by Keary Taylor
But instead, I see firmness in his eyes.
“Sage, I have never once stopped thinking about you since the first night we met. I have never wanted to be with a person so bad in my life. Yes, I want to have sex with you. But having sex is not the only aspect to loving someone. I will gladly wait and maybe you will decide that I am not someone you can trust for the rest of your life, but I sure am going to try my damn hardest to show you that I am.”
My phone starts to ring at the same time I crush my lips to Julian’s.
We are fire and stars and painful want. I climb up into Julian’s lap and my skirt bunches up around my waist to accommodate my position. Julian’s hands are pressed firmly into my back and his lips are moving in sync with mine.
There is a cosmic shift happening inside of me. That wall I’ve put around myself comes crumbling down, revealing something beautiful and fragile and strong at the same time. It shines so bright it threatens to blind me, but it is something I know I could never look away from.
Some people change you. Some bring about the good in you and help rise you up to your full potential. And some people come in and fill all the holes in your soul. Some people are just made to fill your missing pieces from a life before you were born.
Julian’s hands go to my hips and he stands, me firmly locked around him. He makes his way to the wall beside our chair and presses my back to it, pinning me between his body and the wall. Fire ignites in my lower belly and my breath catches in my throat.
I push Julian’s coat off his shoulders and he lets it slip to the ground in a heap. I pop five of his buttons off when I tear his shirt open. He furiously finishes pulling it off himself.
Once again gripping my hips, he carries me toward the bed and we tumble onto it. His lips never leaving mine, he unbuttons my shirt with skill and quickness.
His lips drop to my jawline, and then my neck. Very slowly, very gently, they keep moving downward, to my chest, between my breasts.
My fingers knot in his hair and I close my eyes.
This is bliss. This is being alive.
And for the first time in ten years, I feel free of the wrong that was done to me.
Julian’s lips return to mine, but his kisses are different. They are tender and light and thoughtful. He brings a hand up and brushes his fingertips over my cheek. I open my eyes and he is looking down at me.
“You are an incredible person, Sage McCain,” he says quietly. “You have done something to me that I do not think can ever be undone. You have embedded yourself into my soul.”
I place my hand on his rough cheek and stare at him.
There is an emotion that awakens in me every time I look at him that I do not have a name for. But I do not ever want to let it go.
“I think I’m in love with you,” Julian says.
My heart flutters at the truth of his words.
“Then don’t ever let me go,” I breathe.
Julian leans into me once again and presses his lips to mine.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“What about this one?” I ask, pointing to the paw print on the underside of his arm.
Julian looks at it, his beautiful green eyes locking on it.
“My parents got me a puppy for my sixth birthday, a yellow lab. His name was Backup. He was my constant companion until he died when I was eighteen,” Julian says as he traces his fingers up and down my arm.
It’s the middle of the night and we are in the bed. Julian is wearing nothing but his boxer briefs and I am in a tank and underwear. He lies back on the bed, displaying his beautiful canvas. I lie on my stomach, propped up on my elbows. I’ve been asking what his tattoos mean, one by one.
“And this one?” I ask, pointing to the image of Peter Pan on his forearm.
“A reminder to never grow up too much,” he says with a smile.
I smile too, and remember our conversation about him turning thirty.
Julian is covered in tattoos. He has an anchor, a series of moons that cover his side from his hip to just under his arm. There is a Celtic knot and the Dohring family crest. There are two hearts on his back, over his own heart that he explained are for the love he has for his birthparents for conceiving him and loving him enough to put him with a good family.
“I’ve always wanted a tattoo,” I admit as I trail my fingers down his sleeve. “Not something anyone else could see, but something that meant something to me. I’ve always been too scared of the pain though.”
“Pain only lasts for a little while,” Julian says. “The meaning behind the images lasts forever though.”
I press a kiss to his bellybutton and then lay my head on his stomach. “Maybe someday.”
“Please let me come if you ever get one,” Julian says hopefully. Both of us chuckle.
“So,” I say, looking up at him. “You remember how you told me you were a plus one at the Digit banquet?”
A smile spreads on Julian’s face. “Yeah…that wasn’t quite the truth. Gideon invited me personally.”
“So you really weren’t crashing the party,” I tease him. “But you did show up to the party alone. Glad to hear I wasn’t hooking up with some other poor girls intended date.”
“Like I said,” he smiles. “I haven’t been any girl’s date in quite some time.”
My eyes flicker away from his when the question comes to my mind. I consider dropping it, but there has been a change between Julian and I and suddenly I have to know.
“How many serious girlfriends have you ever had?” I ask. I try to put a teasing smile on my lips when I ask it, but I don’t think I am very successful.
Julian bites his lower lip for a moment and I can see the thoughts carefully forming behind his eyes.
He knows exactly what I am really asking.
What I really want to know is how many women he’s ever had sex with.
“Well, I had a girlfriend pretty soon after I first moved to Bothell,” he says, brushing his fingers over my cheek. “We were only together for just over two months. But she was actually my first. I was twenty.”
It does make me jealous to hear about any type of woman in Julian’s past. A woman who has seen him, all of him, and been with him. But like he said, the past is what makes us who we are.
“I dated this other girl about a year later,” Julian continues. His eyes drift up to the ceiling and I feel a sadness wash over him. “It was short, maybe a few weeks. And then two years later, there was Alana.”
There’s a hard edge to his voice that stands out in a noticeable way.
“We actually lived together for two years. When we’d met, I was starting to make solid money from the Blue Wall. And I kept making more when we were together.”
I see his Adam’s apple bob up and down as he swallows hard. His eyes are still glued to the roof above our heads. “It took me a long while to realize that the longer we were together, the more she was only still with me because of the money. She’d say anything to keep me happy and then go and take my credit card out for a night with her friends. Alana always said one thing when you could tell something else was going on behind her eyes.”
“That’s horrible,” I say, my brows furrowing.
Finally, Julian’s eyes meet mine again. He brings his finger tips to my chin and his eyes soften. “So you see why I couldn’t look away from you from the moment the first words came from your lips. You are brutally honest, Sage McCain. You never say things just because it is what I want to hear.”
“I’ve never even met this woman, but I already want to gouge her eyes out with my Louboutin’s.”
This brings a genuine smile to Julian’s face and his entire countenance lights up.
My phone starts ringing. This is the eighth call I’ve gotten in the last five hours. It is the middle of the night here in China, but the middle of the day at home.
“Sounds like someone needs to talk to you pretty bad,” Julian says, looking in the direction of my phone. “Maybe you’d better get it.”
<
br /> I groan and slowly push myself up into sitting position. “I don’t want to,” I complain as I reach for it. The caller ID says Gretchen.
“Yeah?” I answer, my tone slightly annoyed.
“Why have you not been answering?” Gretchen sounds terrified and infuriated at the same time. “Things have gone to hell here.”
“What are you talking about?” I demand, standing.
“You’ve been fired, Sage,” Gretch says and she sounds like she’s hissing between her teeth. “Mr. Maxwell thinks you stole over two million dollars from that company you just signed. They pulled up your bank account and found all the money our clients have been reporting the last few days as stolen, is in your bank account.”
“What?” I breathe. Julian sits up and his brows furrow. “I haven’t stolen anything. Why would I need to? And why would I ever make such a stupid move as to steal from my own company?”
“I told them you didn’t do it, Sage, but Mr. Maxwell showed me your bank statement and I saw the money there myself. Don’t ask me how he got access to your account, but he is on the war path and wants your head.”
My fingers knot into my hair. “That shouldn’t even be possible for anyone to transfer money out of the clients’ accounts,” I say as I start to pace. “That is what the Blue Wall is all about. No one should be able to steal money.”
“Well someone has,” Gretch says, her voice starting to sound exhausted. “That’s why Mr. Boss is flipping out so bad, the Blue Wall is supposed to be impenetrable and it has been hacked. So far twenty of our clients have been reporting stolen money. Ten of those have been traced to your account, the other ten we haven’t traced yet.”
“And they really think I stole the money?” I exclaim. “I have zero computer skills. How do they expect me to have hacked the Blue Wall?!”
“I don’t know Sage, but you’d better get your ass back here, and fast, or you may wind up in jail.”
I swear and smack my hand against the wall. “Get me a flight home as soon as you can.”
Gretch agrees and hangs up.
“What the hell is going on?” Julian asks. He’s on his feet by now, his arms folded across his chest. “And what is wrong with the Blue Wall?”
“Someone hacked it. They’re stealing money from Digit clients. Half of it is in my account,” I say as I fix my eyes on him. “Someone is trying to frame me.”
Two hours later, we are on a plane back to the states. I sit jittery and sick in the first class seat next to Julian, actually biting my thumbnail as he clicks on his keyboard. I logged into my bank account for him and he’s scanning over the transactions now.
“There are deposits here alright,” Julian says. “The first one was made four weeks ago. See?”
The amount isn’t huge, not enough for me to have even really noticed. I look at the date and my stomach churns. “That was the night of the banquet. That sleazeball you saved me from dancing with? He asked me that night about new tech Digit was supposed to be coming out with.”
“He knew about the Red Door?” Julian asks, his eyes narrowing.
“He didn’t have a name for it and I don’t think he really knew what it did,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest so I don’t gnaw my nail to the quick. “But he knew something new was in the works. I didn’t even know then.”
Julian shakes his head. “This doesn’t make sense. The only other person who knew about the Red Door at that time was Gideon.”
“But what does the info being leaked early have to do with the Blue Wall being hacked?”
“I don’t know yet,” Julian says, looking back at his laptop. “But they have to be connected. Sage, look at these transactions. There was one deposit made to your account every weeknight around seven at night. The amounts keep getting bigger and bigger. It looks like you’ve stolen over three million dollars in the past month.”
“I didn’t steal anything!” I say, feeling my blood burn.
“But it doesn’t look good that you haven’t noticed the deposits,” Julian says, giving me an apologetic look. “How did you not notice?”
I sigh and close my eyes. “I used to be really good about keeping tabs on my assets. But, I started making such good money and I always knew it was there, so I stopped worrying about it and well, I guess I just got lazy.”
Julian doesn’t say anything, just looks back at the screen.
To a man who invented the most advanced financial security system in the world, learning the woman he’s gotten involved with doesn’t keep tabs on her own account must be insulting.
“But I checked my account like two weeks ago, there wasn’t this many deposits then, I swear.”
“Someone could have possibly faked the deposit dates,” Julian says, his eyes scanning the screen. “It would have been hard to hide the transactions from showing up if they really did go in those dates.”
“Where are the deposits being pulled from?” I ask.
“They’re all coming directly from the clients’ bank accounts,” Julian explains. “That’s the part that really doesn’t make sense. See, the Blue Wall wouldn’t catch money going in to an account. But no one should have been able to pull money out of a Blue Wall account. Whoever hacked it has some serious skills and some serious intent.”
“And some serious knowledge about how the Wall works,” I say as things start sliding into place in my head. “We have four floors of tech guys who service our clients. It could have been one of them. And Mr. Maxwell was the only one that knew about the new tech. Julian, what if he’s involved in this?”
“But why would he want to frame you?” Julian questions. “You’ve done nothing but make him a lot of money.”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. But someone at Digit wants to see me crash and burn.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The airplane lands at SeaTac airport and my pulse skyrockets. I have no idea what to expect when I step foot off of it. Things are about to get bad, of that I am certain.
Julian takes my carry on and I anxiously wait the minute or so until they let us off the plane. When they open the door, I walk up the terminal with sweaty palms.
“I’ll be here the whole time,” Julian says beside me. “I will help you in every way I can.”
“Thank you,” I say distractedly. It is an instinct answer. In my head, I imagining how bad prison food must taste, and how awful I’m going to look in an orange jumpsuit.
It is everything I can do to keep my composure when we round the terminal and I can see Mr. Maxwell and two federal agents waiting for me.
Julian swears.
Mr. Maxwell is stony faced, but I can see it in his expression: he looks betrayed.
“Miss McCain,” one of the agents says when I get within hearing distance. “We’d like you to come with us. We have some questions for you.”
“Of course,” I say, keeping my voice cool and even. “Let’s get moving so we can get this misunderstanding taken care of.” My main reason for being in a hurry is so that I do not have to bear the humiliation of everyone on our plane seeing me whisked away by FBI agents. It is bad enough that everyone at the airport is straining their necks to get a look at the two people who are wearing badges and looking very official.
Nothing much scarier than seeing someone this official in an airport. It’s easy to let your imagination start running away from you.
“You may want to call your lawyer,” the other agent says.
“I don’t have one,” I say. Suddenly I am panicking and my cool exterior is about to crack.
“I’m calling mine,” Julian says. He’s already got his phone out and is holding it to his ear.
“Isn’t that a conflict of interest?” Mr. Maxwell says angrily as we walk swiftly toward the exit.
“Mr. Maxwell, this attorney has never represented me with anything to do with this company and has no ties to Digit. Trust me, you do not want to piss me off at this very critical time for Digit, and I am pretty ticked about what is go
ing on right now.”
Mr. Maxwell gives him a hard glare and his eyes shift from me to Julian and back again.
“Fine,” he finally says. “She’s going to need a smooth talker to get her out of this mess.”
“You do confirm that this is your bank account though?” Agent Rodriguez asks. She is extending a printout of all my transactions to me.
“Yes, this is my account,” I say again, rubbing my temples. I’ve asked for some Aspirin, but it has yet to be produced. The room they are interrogating me in is small, dark, and musty smelling. “This is the bonus I was promised for closing a Canadian deal. My boss told me the bonus would be twenty percent higher than a previous bonus was. As you can see, this amount here is exactly that. I just assumed that was it. I didn’t think much about the fact that it came from a different account.”
“Mr. Maxwell has confirmed that the first amount was indeed your bonus, but the second transaction was stolen money. And you used that money to pay off a large chunk of your home. You do understand how that looks, Miss McCain. You say you didn’t take the money, yet you’ve spent some of it.”
“My client has told you already that she does not have the knowledge to transfer money from such secure accounts,” Penny Watson, the attorney Julian called for me says. “Or any account for that matter. She has a business degree from the University of Washington. She has limited computer skills. Unless you can prove that she is capable of pulling off such a difficult task of hacking through the Blue Wall, I need her to be released while you and Digit investigate this matter further.”
Agent Rodriguez is giving me the stare down. She’s hard as nails and shows little to no emotion. And she’s been questioning me for the last three hours straight.
“You will not leave town,” she says, her eyes fixing on me. “I expect you to answer every phone call we send your way and you to be ready to jump to the station at any second. We will be in contact soon.”
I stand from the hard chair and try to smooth the wrinkles out of my dress pants. I’m exhausted and in dire need of a shower. Jet lag is making everything fuzzy and out of focus and the twenty hours of travel have left me feeling coated with travel yuck.