So that was how Jonathon first got wind of this whole anti-piracy project or, as he liked to call it, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Blowing Up the Internet. At the time, he didn’t even bother trying to argue the merits of not putting something like that into place with his father. Dear old Dad saw only dollars and cents, always had. An argument about the importance of the Internet as a free channel of information would be lost on him, so Jonathon didn’t even bother to make it. He blew his father off about helping him. After seeing Rudy Dickinson in his father’s car, he finally came to the conclusion that through Rudy, the man was using his own daughter to blackmail Jonathon into it.
But now his father was here trying to buy Lincoln Computers so he could get the program? What was up with that?
“Son?” Liv repeated.
Randy made the transition more quickly. “Pleased to see you again, Ralph!” He pumped his hand heartily.
His father looked in confusion between them. “Ralph?”
Liv, for her part, sank back in her chair and said to the maid, “Actually, could I get an ice tea with liquor in it?”
When the maid handed her one from the tray, ready made, she took it gratefully and downed it quickly.
“I’m afraid I met Mr….er, Randy, before with Miss Altman, but I was playing one of my little jokes,” Jonathon admitted. “I told him my name was Ralph.”
His father laughed, telling the others, “Jonathon is always one for pranks. I think that’s what comes of sending a fifteen year old to MIT. I told his mother I thought it was a bad idea.”
“Fifteen?” the other guy, who looked vaguely familiar, said. “My, aren’t you the smart one. Liv here went to MIT too, though not quite at fifteen, I believe.”
“No, I was slow,” she said dully. “Nowhere near in Jonathon’s league.”
Maybe it was a mistake to show up like this. When he told Liv the truth last night about why he was trying to hack her program, he should have told her the whole truth, including his suspicions about his father. But he didn’t know at the time that it was his father who Liv was meeting at this retreat. He had started to get a very bad feeling—the Bahamas seemed like quite a coincidence—but he wasn’t sure until he saw Liv precede him into this house. The buyer for Lincoln was Intelis, his father’s company. And now that he knew, he was as confused as Liv probably was. Was the old man stealing the damn program or buying it? And did his own children mean nothing to him in the pursuit of the almighty dollar?
He wanted to stop his father now, whatever the cost. But he hated like hell that Liv was looking at him like a wounded puppy. As if he’d lied to her yet again by being his father’s son and now she didn’t believe a fucking thing out of his mouth.
“I’ll take an ice tea too, alcohol included, if you don’t mind,” he said politely to the maid, who brought him one as well.
His father looked from Randy to him and back again. “But how did you two meet at all?”
Randy seemed to start trying to piece it all together, looking at Liv. “Oh, so are you two really—or was this just about—”
Liv looked at him blankly. “I’ll punt that one to you, Jonathon, or Ralph, or whatever.”
Jonathon wasn’t sure what he intended to do here, whether it was come clean with everybody right now or what. His original plan had been to confront his father. But now, with the way Liv was looking at him, he thought maybe he needed to get her alone first and explain this latest twist.
Or maybe he should just get dead drunk before he did either. He gulped his drink, feeling it settle in with the whiskey that, despite the early hour, he had drunk on the plane.
Lies came easily to him, though. Always had, and he had used them more than once to give himself time as he decided what to do in a situation. He did it now almost by rote. “Liv and I met each other at an MIT alumni function. Hit it off. You know. We’ve been friends ever since.” He went quickly to her and kissed her cheek.
“Another one please,” she said loudly, gesturing for another drink.
He sat casually on the edge of her wicker chair. “We were bumming around yesterday before she went to lunch with you, Randy. I showed up just to give her a hard time. Rib her a little. She loves that.”
He watched as Liv started on her second full-strength ice tea, concentrating on draining it.
“That’s my son for you,” his father said, gesturing toward him with his own glass. “The perpetual Peter Pan. Bumming around. Ribbing. You’d think with that brain of his, he’d settle down and get a real job instead of wasting his gifts. Doesn’t have to be with my company,” he told the third guy at the table, who Jonathon figured must be the CEO of Lincoln, Hershey, though he looked nothing like his publicity photos. “Any place would be lucky to have him.”
There it was. His father’s particular brand of backhanded compliment. The man had practically patented it. Jesus, what a hypocrite.
“But he seems to hate corporations,” his father continued with a touch of wonder in his voice, as if “Inconceivable!” wasn’t far behind. “He thinks they’re evil.”
“I don’t think they’re evil,” he protested, although, well, he kind of did. “I think the people working for them should stop hiding behind them when they make decisions. Acting like anything’s okay as long as it’s for the stockholder.”
His father, as he often did, ignored him. “So what are you doing here?”
“Oh, believe me; you’re going to find out.”
His father looked from him and then to Liv again. “I’m just surprised. And it’s quite a coincidence, you knowing Miss Altman. Is that why you came? Or did you find out Julie is joining us?”
“Julie!” Jonathon and Liv both spat the name out at the same time, equally surprised, and Liv stood up, causing him to almost topple over on the now unbalanced chair. He righted himself quickly as Liv turned to him and said with venom, “Julie! Julie! All nice and safe and here in the Bahamas! Imagine that!”
He hadn’t told her Julie was kidnapped. She jumped to that conclusion herself and he just didn’t feel like disabusing her of the notion and talking about his sister’s gangbang. So sorry. The point was, he was protecting his sister. Why did she need to know anything more than that?
But the wounded puppy was looking at him like a half-starved German Shepherd and he was the slab of ground beef.
Shit, between his father and Liv, he felt pretty ground up right about now. “Another drink, please.”
“Yes, Julie, my daughter,” his dad said in a confused voice. “Jonathon’s sister. She’s been a little down and I thought an interlude in the Bahamas would be good for her. She should be here any minute. I trusted you wouldn’t mind, Randy.”
“No, of course not!”
“But I admit I didn’t know my whole family would be here.”
“Inconvenient, as always, isn’t it Dad?”
Randy and Hershey exchanged anxious looks and Lincoln’s CEO said to Liv, “Maybe you could talk a little, just in general, about your program, Olivia.”
“It’s really amazing,” Randy added. “Companies are going to be clamoring for it.”
“I don’t think Liv is up to going into the details now,” Jonathon said, noting her third ice tea was on its way. He hoped the ones she was drinking were weaker than the one he had.
“I don’t think you’re up to telling me what I’m up to,” she said quietly.
“You look tired. That’s all I meant.”
“I am tired. I’ve had this asshole hassling me for the past few days.”
He froze. But nobody seemed to think that by “this” asshole, she meant this asshole, like him.
“Some guys just can’t take no for an answer. You know?” she asked his father.
“Ah, certainly. But I am surprised you even have time for that kind of thing. To hear these gentlemen tell it,” he waved a hand toward her bosses, “you’ve been chained to your computer for a year.”
“Does somebody want to show Liv to he
r room?” Jonathon asked.
“How about you, Ralph? Or is it Peter Pan? I like that.” She smiled at his father. “Though I suppose if you have a rich daddy supporting you when you make your start in the world, you can just flit around doing whatever the hell you want, making judgments on everybody else.”
“Oh, I haven’t supported him since he was—what Jonathon?—sixteen or so?”
“Trust fund?” she shot back sourly.
“No.” His father always answered a question seriously when it concerned finances. “He keeps figuring out how to break those and gives away the money or some such thing.”
“I don’t give it away,” he muttered. “I donate it to causes I believe in.”
“Whatever,” his father said airily. “Anyway, Jonathon’s lived on the income of his patents almost from the minute he went away to school. And then, of course, he sold his own company.”
“I don’t think everybody needs to hear all the details of my financial situation, Dad.”
“Nonsense!” Liv’s voice held just the slightest touch of giddiness as she took big gulps of the potent tea. “I’m fascinated. Jonathon’s been so closed-mouth about his background, even though we hit it off right away. That’s how you put it, right Jonathon?”
He looked at her silently.
“So what was that about selling a company? I seem to remember now,” Liv said, going down a well-worn path that his father had trod many times before her. “You don’t believe in corporations unless you’re making a fortune out of selling the shares of one you own to the public, right?”
His mouth tightened. “I sold that company before it went public.”
“But a lot of the purchase price was in stock,” his father pointed out, for probably the hundredth time. “So you made a fortune dumping it on the market at the IPO price, didn’t you?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t dump it. A willing buyer and a willing seller. I’m not responsible for the tech bubble.”
“You don’t mind capitalism when it suits you. Is that it?” Liv asked. “That’s very convenient.” Her third drink down the hatch, she seemed willing to drop the façade. “What a hypocrite you are! And I’m a corporate tool, is that it?”
“When I said that, Liv, all I meant was I think you’re a little short-sighted about some,” he glanced at the others then back to her, “implications of your work.”
“And I think Peter Pan should shut his big fat mouth.” She slammed her empty glass down.
He’d had about enough of the jabs as he was going to take. “Peter Pan was a sexless pre-adolescent fairy. Is that how you really see me?”
“Tinker-bell was the fairy, Mr. Know-it-all. Peter Pan was the one in green tights. And yes, that is how I see you. I don’t want to grow up.” The singsong quality at the end there grated on him. Not to mention, whatever else she could accuse him of, it wasn’t exactly being sexless.
“Let’s get back to your project, Liv,” Randy interjected, trying to break the volley between them.
“You think I’m sexless?” he asked. “Gosh, I must not be trying hard enough. Care to give me another chance?”
“I thought you were just friends,” his father muttered under his breath.
“We’re not friends!” Liv said, passionately, which quieted the whole room. “He just got the ‘with benefits’ before I realized it.”
“Maybe you need to go upstairs and settle down,” Randy said to her, catching her elbow to get her attention. “You’ve been under a lot of stress.” He looked apologetically to Jonathon’s father. “She really is brilliant.”
“Oh, that doesn’t hold much weight with you, does it, Dad?”
His father shook his head despairingly at him. “What’s going on here?”
“You ought to know,” he shot back. “In fact, you may be the only one in this room who does know.”
Liv turned to his father. “Mr. Raymond, you might want to ask Peter Pan here what he’s been up to lately. I got a feeling you won’t like it. Unless, of course, you put him up to it. I’m losing track of all the stories now.” She picked up another drink from the tray the maid had finally left. “I’m going for a walk on the beach.”
When she was gone, almost out of sight down the white sand, there was a heavy silence until Randy said, “Women! Can’t live with them, can’t live without them!”
Jonathon finished his drink. “I want to talk to you, Dad. Now.”
“Jonathon! What a nice surprise!”
He looked up to see his diminutive sister in a sleeveless sundress, smiling tentatively.
Great. All he needed.
She went to kiss him and then their father on the cheek, each in turn, beaming at them. “I’m so glad we’re all here. This is such fun.”
“Yep.” Jonathon went for another drink. “One big happy family.”
With Julie here, his father was going to get a temporary reprieve. He’d bide his time to get him alone. Liv was the more immediate problem anyway.
He had to talk to her.
Jonathon watched for Liv from his room, mesmerized by the slow pull in and out of the waves and the sway of the palm trees in the distance. He’d made a deal with himself that he would give her a half hour. No more. And then he’d go after her. When a half hour came and went, he changed into an extra bathing suit on hand at the house, planning to jog down the beach in the direction she’d gone in until he found her. But as he stepped out of his room, there she was, talking in low tones to the maid in the hallway, and then going into her room without so much as a glance at him.
She stood on the balcony gazing out to the sea when he went to her. He thought it was a good sign she hadn’t locked the bedroom door until he realized as he shut the door behind him that there weren’t any locks.
She didn’t turn around, even when he was close enough to see the wisps of golden hair falling out from the messy twist of her bun. Close enough for her to feel his breath on her neck.
Although she didn’t move an inch, she came out slugging, saying in a deadly flat tone, “And you had the nerve to call me a corporate tool. What were you really doing after all? Just trying to steal the program so your father didn’t have to pay for it?”
He shook his head, even though she couldn’t see it.
“Are you even Jonathon Crestwell at all? I guess not, right? You’re Jonathon Raymond.”
“Crestwell was my mother’s name. I’ve gone by it since I went away to school.”
“Yeah? So you’re a consultant. Then you’re a famous hacker. Then you’re the son of some kind of a corporate titan. What’s next? Batman?”
He decided to stick to the basics. “I didn’t lie to you about why I was trying to steal your program. I was doing it to protect my sister.”
She whipped around. “Who apparently is not kidnapped!”
“I never said she was kidnapped. You’re the one who thought that. I just didn’t correct you. But I was doing it to protect Julie.”
“From what? Go ahead, what story are you going to give me now? And how convenient you forgot to mention your father was buying my company to get the program? Why is that? Because you told him you couldn’t steal it? Is that who you were talking to on the phone in the hotel room when you said I was getting suspicious? God, you must have been laughing your head off when I confided in you about this deal.”
He saw uncomfortably that her green eyes were reddened, diamonds of moisture shimmering on the edges before she swiped them away. Jesus. In his doggedness to get at the truth with his father and protect his sister, he’d rolled right over Liv, again and again. Even when she was starting to trust him.
And he ached with it.
“Was anything you told me the truth? You probably don’t even hate my program after all. You probably think it’s just fine and dandy, right?”
He shook his head. “No, I told you the truth about that. I think your program will be dangerous in the hands of men like Randy and my father.”
“Well, whoop
-di-doo!”
She pushed him, hard, and it propelled him back a foot or two, forcing him to get his balance or else risk falling off the second story balcony. He righted himself and said, “Calm down.”
“Don’t tell me to calm down. You know what? I couldn’t give a shit what you think about my program. Go talk to Daddy dearest instead of guilt provoking and fucking around with me!”
“I am going to talk to my father. For one thing—”
He needed to tell her the whole truth, whether she believed him or not.
“For one thing because the guy threatening my sister, a guy named Rudy Dickinson who I went to school with, well, I saw my dad talking to him.”
“Threatening her how?” she said dismissively. “With all your or your dad’s money, you can get her a legion of bodyguards.”
“Rudy has a tape of her. A, um, a sex tape.” He cleared his throat. “And he’s threatening to, ah…whatever. Okay?”
He really did not want to talk about that end of it.
“Well did you ask your sister about it?”
“Fuck no! I’ve been trying to get it back.”
“How do you even know it was real?”
“What?” He scowled and she leaned back against the railing.
“Did you watch the whole thing? They can—”
“I’m not discussing my sister’s sex tape with you,” he said, louder than he meant to. The whole beach probably heard it. He took her by the arm and led her back into the bedroom. “That’s not the point here. What I’m trying to tell you is that I think my father might be behind all this to begin with.”
“You know what,” she wobbled a little, going over to the bed and plopping down, “I’m tired of discussing this. Steal it, buy it, whatever.”
He realized with a start that she might be drunk. He’d hoped the walk would have dissipated the effect of the ice teas, even the one she brought with her, but it hadn’t really been long enough. Surprising himself, since her career hadn’t exactly been on the top of his list of priorities, his first concern was that he didn’t want her to embarrass herself in front of her bosses. Any more than she already had, especially since that was his fault with his surprise appearance and denouement. “Just keep your voice down.”
Tempting the Corporate Spy Page 12