do something just for you. Let’s have a little celebration of life, you know? Forget about all this other stuff.” He waved his hands around vaguely and the gesture irritated Paige.

“I can’t tonight. Especially not now. I’ve got to get her off my mainframe. I’ve got to figure out how she’s telling kids to do this stuff. I can’t see you until this is all over.”

“What do you mean?” His innocent expression still on his face, she hated to tell him.

“I need to be alone for a while.” Forcing some specificity into her words, she continued, “A couple of weeks, at least. Until we catch who’s doing this. I can’t hang out until then. It’s not right.”

“Fuck, Paige! Is this about Rocco?” His eyes flashed angrily, and Paige felt a ripple of fear.

“Um, no. Don’t be stupid. I need to work until she’s gone. I don’t have time for celebrations of life. Besides, what would happen if the media got hold of that little tidbit? I’d be the Super-Bitch, having a celebration of life the same day one of my game characters killed an innocent woman. I’m not going out tonight.”

In a flash of anger Paige had never seen Neil show before, he swiped his hand across her desk, knocking everything to the floor.

“Neil!”

“Fuck you, Paige. This isn’t over,” he sneered before stalking out, slamming her door behind him.

Paige was shaking as she sank into her seat. Having never seen Neil act like that before, she certainly never expected him to over-react like that to her declaration. She’d never heard him curse, nor display fits of temper like that. She was having a hard time wrapping her head around it. Maybe Evan had been right to suspect him. Had he acted like that with him?

She composed herself and went to Evan’s office to talk to him. His door was shut and locked, and Gene had gone for the day. So had the rest of the office. Suddenly not wanting to be there alone, she packed up her stuff and left, too.

She called Evan’s cell phone on her way home, but he never answered. She didn’t leave a message, not really knowing what to say. All the things she wanted to say were totally inappropriate, like, “I miss you, I want you, come over and make me forget everything.” What she needed to say couldn’t be said in a voice message, “You were right, Neil should be a suspect. He just wrecked my office in one fell swoop.” Instead, Paige gave up, relegating herself to being alone again.

When she got home, she settled in for a long night of attempted code-breaking, knowing her attempts, once again, would be fruitless.

Mr. Rocco,

I know Paige has hired you to work The Crimson Lady case, and I’m sure she’s tickled to have an excuse to get you on her team. Knowing I’m probably a likely suspect, I wanted to draw your attention to the fact that Dale Stygman faked his death and has been working for me for years. His obsession with taking down Paige escalated right before the takeover incident, and I had to let him go. Since his work with Pat-Tek was ‘under the table’, so to speak, there is no record of his employment with me. However, I fear for Paige’s life at this point and am worried he’s going to do something drastic in his machinations. I have no proof he’s behind The Crimson Lady, as it would be my word against his, and in the attempt to keep my privacy private, I don’t want to be drawn back into court. I’m tired of courtroom walls. I just want you to look at him more closely.

Regards,

Roger Patton

Evan sat back from his laptop and ran his hands through his hair, blowing out an exasperated breath. Of course, Patton would know he was a leading suspect and try to deflect attention. You’d think he’d be smarter than to pin it on a dead man, though, wouldn’t he? The email raised all sorts of red flags for Evan and reeked of desperation. It was one man’s last attempt to point the finger at anyone else, and it only made Evan look at Patton closer.

Of course, it could be a fake email by somebody trying to set Patton up. Breathing deeply, wondering what was going to break this case, Evan traced the IP address of the email, hoping for something tangible to work with.

It took two hours for Evan to find out it was from a public library in Greece. Evan scratched his head while he pondered that information. Was Patton actually in Greece? Or had he made his own IP address a pinger that pointed to a computer in Greece? Doing a quick search on the country, Evan found something that both chilled him and confused him. Greece was number two in the world for plastic surgery procedures. With even more information, Evan didn’t exactly know what to do with it.

Evan was walking back to his office from the men’s room when he walked into the cloud of perfume that announced the appearance of Peggy, coming out of the door to the server room. He wracked his brain, trying to figure out a reason for the head of HR to be in the server room, coming up empty.

“Peggy? Why are you in there?”

She held up some drives in one hand with a happy smile on her face. “I was switching out the backup drives for Delvin. He said it had to be done every day, and he had an errand to run today, so he’s not here. I told him I’d take care of it for him.” She cut her eyes to the left a lot while she spoke, but the smile never left. She was lying.

“We don’t have an automatic backup system? I thought we did?”

“Um, I don’t know. I was just doing like Delvin asked.” She squirmed around him. “Excuse me.”

Evan looked around before sliding into the server room. Nothing seemed to be missing or damaged, which made sense. Peggy wouldn’t do something as obvious as botch up the server, and she wouldn’t have been as cool about it if she had, not being caught coming out of the room.

He sighed and went back to his office to see if he could find something internal.

When he found the laughing Lady in Paige’s email, he scrubbed his face with his hands before standing up and going to her office.

Of course, that’s why she’d called him last night. And he hadn’t answered, because he’d thought she was still mad at him and wanted to give him more grief. He’d honestly been terrified of answering. He was afraid she would tell him something awful, like not only had she decided to stay friends with Neil, but they were going to the next level, or something really shitty like that. And he couldn’t make small-talk with her, so he chose not to answer. Since she didn’t leave a message, he’d assumed she didn’t really need anything.

But this had happened. Peggy had presumably gone in to wipe it out, and Peggy being in HR, not IT, hadn’t done it. Or she’d wiped out something different. Or she had another reason altogether for being in there. He knew the drives were backed up automatically every night, so that couldn’t be it.

He was in way too deep with Paige. This was what Simon warned about—getting personal with the clients—and he’d done it. Evan had missed her call last night because of his personal feelings for her, and she’d needed to talk about the case, for once.