by Mia Carter
“Chloe, you don’t owe me a thing.” His eyes are soft and hide a secret I wish I could know. “I like taking care of you.”
Taking care… He looks down, back at his plate, but is it my imagination, or is that a blush on his cheeks? Must just be the wind, or the sun.
I clear my throat. “I think you’ll do great.” Crap. I’ve already said that. “I’m sure you will.”
“Thanks,” he says, looking back up with a half smile. “I… Whichever way it goes—and believe me, I wish I had your confidence about that—I’ll still have to put in an appearance at the cocktail reception tonight.”
The sip of coffee turns into a gulp at this. Cocktail reception? I thought he’d said drinks and assumed it was a one-on-one sort of thing—and Logan must read my expression for what it is, because he hastily continues, “It’s not a big thing, just part of the conference. You could go. With me. If you still wanted to?”
He’s watching me with those fathomless dark eyes, like deep amber, secretive and impenetrable. I have no way of knowing what he’s thinking, and I’m too scared of hearing the truth I fear to ask him.
“I had kind of assumed that drinks meant—”
“I should’ve been clearer.”
“And my ticket,” my words rush out, a sign of my nerves. “I thought it was—”
“You can stay another night,” he says, as eager it seems as I am. “If you want. It’s no trouble.”
“You’d really want me to stay?” The question pops out of my mouth before I can control it.
And he blinks at me, like he’s genuinely surprised. “Yes? For another night, at least. Unless you want to go home. I’d understand. I’ve kind of abandoned you here—”
“You haven’t abandoned me,” I hastily interject. “You’ve given me something I…”
I cannot get emotional here in this very orange tent.
“Something wonderful,” I finish. His eyes are very soft as he watches me find the words, and something warmer than relief, softer than pleasure, spreads over me, relaxing me, calming my nerves. “Something amazing. You’ve given me an adventure, and yes, I would love to go.”
My confidence surprises me. And the way his expression softens more when I say it—he must really need the distraction. That’s all this is.
I clear my throat and look back down into my coffee. “But I don’t exactly have anything to wear. I could get something—”
“The dress you wore last night,” he says. “It’s perfect. Don’t stress about it. These things are supposed to be fun.”
I look up at him, squinting a little in the bright sunshine, considering the expression on his face. No more raw emotions. Humor is safe.
“So why do I get the feeling that ‘these things’ are about as fun to you as a dental cleaning?”
He smiles at this, his sweet mouth breaking into a proper grin, with teeth and dimples and everything. The tension in his shoulders drops, just a fraction. I want to read his body all day long, I think, the thought arising unbidden but not entirely unwelcome.
“Tonight,” Logan says. “It’s at eight. I’ll send you the address.”
I nod. Another night of pouring myself into that embarrassment of a dress—this time, in front of people. People he works with, people he knows and respects. What in the world did I just agree to? But he looks so relieved, and I do want to spend more time with him, even if it’s just under my happy little illusion.
It’s worth the risk.
He’s worth the risk.
“I’ll be there,” I say.
“Okay,” he says. “Good. Right. I should probably get back.”
Back into the lion’s den. He looks like he’s absolutely dreading it, and I wish I could go with him. Crazy, I know, I know. He’s a grown man, he doesn’t need someone useless like me, shielding him from whatever it is that’s making his brow furrow so deeply.
After another moment, he stands, awkwardly negotiating his absurd body out of the chair, ducking out from under the awning.
I follow.
“Good luck in there,” I say, standing before him. The sun is at my back now, and I couldn’t stop my eyes from searching his even if I wanted to. “I hope you get what you want.”
Logan holds my gaze with his dark sweet eyes and smiles faintly, almost sadly. “I do, too.”
Chapter Ten
Logan
I had hoped that lunch with Chloe would make things easier.
Just a short reprieve from reality. Something of a harmless distraction—but instead, the promise of freedom was almost too much. I should know how to be better than this. To be more focused than this, to keep my goals ahead of me and not get pulled away. But instead, all my calm assurance flees, and I’m left with nothing but the image of her eyes filled with delight and humor and amusement. The way she laughs, the gentle, curious smile when she knows something before she’s going to say it.
I’ve known Chloe for less than two days. These feelings, whatever they are, aren’t logical.
Do I truly know her?
If I’m honest with myself, if I apply some of that treasured logic and analytical power to this situation, I have to say that the answer is no. I don’t know her family, know her favorite holidays, whether she likes celebrating her birthday with friends or likes to stay in and keep it simple. I don’t know what she believes, if she thinks there’s some grand design to the universe, a method behind the chaos, if she looks to the stars in wonder or searches for meaning in ancient texts. I don’t know her inner hopes and dreams, her fears, her desires.
But I want to.
I want to know more. I know how she laughs, how she feels in my arms. I know that she doesn’t understand how to take a compliment. Not because she’s demure or playing games. She really doesn’t know her potential.
It’s like nobody’s ever told her. Or seen it.
By any reasonable, on-paper standard, Chloe is nothing to me, practically a stranger. But if this had begun some other way, it could be so different.
But I can’t afford to let these thoughts distract me from my purpose.
Inside the convention hall, I check my watch.
God, Mom would’ve loved her.
“Weiss!” A stout, ginger-haired man with a sun-reddened face and a crop of curls grown a little overlong on his head smiles at me. “Hey, we were just getting set up in J room for you, y’ready?”
Yesterday’s panel talk was the easy part. Now it’s all down to me, my ideas, my pitch, my company.
I smile down at Bart Evanston and nod. “Yes. I was just heading in.”
“Great,” he says, and claps me on the back. When he smiles, the lines of his cheeks press against the thin wires of his glasses, a divot there that makes him look older than his years, which I know can’t be more than mid-thirties. “Great. I gotta tell you, what little we’ve heard of your early development sounds very tantalizing. Very intriguing.”
Bart draws out the v in very, but the content of what he’s said, not the way he’s said it, is what draws my attention. I’ve hardly mentioned my early development, certainly not at the public panel I spoke at yesterday with the handful of other attendees. “Oh? What have you heard?”
“All good things.” Bart grins. “All good things. Ah, just in here, here we go.”
Bart leads me into the room. There’s no windows, just a beige room with a lowered projection screen, black chairs designed more for aesthetics than for comfort, narrow tables and a sleek glass-and-wood podium up at the front. I get my laptop out, check and re-check that my keys and my drive are still in my jacket pocket, and mentally run through my notes for this presentation as Bart wanders off, saying something about using the bathroom and finding the rest of the guys.
I’m glad to be alone, if only for a little longer.
The goal today is not to run through all of the intricacies of the product. I’m not just selling the product, I’m selling myself and WhiteLight, attempting to position my company as a viable com
petitor in the penetration testing market for some of the top-tier companies in the field. We’re talking the big names, ones that some of the guys today don’t even admit to holding contracts with. NDAs abound. There’s one for this meeting, too. Secrecy is the name of the game. What can be concealed, what can be revealed, and by whom, and at what time.
I still am no closer to knowing who, if anyone, has been leaking our info, though.
But I can deal with that when I get back.
When I get back, when this is over. When Chloe is gone…
Focus. Think.
The twelve men shuffle into the room in groups of two and three, old colleagues, old friends, catching up at an event like this, soaking in the energy of new ideas like lizards in the sun. These are my potential investors. These are the business owners who have been there since dial-up was a new idea. To say that I’m intimidated by them is an understatement. But I can do this. I got all of my worst-case scenarios out of the way with the adventure of the missing keys. All I have to do now is get through my demo.
When they greet me one by one and take their seats, I look toward the screen to verify that the projector is working. The WhiteLight logo is there, minimalist and geometric on a clean white background. I take a deep breath as the talk settles down.
All eyes are on me, now. Time to do what I came here to do.
“Penetration testing. It’s one of the most important things that a company can do to verify that their app, or their hardware, or their network is secure against threats both seen and unseen. Whether we utilize so-called black hat or white hat testing, whether or not the code or hardware to be tested is known to the tester, both have benefits and drawbacks.
“But with each approach, there’s the question of what to test first. The code? A lot of companies out there focus on their code as their first priority. And they’re not wrong, but almost all of those companies have no real idea about what hardware they’re putting that code on. The hardware, then? A good thought, but all of these different points of entry still represent single points. What if you could test them all at once? That’s the question that WhiteLight’s latest tool set out to answer. We call it Spectrum.”
At this, I click forward on my laptop. The first model from my precious, transatlantic rescue of a demo comes up, just like I’d planned.
“With Spectrum, we—”
Someone in the room clears his throat. Loudly and pointedly.
“So, this is great and all, and I like what it is you’re going for here, but, quick question for ya,” the throat-clearer says, voice almost bored.
Annoyed at being interrupted, I look over at the man by the far wall. I don’t even need to look at his badge to know who it is: George Burke.
I know he’s one of the toughest critics in the room. His reputation precedes him and tends to encompass all of the worst stereotypes of the industry. But to have him stop me cold before I even get started? Trepidation and unease prickle up my spine. His cold blue eyes fix on mine, a smirk on his face. He’s whipcord-lean and reclining a little in his chair, hands folded in a deceptively casual pose.
And all the other men in the room are looking between the two of us.
“Okay,” I say, as casually as I can manage. “What’s that?”
“Your company, WhiteLight, is it? Very clever, the name, by the way. Spectrum, WhiteLight being divided into multiple paths, multiple frequencies.” Burke clears his throat again, eyes still trained on mine. “How is it you can come here today with a product that’s supposed to be the be-all and end-all of security on all these levels when you can’t even patch a leak in your own company?”
My blood runs cold. The mole. Burke knows.
“Excuse me?” I say. “I don’t—”
“Don’t bullshit me, Weiss,” Burke laughs, still leaning back in his chair. “You’ve got a lot of good ideas, big ideas, but you need to tend to your own sinking ship before you start offering ferry trips across the Atlantic.”
“I don’t think that’s exactly fair,” Bart says, confusion on his face as he looks from me to Burke to me again. “Logan has—”
“Are you gonna tell them, or should I?” Burke says it so casually, with a twist to his mouth like he’s enjoying this. He probably is.
And I feel myself filling up with rage.
Focus. Think.
But I can’t.
The rest of the men here are still watching me. Fuck, why is it always a bunch of old white guys?
I clear my throat. “What Mr. Burke here is referring to is a recent security breach we’ve identified in-house. Some of our proprietary data had been leaking before release. We’d hoped to avoid this, but so far haven’t been able to—”
“You can’t find ’em,” Burke crowed. “And he’s in your own goddamn office. And you want to sell solutions to the rest of us? You’ve got big fucking balls trying that out on us.”
“The leaks haven’t been made public,” I say. “We had it all under control. Nobody knew.”
“Oh, nobody knew? That makes it fine, then.” Burke chortles. “And nobody knows about vulnerabilities ’til you find ’em, isn’t that right? Seen and unseen.”
“Let him present his—” another man, Troy Giles from Inner Systems in New Orleans, begins, but Burke cuts him off with a laugh.
Troy and I have spoken before several times, and he’d been one of my early adopters. I admire his efforts now, but this has all gone too far to shit to be fixed. Troy halts his words and looks over at Burke with something between annoyance and confusion.
Burke knew. He knew, and he wanted to watch me twist in the wind. So why did he let this happen? What’s his real goal?
“Say what you mean, Burke,” I snap. “You clearly have a point you want to make, so say it.”
“Your ideas are good, but unformed,” Burke shoots back, all grinning confidence. “I like you. Don’t misunderstand me, I like you, I really do. Those big ideas will pay off someday, with a lot of hard work behind them. But you need the kind of guidance—”
“I didn’t realize this demo was going to be a character assassination,” Troy says. “Is this really necessary?”
“You either progress, create the best solutions, or you get the fuck out of the way,” Burke replies, punctuating his words with a finger in his palm. “You want to let inferior answers in the gate as a favor? Like keeping some cute fucking dog around whose back legs don’t work because you feel sad for it? You go ahead and tell me how pity and tolerance will safeguard your clients’ security. Tell me, how the fuck does this look like having it under control?”
Troy presses his lips together. Beside him, Tom O’Hara, one of my mentors from college, chimes in. “You may be right, Burke, but you don’t need to be a fucking asshole about it.”
At this, Burke just laughs. “Buncha pussies, all of you. Logan, let me make you an offer. I’ll buy you out of your company right now, all of your IP. Give those big ideas somewhere where they can really grow. That means your little problem becomes my little problem. Isn’t that easier?”
“There is nothing you could offer me that I would take,” I snap back. “I decline your offer.”
This just makes the older man smile wider. “Oh, you do? Well, you let me know, then. You just go ahead and let me know—”
“The internal security concerns are a personnel matter,” I say, but even then, the doubt has crept in. “They will be dealt with. And none of that takes away from the information, the ideas, I came here to present.”
Burke shakes his head, stands up, and walks out of the room.
Eleven men remain. Silent and stunned by the scene they’ve just watched.
Somehow, I finish the demo.
But all I can hear are Burke’s words, his taunts. And all I can see in the eyes of my potential investors is pity.
Chapter Eleven
Chloe
Mirrors. Why does it have to be mirrors? I hate looking at myself in the mirror almost as much as I hate seeing mys
elf in photos, but they’re inescapable here in this venue. I’m waiting in the foyer, surrounded by mirrors and people. No Logan.
A few people nod and smile politely at me as they pass me by, clearly assuming I’m somebody, when I mean nothing to them and don’t have any clue who they are, or if any of them are the kind of people I should know. I’ve been to just one of these industry-specific events, once, with my sister. Never again, I’d vowed—although that had been more to do with feeling intimidated by Eleni in general, feeling so compared and found so wanting, than the event itself.
Eleni knows how to mingle.
This is nice, though. The ballroom, from what I can see of it, is old and draped with chandeliers, sculpted with crown moldings and crenellations, bas-relief cherubs. Apparently, this place had been built for the Russian officers who had been stationed in the city, back when Finland had been under occupation. I can almost imagine them now, like something out of a fever-dream or a Broadway show: military braids and epaulettes instead of name tags and smartphones, ladies fawning in their voile dresses instead of talking animatedly in sequins and lace. It’s all very Anastasia.
At least I’m not cold, although my trusty black wrap dress isn’t exactly thick. I smooth my hands down over my hips and try to calm the flutter of nerves in my belly. It had been so much darker that night at the restaurant. I had been able to convince myself that this dress was more covering, and less embarrassing, back then. But I can’t now.
And Logan’s still not here.
Nervously, I pull out my phone and go through the motions of checking it. Social media: Someone’s shared a meme about motherhood that’s placed next to an American flag and a cheery yellow Minion, for some reason. Someone else has posted about their new kitten. I scroll, not really reading any of it, and then close out of the app. Then, to my Instagram, where I see a bunch of comments and likes on my photos from this trip. At some point I will have to explain what I’m doing and how I got here.
Then, my email. Junk, spam, reminders—and an email from the contact page of my webcomic. I don’t have time to read it yet because there’s a familiar prickle along my spine, a feeling of quiet awareness, and I just know it’s him.