Wicked Words

by M. J. Scott

  So whoever was sending those damn messages to Damon had either done an immaculate job of hiding their hack job, or they were spoofing my system elsewhere.

  Hopefully Yoshi could confirm the first option by finding the sucker. If my system had been cloned at some point, that would be harder still to figure out. My security had always been as tight as I could make it. For someone to clone it meant skills of the very-expensive-pay-grade hacker. The black hat kind. Nothing I wanted to tangle with.

  So I was clinging to the hope that I’d missed something and Yoshi could find it. Right after I made him sign a nondisclosure agreement. I'd stolen a lot of the content of that agreement from the one Damon had made me sign, so I was fairly certain it was watertight.

  Once Yoshi signed, I explained the problem. At the first mention of Riley Arts, Yoshi's eyes lit up. I'd been hoping he wouldn't be a worshipper at the cult of Righteous, but I'd known the chances were slim given he was a deck jockey.

  "You want me to find out if your system is sending messages to Righteous?" He was actually bouncing in place, rising up and down on his toes, reminding me just how young he was.

  "I want you to try," I said gently. "It's not going to be easy. I've already gone over everything several times and found nothing." I braced myself for what would likely be the inevitable next question if he was a true game freak. Aka how did I know Damon Riley well enough to be sending him email in the first place?

  Yoshi went still, expression turning serious. "If there's something there to find, I'll find it."

  Ah, to be young and supremely confident again. But his lack of nosiness—or at least his restraint if he was feeling nosy—was a definite point in his favor.

  "We'll see."

  He just shrugged at me and pulled a terminal deck out of his backpack. "Do you mind if I use this?"

  Given the alternative was him using the screen and keyboard in my makeshift office or doing everything verbally, I didn't. But I made him hand the deck over and ran it through my security scans before I let him connect. No red flags, so I gave him access and tried not to let my discomfort with him poking around my system show.

  I busied myself making another cup of syncaf and rummaging in the cabinets for snacks while Yoshi logged himself in and set to work. The screen on the wall showed me what he was doing, but I figured watching over his shoulder wasn't going to be helpful for either of us. I needed to know if he could do it on his own.

  I put a plate of food in front of him—if Yoshi was sailing close to the wind financially, the least I could do was feed him while he helped me out.

  Judging by the speed at which the food started disappearing, I'd been right about his appetite. I left him alone to fuel up and get to work and curled up on the sofa with Cassandra's book. Lizzie was still asleep. I didn't want to wake her. Sleep would help her heal. And if she was sleeping, she couldn't nag me into more magic practice. Still, even without nagging, I needed to read up.

  I shot a glance at Yoshi, intent on his deck. How much did he know about Lizzie? I'd asked her, and she'd said he wasn't a witch as far as she knew, but I hadn't thought to ask what he knew about her and that part of her life. Not that magic was high on my list of topics I planned to talk to him about. It shouldn't come up if this all went smoothly.

  Ian and Cassandra and Radha had given me another version of the "you need protection until you get your powers back" speech before they'd let us go last night. Cassandra had added something to whatever it was Lizzie's bracelet did. Lizzie, in turn, had refused to go to bed until I found the black tourmaline and amethyst pendant Cassandra had given me when I'd first found out I had powers. I'd stopped wearing it after Nat died, but I hadn't thrown it away.

  I was sure if they'd known I'd lost my magic, they would have insisted on it before now. But the possibility obviously had never occurred to any of them. Which made sense. All four of them were deep in the magic world. You didn't become one of the Cestis by being half-assed about magic and power and all the benefits and dangers that came with it. Not that I had any idea how you did become a member of the Cestis. They certainly hadn't replaced Antony yet, which suggested there weren't that many suitable candidates around.

  They were clearly shorthanded if Cassandra thought even someone as clueless-newbie as me would ease their load. As much as I wanted to pretend otherwise, I owed them. So I would do my homework so I might have some idea what to do if my magic came back.

  "Have you played the new game yet?" Yoshi asked after about an hour of him typing away at the speed of light and me switching between reading about magic and trying to figure out some different approaches for my client's problem when I got too freaked out.

  "Game?" I was deep in an inventory selection subroutine, not really paying attention.

  "Archangel."

  My head jerked up. Crap. Had he seen that stupid ad? "I don't game." I hoped my tone would make "let's not go there" perfectly clear.

  He frowned. "But you worked on that project, yeah?"

  Either he was crap at reading my tone or he was curious enough not to worry about annoying me.

  I frowned, wondering how the hell he'd learned that I had worked on Archangel. I hadn't seen a mention of my name in any article about the game in the weeks after the recall. Not that many people at Riley Arts had known what I was doing there. Clearly someone had talked though. Maybe I should report that to Damon. Give his security team something to worry about other than me. "I did some consulting for Riley last year. I wasn't there to play games."

  "So you never played it at all?"

  I sighed. Gamers were all the same where Righteous was concerned. Endlessly eager for any intel they could gather. Any tiny inside tidbit was to be treasured. But if Yoshi was going to work for me, he had to learn the rules. "I saw a couple of snippets of early versions. And I signed an NDA that makes that one I just got you to sign look puny, so let's not talk about it. Have you found anything yet?"

  Those pale eyes blinked, then narrowed. I got the feeling he was making a mental note to read his NDA more carefully. He should have thought of that before he signed. But I hadn't tied him up in any legalese that was anything I wouldn't have signed myself. I had signed it—or versions of it—many times. But I'd vetted first. Yoshi was young, but if he was running his own business, he needed to learn to look after himself.

  "Not so far. It's all clean."

  Which could either mean he wasn't as good as he thought or that there really was nothing to find. I needed to know which before I made any more decisions. I switched seats to sit beside him. "Tell me what you've tried."

  Twenty minutes later, I had my answer. Yoshi knew his stuff. He'd come up with a few things I hadn't thought of and created a genius sniffer program on the fly that I would have been happy to call my own. That didn't change the fact that we'd still come up blank. I chewed my lip as I stared at Yoshi's deck, trying to figure out yet another angle. Problem was, we'd already done the full three hundred and sixty degrees and were right back where we started.

  With a big ball of nothing.

  "There's just not anything here," Yoshi said after we'd rerun his program for the third time.

  "Tell me something I don't know."

  "You're looking in the wrong place."

  "Pardon?"

  He waved a hand at his deck. "There's nothing here. But these messages that have Righteous all jacked up are coming from somewhere, right?"

  That had been the obvious option B. Someone was cloning my system somehow. "Right. Which only leaves us with several billion possible suspects."

  "Nah," Yoshi said. "Make like that old detective dude. You know, Sherlock Holmes." He snapped his fingers. "Consider the impossible. What's the least likely place you can think of for those messages to come from, apart from here?"

  My heart sank. I knew exactly where his train of thought was headed, and I didn't like it one little bit. "Righteous."

  Chapter Eight

  The smile on Cat Delaney's face had pa
ssed frosty and was skating toward arctic. She'd always been coolly polite to me. She was coolly polite to just about everyone other than Damon. But her voice, as she directed me to wait while she checked if Mr. Riley was available, was several degrees below zero.

  Maybe Damon didn't blame me for the fallout from the recall, but it was clear Cat did. Unfair. The Righteous static filter had been partly to blame, too, but I didn't think making that point was likely to change her mind. Particularly if she knew all the ins and outs of what happened. Easier to assume she did. Damon trusted her, and a good assistant had to know more about their boss's life than almost anybody else if they were going to keep it running smoothly. Cat would know where all the bodies were buried, so to speak.

  I kept my own expression politely neutral. I understood. I'd never really figured out how much Damon's employees knew about our relationship. It had happened fast and ended fast, and I, for one, hadn't tried to advertise it, but if anyone was going to have known, it would be Cat. So potentially, to her I was both wrecker-of-company-she-lived-for and breaker-of-boss-man's-heart. Apparently two strikes and I was out.

  "You can go in now," Cat said after several long minutes of silence while I tried to pretend I was reading something on my datapad.

  As she spoke the words, I realized that staying exactly where I was, soaking up the nuclear eat-shit-and-die vibes rolling off Cat, was actually more appealing than going in and facing Damon.

  But wimping out wasn't an option. I pasted an “I'm perfectly fine” expression on my face, said, "Thank you," to Cat, and walked the twenty feet or so to Damon's door.

  Damon's office was the same. Ridiculously huge, the walls all curves and sweeping glass. Built to reinforce that here sat the man in charge of the whole shebang. Still, that impression was softened a bit—as it had been the first time I'd ever set foot in the room—by some of the quirkier touches. Old surfboards still lined one wall. A giant screen dominated another, currently only showing the reflections of the arc of screaming-red leather recliners arrayed around it. They were game chairs, though you wouldn't have known it at first glance, their high-tech nature artfully disguised. Expensively disguised. But money was no object to Damon. Even with the hit Righteous had taken from the recall, he was rich in a way I would never be. That most people on the planet would never be.

  At least he tried to do good with that money. Riley Arts had been instrumental in getting the city redeveloped by declaring they were rebuilding their campus downtown, and they did a load of charity work. More of it since the recall, though they'd taken flak for that, too, some calling it a cynical PR move.

  Maybe it was, but that didn't change the outcome. The money went to people who needed it. And Damon had never been a corporate asshole. Much as it would be easier to hate him if he was. So no, not much in the room had changed.

  Just me. Or maybe both of us.

  Damon rose from his chair, but he made no immediate move to venture out from behind his desk. He stood there, looking far too good in a light blue shirt and darker jeans. Damn him. He knew he looked good in blue.

  Though why I thought he might care how he looked in what he wore for a meeting with me was beyond me. I stopped well before I reached the desk. Safety in distance and all that.

  For a moment we just stared at each other, no less awkward than we had been in my yard. I clearly didn't know how to do casual chat with this man. And it was better not to think too hard about why he might not be able to come up with something to say to me. I'd never been this awkward with an ex-lover before. Maybe because I'd never let one break my heart.

  Another train of thought I didn't want to jump aboard.

  I pulled a datachip from my purse, advanced a few steps until I was only a couple of feet away, and tossed it onto his desk. "My systems are clean."

  His jaw tightened. "Hello to you, too."

  I narrowed my eyes, then shrugged, going for “I couldn't care less” rather than “I really hate seeing you again.” That emotion was something I was keeping to myself. "You're the one who put a timeframe on this. That chip has detailed diagnostics run by me and by an independent expert. All the traffic logs and every other kind of log your security team could want." "Independent expert" sounded better than nineteen-year-old uber-nerd with a plaid fetish. Yoshi had practically begged to come along, but I had refused. Seeing Damon was hard enough without the added complication of babysitting Yoshi and trying to make him behave himself in what was pretty much geek nirvana. "There's no evidence of any messages coming from my system."

  "That you can find."

  "It's a bit late for you to start questioning my competence, isn't it?"

  "Maybe." He popped the chip into the reader on his desk and pulled up a terminal. I stood, silent, as he scanned through the reports.

  "Well?" I asked when he finally looked up.

  "Mitch would say this could be doctored." His tone was as flat and unrevealing as mine.

  Apparently if I was going to do too cool for school, so was he. "Your head of security can say a lot of things. I'll say this. You have a choice to make. You said you didn't believe it was me. You either trust me or not. If you don't, well, let your security do their worst. They can come look at my system themselves. Believe me, they're not going to find anything."

  "You could be using a different system."

  I only just stopped myself from telling him to bite me. "You saw my house. Did that look to you like I have money to throw around to maintain secret hidden computer setups smart enough to beat whatever you're throwing at them?"

  He frowned. Was he about to ask me why I didn't have the money? That was something I wanted to talk to him about even less than making chitchat.

  "You said you believed they weren't from me. Your guys thought the messages were coming from my system, and I've just given you the proof that they're not."

  "Which leaves me right back at square one."

  "Not exactly," I said.

  The frown deepened. "What does that mean?"

  "Well, if it's not me, then it's someone who knows you and I had a relationship—a business relationship, at least. There aren't that many people who knew about the work I did here, are there? And even fewer outside Righteous, I hope. Unless you think one of the Cestis has a grudge against you."

  He shook his head at that suggestion. "No, they've been nothing but helpful."

  They had what? No. Focus. I wasn't here to talk about the Cestis. I was here to clear my name and get Damon Riley back out of my life.

  "Right. So you need people who knew about you and me. Either them or someone they blabbed to. That's the logical place to start."

  "You think someone in my own company is sending me death threats?"

  I shrugged. "Well, you didn't suck too much as a client, but maybe you do as a boss." I knew it wasn't true. I'd seen him in action with his staff, and the whole Riley campus was a testament to a company that cared about its employees. Riley had a reputation as a great place to work that wasn't just driven by its success and it being on the cutting edge for anyone who wanted to work in virtual reality and game design. But even the best kind of boss made enemies over the course of doing business. Righteous must have its share of disgruntled ex-employees same as any other corporation.

  "Gee, thanks," he said.

  I held up my hands. "Don't shoot the messenger. Has your team looked at anyone else?"

  "I don't know.” He had the grace to look sheepish. “They were investigating whether or not it was you. I'm not sure how far the 'not' part got."

  "Then I guess it's time you give them the order to try a little harder in that department."

  He tapped the datachip. "My guys aren't going to necessarily take this at face value."

  I folded my arms, suddenly wondering if I'd been suckered. "What does that mean? You know, if you've just hauled me in here for some weird revenge thing and there are a bunch of cops waiting to take me away, then I'm changing my mind. You do suck."

  "Why wo
uld I have come to you if I intended to involve the police?"

  "I don't know, Damon. I gave up guessing about your motivations about nine months ago."

  He winced. "Maggie—"

  "No. We did this at the house. Nothing to talk about. So." I pointed at the datachip. "This boils down to you versus your cyber dudes. You're the boss, no matter how much of a hardass this Mitch guy is. So, do you trust me? Or do I need to call a lawyer?" I couldn’t afford a lawyer.

  Damon picked up the chip, slid it into his pocket. "I trust you."

  "Good. Because you know, if I wanted to do something to you, I wouldn't need email. And I wouldn't be stupid enough to leave a trail." I stepped back. "If there's nothing else, I should get going."

  "Wait." His mouth twisted. "I'd like to hear more about your theory. About who else it could be."

  I arched an eyebrow at him. "Damon, you have a cybersecurity team. Who are part of your overall security team. I'm guessing they can come up with a suspect profile in about thirty seconds flat if you tell them to look elsewhere."

  "Just a few minutes," he said. "I'll get Cat to bring us some coffee."

  That was playing dirty. He knew how much I loved the real stuff. I hesitated. I should get out while I could. While my exposure to him was limited and my emotions couldn't confuse themselves all over again. But as he leaned over to press a button on his system to call Cat and I got a waft of his damned clean cotton, spice, man scent, my feet seemed stuck to the floor.

  "Coffee and one of those amazing cheese Danishes from the cafeteria in Building Two," I countered.

  "You got it." He smiled at me and gave the order to Cat.

  Damn it. I didn't want him to smile at me. Didn't want to feel the silly little rush it gave me. God. Hormones were the worst.

  I lowered myself back into the chair. Talk or do awkward silence. Talking seemed the lesser of two evils. "So what did you want to know?"

  "What makes you think it's someone here?"