“No.” He closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose. “His family has to be worried sick about him. If collecting his stuff from his desk is what they need to do to deal with it, I’m not going to make this any harder on them than it already is. I’ll be there in a minute to let them in.”
In accordance with the new office security policies—at least those in place until the metal detectors could be installed—Thad had kept the visitors standing outside until their entrance could be approved, so Niles got a good look at them through the glass doors. He recognized Patrick’s stepbrother from the convention and the few other glimpses he’d caught. The other guy, though, wasn’t familiar. He was dressed in a trench coat with a fedora pulled low over his brow like some sort of film noir tribute. If not for the fact that these guys were no doubt having a hard time with Patrick’s disappearance, Niles might have looked askance at that particular fashion choice.
The stepbrother was shifting nervously from foot-to-foot outside the door. The fedora-wearing one, however, looked suitably grim.
“Shit,” Niles whispered and closed his eyes against the dread. He didn’t want to do this. He drew a bracing breath and pushed open the door to let them inside. “Come in, gentlemen. You’re Patrick’s brother, right? I’m Niles River. I’m Patrick’s supervisor.”
“We know who you are,” the other guy said as the stepbrother entered. “He’s Charlie Pryce, and I’m Mike. I’m Charlie’s cousin and leader of the Soldiers of Justice guild.”
Niles blinked. He felt the need to introduce himself by his guild title? “Um, I see. I just want to say how sorry I am for what your family must be dealing with. All of us here are hoping Patrick will still come home safely.”
“Right,” fedora-wearing Mike scoffed and stuffed his hand in his pocket. Niles tensed. The dude was making him jumpy. He was acting angry, rather than worried. “It’s because of you people that he’s gone. Charlie’s dad wants us to get his stuff, and when and if Patrick comes back, we’re going to make sure he never has anything to do with your company again.”
Niles flinched, the accusation spearing him right where his own self-doubt had already gnawed a weak spot. It was their fault Patrick was missing, and that four other people were dead.
“I’m sorry,” he murmured, unable to look at them. “If there’s anything else I can do to help—”
“Just show us to his desk,” Mike said.
“Of course. Thad, let Rosie know I’m going to help them collect Patrick’s stuff, then head on home if you want. It’s late. I’ll handle this.”
“Um, Niles, can I . . .?” Thad jerked his head to the side. “Can I talk to you a moment?”
“Sure. Excuse me, gentlemen.” He followed Thad through the security door to the inner office and let it close behind them, the electronic latch engaging. “What is it?”
Thad shifted nervously. “I just— Rosie and the security guys gave me a procedure I’m supposed to follow to the letter now when we have visitors in the building. I’m not supposed to let them in until the guard clears them.”
“They’re the family of a victim. I don’t want to give them a hard time. They’re going through enough.”
“Yeah, I don’t, either, but I’m supposed to follow the security procedure. Maybe if the guard were here—”
“Is she still out on her rounds?”
“Yeah, but she should be back soon, and if the cops are on schedule, they should be checking in in another half hour or so.”
“Right. Damn. That doesn’t help us just now.”
“I can call her cell, tell her we need her back here.”
Niles blew his breath out in a long, slow sigh, scrubbing a hand through his hair. “I don’t want to put you in a bad position, Thad. I get that you have a job to do. So tell you what, you give her a call, and we’ll seat them in the visitor’s conference room off the lobby while I box up Patrick’s stuff and bring it out. Just . . . do what you can to make sure they feel welcome, okay?”
“Sure, Niles.” Thad nodded readily, relief evident on his face. Niles straightened his shoulders and opened the door to return to the lobby.
Mike and Charlie came to their feet from where they’d been sprawled in the lobby chairs as he approached. “I’m sorry, only authorized visitors are allowed back in the studio. It’s for security reasons; we have to make sure all our people are safe. I’m sure you understand that. If you want to make yourselves comfortable, I’ll go pack up everything from Patrick’s desk and bring it to you.”
“How do we know you’ll bring it all?” Mike asked.
Niles glanced at Patrick’s stepbrother, who had yet to speak up, but he had his hands stuffed in his pockets and his eyes on his cousin. It was clear to see who was alpha in that dynamic. “You can go through the box, let me know if anything is missing.”
Mike’s tone sharpened, became a little more belligerent. “I don’t see why we just can’t go back there.”
“If it were up to me, I’d be happy to let you, but after what’s happened to Patrick and the fact that we have other people here who have been threatened, we’ve had to institute security procedures.” He opened the door to the conference room and turned on the light, gesturing them inside. “I’m very sorry. I’ll be back shortly.”
The two exchanged unhappy glances, and then brushed past him. Charlie flung himself into a chair with a disgusted sigh. Niles reminded himself of the incredible stress Patrick’s family must be under and left the conference room, leaving the door partially ajar.
“Did you get ahold of the guard?” he asked as he passed Thad’s desk, where he was shutting down his computer.
“Yeah, she was checking out a noise in the warehouse. She’ll be back in a moment.”
Niles nodded. “Okay. See if they want something to drink. They’re going through an ordeal right now.”
“Will do.”
“Thanks.” Niles tried to muster a grateful smile, but the best he could manage was a grimace. Sighing, he dug his key card out of his pocket and swiped it to go back into the studio.
“Hey, Rosie?”
Rosie looked up to see Niles standing in her doorway, his expression somber. “What’s up?”
“Patrick’s family is here. They want to collect his stuff from his desk.”
“Ah, Jesus.” She scratched her scalp, closing her eyes for a moment at the sharp surge of grief. “Has it really gotten to that point?”
“They could still find him alive . . .” Niles said, a wistful, hopeful note in his voice. “Couldn’t they?”
She opened her eyes and smiled gently at him. Her poor, wounded, idealistic best friend. “How do you want me to answer that? Realistically or encouragingly?”
His shoulders slumped. “Never mind. They’re in the visitor conference room if you want to go out and say something to them, but they’re a bit hostile. They blame us for what happened to Patrick. I can sorta see where they’re coming from.”
“Hey, no. None of that.” She rose and rounded her desk to hug him quickly. “We’re not responsible for the actions of the person or people doing this. Don’t blame yourself.”
“Right. Yeah.” Niles’s mouth twisted bitterly. “I guess I’ll go pack up Patrick’s things. Thad’s taking care of them, and the security guard knows they’re here.”
“All right. I think if I try to say anything to them, it will just make things worse, so I’m going to stay out of it. Come see me when you’re done.”
She stared at the door a moment after Niles left, frowning. Of course, they should have expected someone to come clear out Patrick’s desk, but this was going to hit Niles hard, and Jordan had left early for a meeting with some suits from the PR department at Electronic Entertainment Unlimited, who were all still frantically trying to strategize spin control.
Hell, maybe Niles was right that everything they’d worked to build was slipping away. If it was, Rosie didn’t have the first idea how to stop it. It was hard to even worry all that much
about her own safety when she could see the possibility of the work she’d poured her heart and soul into crumbling.
Or maybe it was that she’d been living with insubstantial threats so long that real ones didn’t feel real. She knew Niles struggled with that too. There was a disconnect, a place where they had conditioned themselves to ignore the hostility as background noise, and even knowing people had died didn’t quite cut through that sense of unreality.
Her cell rang, and Angie Payne’s name and number flashed on the screen. She picked it up, shaking off the morbid thoughts. “Hey, Angie, what’s up?”
“We found our girls,” Angie said. “You were right. Charity and Lakshmi hung out on some obscure feminist media criticism blog where they talked about Charity’s project. They were recruiting volunteers to attend conventions in other cities and add their stories to the study. And that’s where they met Keilana Savanh.”
“So there was a connection.” Rosie blew out a slow breath.
Angie sighed. “Yes and no. It still looks like Keilana committed suicide, but the posts on the blog indicate that she’d been the target of a bunch of harassment from some former gaming companions of hers for nearly a year. Apparently they had some boys-only guild in one of the multiplayer games, and when they found out she was a woman behind the avatar, they came after her. Nonstop emails and texts, same sort of shit you’ve been showing me for days.”
“Ahh, the song of my people,” Rosie said bitterly.
“We think that might be the source of the virus that wiped her computer, not any attempt on her part to clean it before she killed herself. We’re tracking that down, to see if there’s a connection between her harassers and Charity or Lakshmi. We don’t have any answers yet, but this brings us a step closer, and we wouldn’t have looked for it if not for your insight, so thank you.”
That was a badly needed shot of validation at just the right moment. Too bad she couldn’t do something similar for Niles.
“You’re welcome.” She turned the phone on speakerphone and began digging through her emails as she spoke. “I don’t know shit about criminal justice, but I can say without ego that if you need more information on feminist theory and how it pertains to these young women and their activities, I can answer any questions, anytime, and I can point you to a lot of other sources as well.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Our techs say we’re also close to possibly recovering something off Keilana’s computer, so we’re holding out hope for a lead there. Meanwhile, I still need to come by the studios to finish my play-through.”
“You still think there might be something pertinent in there?”
“Not really, but, girl, I’ll be damned if I’ve sunk that much time into some game and don’t finish it.” There was an amused note of self-deprecation in Angie’s voice, and Rosie found herself laughing for the first time in days.
“This is how it starts, Detective. I’m going to be here late, as usual. Just come by whenever you’re off duty. I’ll let the security guard know to let you in.”
“I’ll be by later,” Angie replied and disconnected the call.
Tucking her phone away, Rosie focused on her email again. She frowned to see a broadcast message titled “Recent Events” from one of the accounting staff. What the hell was she doing sending a message to the whole company? Damn it, if that email was about Patrick and the murders and it had been sent to everyone, Rosie was going to have her ass.
The moment she clicked on it, her virus software went crazy, trying to isolate and scrub the code and apparently having a hard time with it. She quickly turned off her laptop manually, bypassing the shutdown process, before it could do any more damage.
“Fuck,” she muttered, crossing to the bank of gaming rigs on the wall and shutting them down. She snatched her phone off her desk, hitting the speed dial for their IT manager at home as she rushed out into the open floor of cubicles outside her office to begin making sure all the computers were shut down.
Niles growled as he set the box of Patrick’s belongings on the reception counter, staring with disbelief at the empty conference room where he’d left Patrick’s stepbrother and Cousin Fedora.
“You’ve got to be kidding me.”
“Problem?” He turned to see the night security guard—what was her name, Reina? Rena?—come in from the blustery night.
“Did you see our visitors take off?”
“I was back checking that the warehouse was secure. I had to finish up after I got Thad’s call.”
Niles sighed. “Yeah. Do me a favor and hang out here in case they come back for this box of stuff. It belongs to the intern who’s missing, and his stepbrother and cousin are here to collect it. One of them’s wearing a fedora and trench coat. You can’t miss them.” He turned to swipe his card and punch his code into the door again, opening it and calling down the hall. “Hey, Thad? Where’d you go?”
“Down here in the break room!”
Niles glanced through the doorway to the empty maze of cubicles he thought he’d heard someone working in before, but there was no sign of anyone. The back of his neck prickled as he continued down the hall, reaching the break room just as Thad was emerging with an airpot hanging from his hand.
“Hey,” the receptionist said with a smile. “Those guys wanted coffee, so I decided to make some fresh. I started another pot for you and Rosie in there too, and I’ll bring this one back after they leave.”
“It looks like they already took off, Thad, but thanks. Why don’t you head on home? I’ll rinse out the airpots before I go. Thanks for the coffee.”
“They took off?” Thad gave him a disgusted look. “Jeez, what kind of assholes ask you to make fresh coffee and then bug out before you’re done?”
“Maybe something important came up. Do you think there’s been news about Patrick?” He tried to damp down the flare of hope and fear in his chest, but he needed to get to his office and call Tim for an update, now.
Please, God, just let him be okay.
“Oh God. Right. Scratch that asshole comment.” Thad looked sheepish.
Niles waved it off, the idea of finding out if there had been a development in the case becoming an obsession. “Have a good night, okay?”
“Yeah, sure, Niles. Thanks.” Thad handed off the full airpot and returned to the lobby.
Niles looked at the airpot in his hands and turned briskly to take it back to the break room, digging for his phone once he’d set it down. Tim answered on the first ring, which said a lot about how antsy his convalescence was making him.
“Tim? Hey, it’s me. Is there any news about Patrick?”
“What? No, not that I’ve heard of. Why?”
He sighed, his heart sinking. “Nothing. Never mind. I was being stupid. I just had the crazy idea that there might be. I’ll come by the hospital later, okay?”
“Sure. You all right?”
He shrugged, though he knew Tim couldn’t see it. “Define ‘all right.’ I’m still breathing. I guess that’s a check in the pro column.”
“Hang in there, baby. We’ll get you through this. Want me to call Payne? Find out if there have been any developments I’m not aware of being laid up here?”
“Sure, that’d be great. I’ll see you later.”
He hung up before Tim could offer him any more well-meaning encouragement, then braced his hands on the edge of the sink, breathing in and out deeply several times before opening his eyes.
He could do this.
“At least there will be plenty of coffee. That’ll make Rosie happy.” He retrieved two mugs stamped with the Third Wave logo from a cupboard and filled them. He stared at the cream and sugar a moment, then reached for the seldom-used cupboard above the refrigerator, pulling down a bottle of Baileys and dropping a generous splash into each mug. He’d probably be better off settling in at his desk again and trying to recapture his flow, but he’d been interrupted anyway, so he might as well have a drink.
He ran into her rushing aro
und the maze of cubicles, looking grim.
“Niles, get Thad if he’s still here to come help. We need to make sure every computer in this place is shut down, and warn everyone with remote access to company email to not open any broadcast messages. IT has been alerted. There’s something in the system, and judging from the way the virus software was struggling with it, it’s big and bad.”
“Fuck. Thad already left.” He set the coffees down on a mail cart outside her office and started searching CubicleLand for computers that were left in standby mode by their users. While he was doing that, he heard Rosie on her phone.
“Angie, it’s me. We just had a virus hit our system, and it’s huge . . . Exactly, that’s what I’m thinking too. It’s not something the virus software recognizes, so it’s not anything that’s already known, which means it’s new. Probably custom . . . Yeah, I’ve got our IT people coming in, but bring your computer guy with you. See you.”
Adrenaline spiked when he realized Rosie thought this might have something to do with the murder investigation and the threats, making Niles feel like he’d been punched in the sternum. He had heard typing earlier on his way to the lobby. It hadn’t been his imagination, and it hadn’t been Rosie or Thad. Thad had shut his machine down; Niles had seen him do it. And he’d been on the complete other side of the office space from Rosie’s office. It couldn’t have been her computer he heard.
Had Charlie and Mike actually left? But they couldn’t have gotten into the office, even if they hadn’t, right? Thad wouldn’t have allowed them back, not with the new security protocols in place.
Unless they’d slipped in somehow when they sent Thad on a phony errand to make coffee . . .
He looked around the maze of cubicles. Fuck, they could be anywhere, waiting for one of them to walk into their hiding space.
“Rosie?” he called, meeting her eyes as she popped up out of a cubicle. He gave her an intense stare, trying to say with his look what he didn’t dare say aloud. “I think these are all shut down. Let’s go out to the lobby to check Thad’s computer and wait for Angie and the IT guys.”
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