Wire (Pierce Securities Book 2)

by Anne Conley

  Evan tiptoed back into the bedroom and slid under the sheets next to Paige. She mumbled something incoherent in her sleep and sidled up next to him, wrapping a slender arm around his waist as he sat up against the headboard. Leaning over to grab his laptop bag, he pulled it out and powered it up. He had data to go through, and he wasn’t going to leave her side for anything. Not now.

  It didn’t take long to find what he was looking for and when he saw it, Evan’s muscles tensed, and he let out a muttered, “Holy fuck.”

  “Wha—?” Paige looked up at him with sleepy eyes as his muttered curse awoke her.

  He didn’t want to tell her. He knew the betrayal would hurt, and he didn’t want to see the pain in her deep green eyes. But he respected her, and knew if she found out from anyone else, it would hurt worse.

  “Stygman’s mother’s maiden name was Koen.”

  She sat up and rubbed her face while she stretched out her legs. Then, it was as if the information hit her in the face as she stiffened and looked over at him, eyes wide and mouth agape.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means Stygman is better at re-inventing himself than Michael Jackson.”

  “Why would he do that, though? I never did anything to him, Evan. I don’t understand…”

  He tried not to give her the look he knew his face wanted to make, but he couldn’t see how she didn’t understand it. Instead, he grazed her cheek with his knuckle, feeling the smooth skin of her face as her wide eyes sucked him in.

  His voice came out harsher than he intended it to, but he had to make her understand the danger she kept putting herself in by denying the truth. “He’s in love with you, Paige. Probably always has been. Didn’t you ever see it?”

  She shook her head, crossing her arms across her chest. “It was an adolescent thing, nothing more than that.”

  He read into the subtext of her words and the body language accompanying it. “Did you have a relationship with him?”

  “We tried, once, after we’d been living together for months, to see what would happen if we were ‘together’ but it didn’t work out. At all.”

  “What happened?” His jaw was ticking; he was pissed beyond belief. First, that she didn’t think this was important enough to share, and second, that it had happened at all. Fuck. Koen actually touched his Paige.

  “Well, we were best friends and decided to see what would happen if we went that extra step. We kissed one night, and one thing led to another, but it didn’t work out.”

  He stifled the jealous rage knowing Stygman/Koen had actually sunk his dick inside her sweetness. Instead, he schooled his features and repeated, “What happened?”

  “We had sex and decided it wasn’t the right thing for us, so we promised we wouldn’t speak of it again. And we didn’t. After that, we had a relatively successful business relationship, Dale met and married Peggy, and it was forgotten.” She shrugged matter-of-factly.

  “Whose idea was it to stay friends?”

  She chewed on the inside of her mouth in thought. Finally, she relented, “I guess it was mine.”

  “See?” He kept his voice gentle, even though he wanted to shout triumphantly, ‘I told you so.’

  She nodded, and Evan went back to his laptop.

  “So, what’s next?”

  “I’m hacking into the FBI case docs. I haven’t checked in since the last incident with the prostitute, but this makes everything more urgent. If Koen is Stygman is The Crimson Lady is Red_Dawn, I’ve got to find him tonight. You’re in some serious danger, Paige.”

  “Who’s Red_Dawn?”

  “I thought it was just a guy I played Realm of Worlds with, but now I think he’s Stygman, trying to weasel inside information out of me during our playtimes. Or just fucking with me, I’m still not sure. It took me a while to figure it out, though, but I don’t think I really told him anything.”

  She looked over his shoulder as he clacked on the laptop keys. “Wow. I never thought to do that,” she whispered in awe at one point. “You hack into the FBI often?”

  He chuckled. “Yeah. It’s a perk of the job. I have a buddy on the inside who overlooks it for me, as long as I don’t do anything stupid.”

  The FBI had confiscated the computer belonging to the youth who had killed the prostitute in the latest incident, and the chat he’d had with The Crimson Lady in the site he’d visited was there in transcript form.

  He skimmed the notes of the conversation the youth had with The Crimson Lady while Paige read over his shoulder. “Oh my God… I just can’t believe Dale would be doing all of this to get back at me. I can’t wrap my head around him being Neil. I mean, these are innocent people, for God’s sake. How can he do that?” Her voice was quiet, but laced with pain, and Evan struggled with the sound.

  “Mental disease takes all sorts of forms.”

  “But he never was really mentally ill.”

  “Okay, let me put it this way. He spends years pining for one woman, and eventually gets her to take the next step with him, then she rejects him. He invests another couple of years into the friendship, to see she’s not changing her mind, so he tries to move on, marrying someone else. That doesn’t work, so he does something drastic, stealing her notes and faking his death. That doesn’t work, either, so he goes to work for the competition. Then gets fired, goes into seclusion, changes his looks completely, imbeds this avatar into her software to start pinning blame on her company. Meanwhile, he gets physically close to her, as Koen, trying to get into her pants that way. When she hires the one man she’s always worshipped to take him down, he escalates to murder with The Crimson Lady.” He clutched her face in his hands to make sure she understood. “When he finds out we’ve fallen in love, and I’m never letting you go, what do you think his next step will be, Paige?” He kissed her lips softly. “I don’t want to find out. He may not have been sick before, but he is now. You’ve got to take off the blinders and see it, Paige. You’ve got to.”

  He watched his words sink in before she nodded. “Okay, what’s next?”

  “I’ve got to find him. This IP address is a bouncer, so that’s a dud. But if I can get into his messages on the site undetected, I might be able to find his next target. My gut is telling me he’s there at each of them, watching the crime go down, even though there’s never been any evidence of it.”

  “Can I help?”

  “Sure, get your laptop and try to find a back door into this site.” He looked over at her. “You hack?”

  She giggled. “Not anything major. I’ve hacked my friends’ stuff for fun. But sometimes when I can’t go to sleep, I’ll go through the process of what I would do to get into places if I did.” She shrugged. “I’m not really all that good at that sort of thing.”

  “Well, try out your methods. See if you’re any good.”

  She got out of bed, and Evan watched her glorious naked body as she walked to where her own laptop was on a table across the room. Her legs were long and lean, the curve of her waist just slender enough for him to grip it good. Her breasts were full and swayed when she walked. She caught him looking and gave him a slow smile that shocked his groin.

  This was going to be a long night.

  An hour later, Paige was inspecting the website’s code when she found it. Dale had a signature in every piece of code he’d written, and here it was. She felt both elation at finding the missing piece and a heart shattering disappointment that Evan was right. Dale was The Crimson Lady. Or at least, Dale had created this website featuring The Crimson Lady’s exploits in a positive light, luring in innocent teenagers and bending them to his will. Her mind spun with the ramifications that her friend had done this and done it because of her.

  “I got it,” she mumbled regrettably. Dale was supposed to be dead. She’d gone to his funeral. Mourned him. Cried over his casket. And it was all a lie. Now this. Code could be copied, but since she and Roger were the only ones who knew about Dale’s signature, she didn’t think it likely. It w
ouldn’t hold up in a court of law, but it was irrefutable proof to her that Dale wasn’t who she thought he was. The fact he’d gone under the knife for extensive plastic surgery and come back as Neil was like a knife through her heart. What happened to her friend?

  “Got what?” Evan looked over her shoulder at her laptop. His nearness spiked her heart rate. Even thought they’d both put on clothes, well, he’d at least put his underwear on, she could still feel the heat of his body through her pajamas.

  “Here’s his signature. For some reason, he put it into every piece of code he ever wrote.” She pointed at the screen, showing Evan the piece of code that was totally useless and nonsensical in the document, yet proved beyond a doubt in Paige’s mind that Dale Stygman was the author.

  “Dumbass.”

  “Yeah,” Paige agreed rather listlessly. Finding out The Crimson Lady used to be her only friend was really doing a number on her.

  “I managed to cloak myself and get in again. So far she hasn’t realized I’m in here, yet.” He was motioning to his own laptop, and she read over his shoulder.

  And the blood drained from her body.

  They’d just read an exchange where The Crimson Lady gave explicit directions to a fourteen-year-old to go to an address and shoot a woman while she slept. It was time stamped thirty minutes ago.

  Evan reached into his pants pocket on the floor and dug out his cell phone. “Something about that address…” He barked orders into the phone while he dressed, and Paige watched the blood drain from his face as he listened to someone on the other end. He redoubled his efforts, dressing faster than she’d ever seen a man move. Paige held her breath at the sight of him switching gears so quickly, from quietly working next to her in bed, into a force to be reckoned with. He exuded power, and while she watched the man clothe himself, she marveled at how far he’d come in his lifetime.

  When he finished, he lowered himself in for a kiss. “Simon will be here in a few minutes. I’ve got to go. I called him… it’s Miriam’s apartment. I’m going to call the FBI, and they’ll probably meet me there. We have to stop this.” He stood and tucked in his shirt. He’d left off the vest, tie, and jacket. She didn’t mind. It didn’t seem to matter what clothes the man wore, he still made her stupid with lust. “Can you work on The Crimson Lady? Now that you know it’s Dale, can you find a weakness?” She nodded, and he lowered himself to her again. “I don’t want to leave you, but I’ve got to go do this. You understand, don’t you? I can’t let him get Miriam.” She nodded, wanting to just forget all of it and snuggle into the covers with Evan. But another woman’s life was at stake, and for reasons she was just now getting, it was all her fault. He captured her lips in a fierce kiss, and before she recovered, he was gone.

  Deciding she needed more than just the after effects of sex with Evan to keep her going, Paige padded downstairs and made herself a cup of coffee in her ridiculously overpriced coffee machine. While it brewed, she thought about all that had transpired today.

  The realization that Dale was behind all this was shocking and made her feel completely naïve. How could she have missed it? As soon as Evan explained it, it made perfect sense, even though he’d been saying some version of it all along. She just hadn’t put it all together.

  When they were in college, Dale had scoffed at her hero-worship of Evan Rocco. He’d always made fun of the man, even if he did grudgingly admire his work. When the photo spread had come out in TEKNIX, Dale had thrown a fit about her hanging her precious photo collage anywhere he could look at it, which was why she’d initially started hanging Evan in bathrooms. She’d splurged on a special photo frame that was waterproof and hung him proudly where she could look at him while she bathed.

  When Dale had suggested they take their friendship to the next level, she’d initially balked, knowing her own feelings didn’t go that direction. But he’d been persistent with his romantic gestures until she’d finally given in. They’d had a romantic relationship for about a week, when Dale decided it needed to go even further. He’d pushed her into having sex, and while it hadn’t been bad sex, the fact that he’d strong-armed her into it had left a bad taste in her mouth about the whole thing.

  So she’d ‘broken up’ with him, telling him she preferred their relationship as friends better.

  And that had really been the beginning of the end. After that, their friendship had sort of deteriorated, and the measure of relief she’d felt when Dale had announced his engagement to Peggy had been palpable. She wondered what Peggy’s take in all this was; if she knew her husband was Koen. She couldn’t really focus on any of that right now. She had to stop Dale’s plot before anybody else got hurt.

  While she poured her cup of coffee and stirred in the sugar and cream, she said a little prayer that Evan would be safe. As she stirred, a knock at the door interrupted her ruminations.

  It was Simon. Tall and extremely rugged, he cut an impressive figure. Paige certainly wouldn’t want to be on the wrong side of him and was thankful he was helping her out.

  “Hey.” She opened the door for him to allow him access. “I actually have a guest room you can sleep in.”

  He stayed in the doorway. “Not sleeping. Thanks, though.” He looked around her entryway. “I’m going to check around outside before I come in for the night. Do you have a key I can use?”

  “Uh, yeah.” She got him the spare key and the security code and left him to do his thing, taking her cup of coffee upstairs to work on the laptop.

  Knowing she had to focus on the task at hand, she put thoughts of Evan and his unlikely co-workers out of her mind. She had to take care of The Crimson Lady tonight.

  After removing the game from the company’s mainframe, she was free to work on the coding on her laptop without worrying about messing up the infrastructure for the players. She could always fix that later, now that it wasn’t online anymore.

  She was sure her stocks had plummeted after the announcement but didn’t really care. She had to get this woman out of her system.

  But The Crimson Lady’s grip was tight.

  She heard a noise downstairs as she finished her cup of coffee, her eyelids getting heavy. Assuming it was Simon getting settled for the night, she relaxed into her pillows. Her vision blurred, and she decided to close her eyes. The sound of her bedroom door opening forced her eyes open, and she saw the silhouette of a man walking to the foot of her bed.

  Her eyelids felt lined with sand, and she wanted nothing more than to just go to sleep. The man drew closer, and some part of her told her to wake up. Evan hadn’t been gone long enough to save anyone. She tried to lift her head but was too weak.

  A whispered tickled her ear. “I’m sorry things didn’t work out the way I wanted. I really wish it hadn’t come to this.” A soft kiss brushed her lips while her brain screamed at her to wake up, but she couldn’t. “Goodbye, Paige.”

  Racing to Miriam’s apartment, Evan called Quinten and his buddy at the FBI, who promised to meet him there. He was panicking and he knew it. He knew panic was exactly what Stygman wanted. He needed Evan to panic to fuck everything up. Evan took deep breaths, realizing the futility of them. This man was brainwashing kids somehow. He didn’t know how; he hadn’t had time to look at the history of discussions between The Crimson Lady and the kids to figure out how he was getting them to do these things, and right now, he didn’t particularly care. He had to get to Miriam. She was a pawn in all of this.

  Why had Stygman targeted her? That’s what this was. He’d even brought her up specifically in the game last night. He knew. He knew she was Evan’s secretary. Killing her would hurt Evan. So was this an elaborate ploy to get to him?

  Banging on the steering wheel in frustration at a stoplight behind a car, Evan twisted the wheel and went around, narrowly avoiding an accident. When he finally pulled up to Miriam’s apartment, everything looked quiet, and Evan cursed the police and FBI for not being there already.

  He ran up the stairs to the second floor and
flung himself inside, only to find Quinten on the sofa, sitting on top of a youth, twirling his gun on his index finger, a rare smile on his face. It was an act, though, probably to intimidate the kid. Spilled onto the floor were three knights from a chess board.

  “‘Bout time you got here,” he drawled. Quinten was agitated, and a rare look of abject fear skewed his face despite his grim smile.

  “Miriam’s okay?”

  “I’m fine.” Miriam came out of her kitchen with two cups of coffee in her hands, bathrobe cinched tightly around her waist. Her face was pale but wore a wan smile. “I’m getting ready to have my apartment overrun with cops any minute. Just put on a fresh pot.” She offered Evan a cup, but he waved it away.

  “I’m going to check around the neighborhood, see if he’s around.”

  On his way down the stairs, he ran into Ryan, running up them.

  “Miriam’s okay. Quinten’s with her.” Sirens screamed in the distance. “Let’s take a look around the neighborhood before it’s crawling with cops.” He jutted his chin down the stairs where Ryan had come from, and without a word, they went down.

  Evan felt a tingling at the base of his spine, but couldn’t tell exactly what that meant. Only that his body was trying to tell him something. He chose to think it was telling him he was on the right track, looking for Stygman/Koen here, but he was afraid he was all wrong. Calls to Simon were going unanswered, and the tingling intensified.

  The neighborhood was upper-middle class and coming awake with the lights and sirens of the police as they arrived and made a general hub-bub in the area. Porch lights were coming on, bedrooms were lighting up, and people were stepping out in their bathrobes to see what was going on. At the sight of so many men, guns drawn, they retreated to watch through windows and stay out of the way.

  Evan and Ryan searched, to no avail. A sickening twist in his gut told him he was wrong, but he refused to listen. Koen knew he’d gotten close, but he couldn’t know how close, could he?