Then her fingers grip my bicep, and she shatters with a half-sob. I run my hands over her sweat-dampened skin, and I feel the warmth of her deep in my soul.
“Shall we continue this in bed?”
39
Miki
It’s dark outside. I’m tangled in Finn’s sheets. Finn and Oliver are on either side of me, their bodies touching mine.
“I need to tell you something.” My voice comes out high and nervous. I discreetly wipe my palms on the bed.
Both of them freeze.
“I’ve hidden something from you for almost a month. When I ran into you at the party on Valentine’s Day, I wasn’t there by chance.”
“Miki.” Oliver’s voice is tight with tension. “Listen, there’s something you should hear from us.”
I barely pay attention to him. For days, guilt has sloshed through my insides. Both men have given me keys to their apartments. They’ve cooked for me. They’ve brought me coffee in the morning and donuts in the afternoon.
I’ve slept with them. I’ve given into temptation when I should have resisted, but it’s time for the truth, and I won’t let Oliver derail me.
“No,” I say, cutting him off. “Listen to me. Please. Let me say what I need to say.”
Finn takes my hand in his. He looks deep into my eyes, “Whatever you think you need to say to us, you don’t need to.”
Hot shame fills me, and I can’t meet his gaze. “I’m a hacker. I hang out on a forum. Last month, someone approached me there.” I take a deep breath. “He offered to pay me a hundred thousand dollars to hack into Imperium. He wanted a copy of your client list.”
Neither of them says anything, and I’m too afraid to look at them, to see how they’ve reacted to my betrayal. I swallow hard and force myself to continue.
“A couple of hacker friends did some digging.” I cross my fingers as I tell them my bombshell revelation. “They discovered who hired me. The person that offered me a hundred grand to hack into Imperium was Lawrence Kent. Your CFO.”
I’m waiting for anger. For bitter reproaches. I’m prepared to hear them defend Lawrence, prepared to hear them tell me that they’ll be pressing charges. I’m ready for anything.
Except for their lack of surprise. Finn looks uncharacteristically nervous. His grip on my hand tightens. “Miki, there’s something we haven’t told you.”
The shrill ring of his phone interrupts what he’s about to say.
He mutters a curse under his breath and silences the ringtone. He turns back to me, and the look on his face causes my heart to hammer in my chest. What’s going on here? Finn and Oliver aren’t reacting to my news. Why?
Oliver clears his throat. “Before we say anything,” he says, “I want you to know that I care about you and I trust you completely.”
Finn’s phone rings again. “For fuck’s sake,” he snarls, picking up the instrument. “It’s eleven on a Monday night. This better be important.” He swipes the screen. “Hello?”
He listens to the person on the other end of the line. His body tenses and his face goes totally white. His fingers grip the phone. “Where is she?”
“What’s wrong?” Oliver asks.
Finn turns to him, his eyes bleak. “My grandmother fell in the bathroom,” he says. “Her neighbors found her twenty minutes ago. The ambulance took her to Mount Sinai.”
Oliver’s already getting dressed. “I’ll come with you.”
“Me too,” I reply automatically. I put my arm around Finn’s shoulder. “Did they say how she’s doing?”
He shakes his head, dazed. “No,” he whispers. His fingers tremble as he reaches for his t-shirt. “She’s got to be okay.”
I’ve never met Finn’s grandmother, but he adores her and talks about her all the time. She brought him up, made him into the man he is today. My heart aches for Finn. “She will be.”
Last Christmas, I spent hours at Mount Sinai, as Wendy’s mother fought for her life after being in a serious car crash. Her recovery had been something of a miracle.
I cross my fingers and desperately hope for another one.
We get to the hospital and try to find someone who can help us, no easy task in the labyrinthine area. Finally, we’re directed to surgery, where a helpful nurse tells us that Finn’s grandmother is in the operating room.
“I’m Finn Sanders,” Finn grinds out. “I’m Joyce Sanders’ grandson. I’m her emergency contact.”
She gives him a sympathetic look. “Dr. Harris attended to your grandmother,” she says gently. “I’ll page him. Please sit down.”
Dr. Harris, a short man with kind eyes, arrives in five minutes. “Which one of you is Mr. Sanders?” he asks, looking at us.
“That’s me,” Finn replies. “What’s going on with my grandmother?”
“She slipped in the bathroom and broke her hip,” he replies somberly. “She’s in emergency surgery right now.”
Finn goes white. “She was having trouble getting around,” he whispers. “She wouldn’t listen to me when I suggested she get help. I should have insisted.”
“Yes, yes. Mrs. Sanders tried calling for help, but she couldn’t get up. Luckily for her, her neighbors saw that her light was still on past her usual bedtime, and decided to check up on her.”
My blood runs cold. It’s Monday night. Finn talks to his grandmother twice a week, and he has lunch with her every weekend. Had her neighbors not been paying attention, how long would she have laid there in pain, calling for help?
Finn gulps. “Is she going to be okay?”
The doctor nods. “Hip surgeries are always complicated, but your grandmother is only seventy, and she’s in good health. The surgeon’s working on her now, and she’ll give you an update when she’s done, but the prognosis should be excellent.”
I squeeze Finn’s hand, relief running through me.
Finn still appears shaken. “She has new neighbors,” he says. “She took them a pie. I thought she was crazy.”
Oliver puts an arm around him. “Nana Sanders is a tough old goat,” he says, the affection in his voice obvious to hear. “She’s going to be fine.”
Finn nods. “I’m going to stay here,” he says. “Go home and get some rest.”
I shake my head at once. “I’m not going to leave you here alone.” A sudden thought occurs to me. “Unless you don’t want me here?”
His light blue eyes meet mine. “It would mean a lot if you stayed,” he says quietly.
My heart skips a beat at the intense need on his face. “Okay.”
In the mad rush of getting to the hospital, I’ve almost forgotten Oliver and Finn’s reaction to my revelation.
They were going to tell me something. What was it?
Finn’s face is etched with worry. As much as I want to know what’s going on, now’s not the time to bother him.
Two hours later, a tired-looking surgeon comes to the waiting area where the three of us are huddled, drinking some lukewarm vending-machine coffee. “I’m Dr. Perez,” she introduces herself. “One of you is related to Mrs. Sanders?”
Finn rises to his feet eagerly. “I’m her grandson,” he says. “Is she okay?”
The doctor nods. “The surgery went well,” she says, and Finn exhales, his shoulders slumping in relief. “She’s under anesthetic now, but you can see her for a few minutes if you like.” She gives Oliver and me a glance. “Only immediate family, please. Mrs. Sanders needs to rest.”
“Go ahead,” Oliver says, squeezing Finn’s shoulder. “We’ll be right here.”
Finn follows the doctor. Oliver leans on my shoulder. “I’m so glad she’s okay,” he says softly. “If anything had happened to her, Finn would have been devastated.” His lips twist in a grimace. “He wouldn’t have been the only one. Nana’s fed me more times than I can count. She’s always treated me like family.”
He pulls his phone out of his pocket and types out a message. “I’m warning Janine,” he explains. “I’m fairly sure Finn isn’t going to
leave Nana’s side tomorrow. And I won’t be in any shape for my morning meetings.”
I don’t understand anything. Oliver is acting like I didn’t admit to hacking his company. I want to scream at him, demand to know what the hell is going on. Is this some kind of elaborate trap?
He drains his coffee, a disgusted look on his face. “I’m going to go in search of something better,” he says, setting his phone on the seat next to him. “You want something?”
I shake my head, not trusting myself to form words. The moment Oliver is out of sight, I pull my own phone out of my purse. Things are not going as I expected. Oliver and Finn were too unfazed by my news. I get the sense that I’m missing something important.
Maybe Lancelot and Merlin will have some insight into their reaction.
Hey, I type. Are you guys around?
Oliver’s phone buzzes and my lips twitch. He’s always leaving it lying around, and Janine’s constantly bringing it back to him. I can imagine the way she would roll her eyes at him if she were here.
I wait for either of them to reply, but neither of them does. Maybe they’re asleep, I think. After all, it’s well past two in the morning.
Still, I keep typing. It feels somewhat cathartic to talk about tonight’s weird turn of affairs. Something’s happened. I confessed everything to Oliver and Finn, and they didn’t even react.
Oliver’s phone buzzes again. It’s probably incoming email, but who could possibly want to talk to him at two in the morning?
They didn’t even blink when I told them about Kent. I’m missing something.
His phone buzzes for the third time, and this time, the hair on the back of my neck rises.
I’m missing something.
Finn and Oliver like the same TV shows I do. Gabby had even commented on it one day, and I’d told her that it wasn’t that rare, so did Lancelot and Merlin.
Oliver’s been divorced. So has Lancelot.
Finn’s favorite pizza toppings? Pineapple and ham. Just like Merlin.
They didn’t react when I told them I was hired to hack into their company.
They didn’t even blink when I told them about Kent.
Because they’ve always known.
Bile rises in my throat. Disbelief fills my heart, but my brain’s finally connecting the dots, and it’s painting a damning picture.
Finn and Oliver have been hiding an important piece of information from me, right from the start. Their identities.
They’re Merlin and Lancelot.
40
Finn
There is no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment.
Hunter S. Thompson
I stare down at the frail, wrinkled-lined faced of my grandmother. She’s hooked up to an assortment of machines. Her eyes are closed, and her breathing is strained, but she’s alive.
For too long, I’ve lived for work, and I’ve neglected everything else, but as I stare down at the woman who stepped in and raised me, who gave me a stable and loving home, I know the old Finn is gone.
Spending time with Miki these past two weeks, chatting for hours with her online the three months before that, I’ve learned for myself what my grandmother’s always told me. Work isn’t everything. Family, friends, laughter, those are the things that remain when we have nothing else.
Had my grandmother not taken her neighbors a pie in a gesture of welcome, would they have known her well enough to worry when her lights were still on? Would they have checked in on the old lady?
I sit next to her and put my hand on her papery skin. “I started telling Miki everything when your neighbors called, Nana. I know I should have told her before, but I was selfish and greedy, and I couldn’t bring myself to give her up.”
The beeping of the heart rate monitor is a soothing, steady sound in the brightly-lit room. There’s another bed in the space, a curtain dividing us. It’s empty at the moment, but I make a mental note to ask for a private room.
“I should have brought her to meet you,” I continue. “I was nervous about so many things. I wasn’t sure how you would react to the situation, to our ménage, so I hesitated.”
A nurse comes in and reads my grandmother’s chart. “Dr. Perez is one of our best surgeons,” she says encouragingly.
“She’s going to need home care, right? Once she’s out of here?” My grandmother won’t want to leave her home, but her Brooklyn house has stairs that she’s going to have difficulty navigating while she recovers. I have so many things to figure out.
She nods. “As well as rehab to get her moving again.”
“Don’t worry,” I say dryly, smiling for the first time since I received that dreadful phone call. “Nana hates being dependent on other people. She’ll be up and hobbling around in no time, telling me that she’s quite alright and I should stop fussing.”
The nurse laughs. “My mother’s the same way,” she says. “I’ll be here for the next ten hours. I’ll keep checking on her, but she won’t wake for a few hours. Your best bet is to go home and get some sleep.”
I’m not leaving, but Oliver and Miki are still in the waiting room outside. I should tell them to go home. I give my grandmother one more look and get to my feet. In the tumult of the last few hours, I’ve almost forgotten that Miki told us about User0989 hiring her. I saw the surprise on her face when neither Oliver nor I reacted to her revelation.
She’s smart and sharp, and she’s got to be wondering what’s going on, and even though Mount Sinai isn’t the best place to have this conversation, I don’t think we can put it off any longer.
I emerge from my grandmother’s room at the same time as Oliver returns from God-knows-where, holding a tray containing three cups of coffee in his hand. “How is she?” he asks me. “I’ve told Janine to cancel your meetings for tomorrow.”
I’m not looking at him. I’m looking at Miki. Her face is white, and her eyes are filled with a terrible hurt when she looks at the two of us.
She’s discovered the truth.
Oliver reaches the same conclusion I do. “Miki, we can explain,” he starts to say, but she cuts him off with a vehement shake of her head.
“I don’t want your pretty speeches,” she says, her tone harsh and jagged. “I don’t want your fancy explanations. What I want is the truth.” She turns from Oliver to me, her face a mask of stone now. “You lied to me.”
Wordlessly, I nod. What can I say, really? Every accusation she’s going to throw at us is true.
“When you sat next to me on the flight from Houston, was that an accident?”
I take a deep breath. No more lies. Everything comes out in the open now. She deserves to know. “No. Oliver and I had been searching for you for months. Last summer, you succeeded in hacking into one of our experimental systems. The moment we found out, we started our search for you. The day before Thanksgiving, we finally uncovered your name. We were on that flight to discover what we were up against.”
She frowns. “What experimental system? What are you talking about? I’ve never hacked into an Imperium network.”
“It was a prototype, and we kept our involvement a secret. You were searching for Howard Lippman’s financial records because your friend Wendy Williams was representing Sandi Lippman in a contentious divorce case.”
She draws in a sharp breath, and recognition dawns on her face. “That was Imperium,” she says softly. “Of course it was. All month, I’ve been feeling a sense of déjà vu as I’ve tried to break into your network. A feeling like I’ve done this before.”
She lifts her chin and gives us a searching look. “Then you befriended me on DefCon. Why?”
“We needed to keep track of who you worked for,” Oliver replies. “You were the only person that had ever broken into one of Finn’s systems. We needed to make sure that you didn’t target us again.” He grimaces. “That’s how it started.”
“It was just supposed to be business,” I interject. “It became more. You were my friend, Miki. O
ur initial motives were suspect, but our friendship was real.”
“I’ll be the judge of that,” she says flatly. “Then I showed up to your Valentine’s Day party.”
“The IPO was three months away. Claudia had just threatened to make the photos of the two of us public. We were dealing with a difficult board of directors. We believed you’d been hired to hack into our company, and when you didn’t tell us anything on the forum, we thought you were a threat.”
“So why not confront me right away?” She exhales as she figures it out. “You wanted to see what I was after.”
I nod.
“You befriended me for Imperium. Did you also sleep with me for your precious company?”
“No,” we both say at once.
“That was unexpected,” Oliver says. “That night, when you came after me, I was hurt and upset. We shouldn’t have done it, not until we told you the truth.”
“But it was real.” I stare at Miki, trying to will her into believing us. “We started out under false pretenses, but that doesn’t mean we don’t care about you.” I swallow hard. “Miki, I was afraid to tell you the truth. I didn’t want to lose you. I love you.”
“No,” she says harshly. Her eyes have a sheen of tears now, and she shakes her head again. “No more lies. For a year, my ex-husband lied to me. I thought that maybe I could begin to trust again, but I was wrong.”
She pulls her keyring out of her purse and removes our apartment keys from it with shaking fingers. She sets them down on the plastic chair, right next to Oliver’s phone. “I think it’s safe to say,” she says, “that I won’t be at work tomorrow. Or any time after that.”
“Miki, please.” My heart races in my chest. This can’t be the end. “I screwed up, okay? But I care about you and maybe I’m a crazy fool, but I thought you cared about us too.”
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