About That Night

by Julie James

  “Seven ninety-five Folsom Street,” he told the driver. When the taxi pulled to a stop a few minutes later, Kyle peered through the window and checked out the modern, six-story office building before him. After paying the driver, he stepped out of the car and adjusted his tie.

  Time to face the music.

  Portfolio in hand, he pushed through the double doors and took the elevator up to the sixth floor. He watched as the floor indicator counted upward at what seemed to be an excruciatingly slow pace, finally springing open to reveal a simple, minimalist-style reception area.

  A receptionist sat behind a white and gray marble desk, her eyes going wide as saucers as soon as Kyle stepped out of the elevator. The wall behind her was devoid of any artwork, bearing only the company’s all-too-familiar name in lowercase letters:

  twitter

  “You actually showed up,” she said incredulously. “We’ve been betting for a week whether you would keep the appointment. A lot of people thought this was some kind of joke.”

  Kyle had spent hours on the phone with the company’s lawyers just to get the appointment—no way would he have backed out after going through that torture. “I take it I don’t need to introduce myself?” he asked.

  “That would be a definite no. You’re quite recognizable around this place.” The receptionist picked up the phone and pushed a button. “Kyle Rhodes is here to see you.” She listened for a moment, and then looked up at Kyle, still speaking into the phone. “You and me both.” She hung up and gestured to a waiting area. “Mr. Donello will be with you shortly. You can have a seat if you like.”

  Kyle eyed the brown suede couch with two blue throw pillows cross-stitched with the words “Home Tweet Home.”

  “I think I’ll stand,” he told the receptionist. He half-expected Donello to make him wait all morning, and then blow him off anyway, but the receptionist’s phone rang just a few minutes later. After speaking in a hushed voice, she hung up the phone and stood up. “Mr. Donello is ready for you. Follow me.”

  She led him past the reception desk, through a set of frosted glass doors, and then into the main office area. Virtually everything was painted white except for the light maple hardwood floors. The office contained several rows of cubicles, with each row divided into four workstations.

  And every person, at every single one of those workstations, had stood up to watch as he walked by.

  They stared silently with a mixture of expressions on their faces, most of which Kyle would not describe as particularly friendly. When they reached the large corner office at the end of the hallway, the receptionist half-smiled. “Good luck.”

  Kyle stepped into the office and saw Rick Donello, CEO of Twitter, sitting at his desk. He was a relatively young man, in his midthirties, with glasses, thinning hair, and a look in his unsmiling eyes that fell somewhere between disbelief and disdain.

  “I’ll say this: you’ve got balls the size of watermelons, Rhodes.” He gestured for Kyle to have a seat, then nodded at the receptionist, who closed the door after she left.

  Once it was just the two of them, Donello got right down to business. “You have sixty seconds to tell me why I should do anything other than toss you out on your ear.”

  Fine with him. Kyle was perfectly happy to skip over all the bullshit. “As half the world saw seven months ago, you have cracks in your network that I could drive a truck through. My company can help you with that.”

  Donello laughed humorlessly. “I’m not an idiot, Rhodes. We updated everything after you hijacked us. I doubt you’d find us so easy to hack into now.”

  “How much of the revenue from your seven hundred advertisers are you willing to bet on that?”

  Donello’s gaze was steely. “You’ve got forty seconds left, so finish whatever it is you’ve come to say. If nothing else, it’ll give me something laughable to tweet about later.”

  Kyle sat forward in his chair. “I’ve read all the interviews, Donello. When you took over the company a year ago, you pledged to focus on Twitter as a business by turning what has become a massive communication network into a major advertising platform. You’ve emphasized the need for reliability—yet I managed to shut you down for forty-eight hours from a single computer while half-drunk on Scotch.”

  Donello rested his arms on his desk. “So your proposal is that I hire you, the guy who made us look like clueless dickheads seven months ago, and pay your company some outrageous consulting fee to come in here and fix our security problems? That’s what you’re suggesting?”

  “Yes.” Kyle held his gaze. “Except I’ll do it for free.”

  Donello paused at that. “For free.”

  “I’ll build a goddamn cyber-fortress around this place—and it won’t cost you a penny. I figure I owe you that, at least.”

  Donello studied him and then leaned back in his chair. He spoke slowly, musing aloud. “You want the publicity that will come with this.”

  The corners of Kyle’s mouth turned up in a smile. His sixty seconds were up, yet there he still sat. “Yes. And so do you.”

  TWO HOURS LATER, the CEO of Rhodes Network Consulting LLC walked out of that modern, six-story office building having landed the company’s first client.

  True, the client wasn’t paying him, but Kyle was a happy man nevertheless. As he’d hoped, at the end of the day Donello had acted like the businessman he was and seized on the unique opportunity Kyle had offered: better security and a ton of free publicity that would highlight that fact. They’d even worked out the wording of a joint press release that would be sent to the media at eight a.m. Eastern time the following morning.

  Now it was time for Kyle to implement the second phase of his marketing strategy. After his arrest and conviction, and then again after his release from prison, he’d been bombarded by interview requests from virtually every media outlet—yet he’d never answered so much as a single question.

  But he’d held on to the contact information for one particular person who’d asked for an interview for just this occasion.

  Standing on the sidewalk in front of Twitter’s headquarters, Kyle dialed the cell phone number of David Isaac, correspondent from Time magazine. After getting the reporter’s voicemail, he left a message.

  “David, it’s Kyle Rhodes. There’s going to be a press release tomorrow morning—you’ll know it when you hear it. If you can get me the cover, I’ll give you an exclusive. The whole sordid story, directly from the mouth of the Twitter Terrorist. Trust me, you won’t want to miss the part about the cactus in Tijuana.”

  Twenty-nine

  FOR THE SECOND time since Rylann had starting working in Chicago, the U.S. Attorney’s Office was abuzz over Kyle Rhodes.

  She had, of course, heard the story that had set the Internet on fire earlier that Tuesday morning: that the Twitter Terrorist and Twitter had kissed and made up. She’d been in her kitchen, eating Rice Krispies and catching up on the news on her iPad, when she’d read about the press release. She’d laughed out loud, then had immediately texted Kyle:

  SO THAT’S WHAT YOU’VE BEEN UP TO.

  She hadn’t expected a response given how busy she assumed he was, but to her surprise she’d received a message back within minutes.

  NO CLUE WHAT YOU’RE TALKING ABOUT, COUNSELOR. I’LL CALL WHEN I GET BACK TONIGHT.

  Sitting at her desk, Rylann looked up when she heard a knock at her office door and saw Cade standing in her doorway with a wry expression.

  “I’ve received over two dozen phone calls from the press today, asking what I think about the fact that the Twitter Terrorist is starting his own network security company.” He shook his head. “Just when I thought we’d finally seen the end of that guy.”

  He said the words offhandedly, just a casual remark, but Rylann nevertheless felt…sneaky. A little guilty, even. While she generally believed that a person’s personal life wasn’t anyone’s business but her own, she also didn’t like deceiving people. After working with Cade for nearly two mo
nths, she considered him a friend—they went on Starbucks runs together, they talked case strategy, and she’d even tried to set him up with Rae. But now here she was, about to lie to the guy.

  You’re not lying. You’re just avoiding the truth.

  Apparently, her subconscious had a lot easier time splitting hairs than she did.

  Then maybe it’s time to say adios to Kyle.

  Apparently, her subconscious was also a waffling, capricious bitch.

  Rylann threw on a smile for Cade’s benefit, pushing aside the self-reflection and inner turmoil for a time when her lover’s nemesis wasn’t standing in the doorway.

  “Wow, two dozen calls,” she said. “I bet that was fun to wade through.”

  “A real hoot. Rhodes is like a boomerang around here—he keeps coming back again and again.” He grinned. “I bet you’re glad you don’t have to deal with him anymore.”

  Right. She wondered if Cade would consider seven rounds of hot and steamy sex within the definition of “deal with.”

  “Actually, I didn’t mind working with Kyle,” she said. “He’s not a bad guy, you know.”

  Cade rolled his eyes. “Don’t tell me you’ve gone starry-eyed, too. What is it about this guy? The half-billion dollars? The hair? Do you know that I used to get death threats from crazed, angry women calling me the Antichrist and demanding Rhodes’s immediate release from prison?” He held up his hand. “Swear to God.”

  “Now, that’s definitely something the Antichrist wouldn’t do.”

  Cade laughed. “Have your little crush, Pierce, but I think you’re SOL on that front. According to Scene and Heard, the Twitter Terrorist has been getting busy with some brunette bombshell.”

  It took all of Rylann’s de minimis acting abilities to keep a straight face with that one. “Right. I heard that, too.”

  From that point on, her day—which had started out great after hearing the fantastic news about Kyle and Twitter—went from awkward to worse. She appeared in court for a motion to suppress in a credit card fraud case, a motion she’d felt fairly confident about going in. Although the Secret Service had handled most of the investigation, the initial search of the defendant’s premises had been conducted by two Chicago police officers who’d responded to a domestic abuse call made by the defendant’s wife. After the cops arrived—and of course after getting consent from the wife—they did a sweep of the house, opened the bedroom closet, and found over a thousand credit cards in different names.

  Or at least, that’s what Rylann thought had been the situation.

  On the witness stand, however, the cops completely caved, admitting that—oops—maybe the wife had “technically” revoked consent when they went into the bedroom, but since they were already in the house, they’d just finished the search anyway.

  And so Rylann had sat there at the prosecution table, unable to do anything except watch as her case went up in flames when the judge, not surprisingly, granted the defendant’s motion to suppress all one thousand credit cards found on the premises.

  Not good.

  After that, she’d spent the rest of the day listening to the pissed-off rantings of the two Secret Service agents who had taken over the investigation from the Chicago police, scrambling to see if there was any evidence left that would allow her to somehow save the case, and, ultimately, feeling the beginnings of a migraine coming on. By the time she left work at six thirty, her head was throbbing, she felt nauseous, and even the hazy, pre-sunset light outside made her eyes hurt.

  When she got home, she immediately changed into sweatpants and a T-shirt, left off all the lights, took two Tylenol, and then lay down on the couch, praying for sleep.

  An hour later, she was woken by the sound of her cell phone. She sat up and instantly groaned, feeling as though somebody were driving a jackhammer into her forehead. She reached over to the coffee table and saw it was Kyle calling.

  “It’s the man of the hour,” she answered, trying to muster up an enthusiastic tone before falling back onto the couch with her hand over her eyes. “Oh God, that hurts,” she whimpered.

  “What hurts?” Kyle asked, sounding concerned.

  “The invisible man pounding spikes into my head.”

  “That doesn’t sound good. Maybe you should take out an invisible Taser gun and zap the son of a bitch.”

  Rylann laughed, then groaned again. “No making me laugh—it hurts too much. I have a migraine,” she explained.

  “Yes, I figured it was something like that. I’m on my way to Firelight to meet Dex. We’re having a few cocktails to celebrate my new partnership with Twitter. Can I bring you anything?”

  Awww. “That’s sweet. But I’m okay. Just had a supremely crappy day at work, that’s all. You go whoop it up with Dex. You earned it. The thing with Twitter was genius.”

  “You’re impressed again,” he said, sounding quite pleased with himself. “That’s three times you’ve stroked my ego now, counselor.”

  “Imagine me saying something really sassy and quippy back to that,” Rylann told him. “But right now, it hurts too much to think. I’m officially de-quipped.”

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, there was a knock at her front door.

  When Rylann opened it and saw Kyle standing there, she immediately pointed. “Go. You should be celebrating.”

  Ignoring her, he stepped inside. “Dex can wait a few minutes to whoop it up. He’s at the bar every night. It’s not like he’s there just to meet me.” He shut the door behind him and looked her over. “So you’re de-quipped, huh? I didn’t think that was even possible.”

  “Well, that’s because you…” Rylann struggled to pull at least one semidecent retort out of the pounding fog that was her brain…but came up dry as a bone. She sank exhaustedly against the back of the couch. “I’ve got nothing. Get in your zingers, go wild with the sarcasm—I’m totally, completely defenseless.”

  With a smile curling at the edges of his lips, Kyle held up a Starbucks cup. “Drink this. My mother used to get migraines. I remember her saying something about caffeine helping.”

  “Sweet Jesus, you are a god,” Rylann said, taking the cup gratefully. She’d had luck with caffeine before but hadn’t had the energy to stop at a Starbucks on her way home from work.

  “Very true.” Kyle took her by the hand and led her to the couch. “Now sit and drink while I work my magic.” He took a seat behind her and began massaging her neck.

  “Do you want to tell me about your supremely crappy day?” he asked softly as his incredible fingers worked on the knots in her neck and shoulders.

  “I lost a motion to suppress that tanked my whole case.” She took another sip of her coffee. “Tell me what happened with Twitter. I can only imagine the looks on everyone’s faces when you walked in.”

  Maybe it was the caffeine kicking in, or the massage, or simply Kyle’s rich, lulling voice as he told her the story, but slowly, Rylann began to feel a smidge better. She still had her migraine, but now it felt as though the invisible man were merely pounding her head with a dull, blunt object instead of spikes.

  When she’d drunk about half of the coffee, Kyle shifted on the couch, leaning back with his legs outstretched. “Lie down. Put your head in my lap.” He saw her raised eyebrow. “Mind out of the gutter, counselor. This isn’t a sexual thing.”

  Rylann set the Starbucks cup on the coffee table while he grabbed one of the throw pillows and put it over his lap. She started to lie down on her side, when he stopped her.

  “No, on your back.”

  She turned around, snuggled comfortably between his legs, and rested the back of her head against the pillow.

  “Close your eyes,” he whispered.

  She did, then felt his fingers brush lightly against her forehead. When he began massaging her throbbing temples, her body melted into a liquid puddle and she actually moaned out loud.

  “Oh God…that feels so good,” she breathed. “Please don’t stop. Ever.”

  “I can do this
all night, baby,” he said with a soft chuckle. “I told you—I’ve got you.”

  LATER THAT NIGHT, Rylann woke up on the couch, curled comfortably against a warm, hard body, and realized that she must have fallen asleep while Kyle was massaging her head.

  He’d shifted their positions while she slept, stretching out on the couch next to her, with her head on his chest. He’d also grabbed the chenille throw blanket off the back of the couch and tucked it all around her, just up to her shoulders.

  A girl could fall big-time for a guy who’d do something like that.

  She lifted her head to peek at him through the darkness, the moonlight casting shadows across the strong planes of his face. Her movement must have woken him, because he stirred, inhaled deeply, then blinked in amusement when he opened his eyes and saw that she was watching him.

  “How’s your headache?” he said in a deep, gravelly voice.

  “Better.” Fortunately, it had mostly dissipated into a faint ache while she’d slept. “You should’ve woken me up,” she said softly. “You had such an awesome day—you should be partying right now with Dex.”

  “I can go out with Dex anytime.” He reached up and ran a finger along the side of her face. His voice was a low murmur, barely more than a whisper. “I want to be here, Rylann. You know that, right?”

  She knew he wasn’t only talking about tonight. “I know.” And she knew one other thing beyond any doubt. “I’m glad you’re here. I’m getting very used to having you around, Dimples.”

  “Good. Because I’m taking you out tomorrow. On a real date.”

  Such a simple request, and yet not so simple at all. “Kyle, I don’t—”

  He cut her off. “Don’t worry. I can make sure no one finds out.” He held her gaze in the moonlight, seemingly unwilling to take no for an answer. “Say yes, Rylann.”

  Maybe it was the fact that the headache had weakened her defenses. Or maybe it was just him.