by Reiss, CD
A whoosh, a burst of light, and a blast of heat came from my right. I put my arm up in an inadequate gesture to guard against it.
The thorn bushes were on fire.
Keaton barely squinted. The children cheered. The adults around the bonfire whooped and hollered. Damon got close to the flames, an unlit cigarette dangling from his lips. What a knucklehead.
“Once this is over,” he continued, “we’ll deal with her.”
“No,” I said. “We won’t. We’re going to drop it.”
“Oh, Beeze.” Disappointment dropped from his lips. “You can be the doormat. I’ll take care of it.”
I was going to throw him off by calling in a favor, but that was playing by his rules.
His rules, our rules, the rules of the underground? They didn’t scale.
“You won’t. Let me tell you why.” I faced him so he paid attention to me, not the fire. “If you want to go bigger, go better, go more public, this hacker mafia bullshit has to stop. We’re going to be under scrutiny like never before. A thousand people might care about whether or not we get revenge, but a few million are watching to see if we keep our noses clean. Don’t fuck this up with petty bullshit.”
He nodded slightly. I could never read him before, but that changed in the firelight. His code scrolled across his face.
He was afraid of the big time. He didn’t know the rules.
“If we walk away from tonight with a secure system,” he said, “I’ll walk away from retribution. I won’t indulge in ‘petty bullshit.’ If we’re still a struggling startup in twenty-one minutes, I’m burning her down.”
He held up his phone.
ATTEMPTS: 1,332,871,552,921,972
FAILS: 1,332,871,552,921,972
T-MINUS: 00:21:04
If Harper lost the challenge, she’d be mine.
If she won, he was going to hunt her down until he found her right under me.
I didn’t know what to wish for. Both options were losers.
If she won, we were over. For her own protection, I would have to shield her by leaving her behind.
The threat hung in the air like lead. What was Harper waiting for? The last minute? To ensure no one followed her into QI4, was she waiting for the last possible second?
Twenty-one minutes and counting. That was how long she was mine because she was going to crack it. She was too good not to.
The fire hit the back side of the bushes, catching on the gasoline and whatever Orrin had sprayed. The flames rose to the height of the house. Harper’s room on the third floor was on the front and side, but if the house caught, she’d be stuck up there at the top of a single staircase.
“Who in the hell thought that was a good idea?” Keaton sipped his beer as if he was watching a movie.
He seemed awfully calm, but everyone was backing away. We were in the moment when a fun thing turns into a dangerous thing. That moment when decent, relatively intelligent people start to wonder if the method they’d implemented to clear yesterday’s bad idea was becoming today’s tragedy.
And Harper was a sitting duck. Stay back here and try to put it out? Or run upstairs and grab her?
Nineteen minutes.
I stepped forward. Water. The green garden hose wouldn’t do much, but if I doused the house? Would it deter the flames from taking the whole thing?
Leaping for the hose, I twisted the valve. Water shot out of the seal between the threads and the nozzle, but it held.
A man came from the back door. I didn’t recognize him, and I would have dismissed him as yet another Barrington citizen I hadn’t met yet, but he stood out in a jacket and slacks.
He carried a fire extinguisher canister in one hand and the hose in the other.
“Chris!” Catherine cried.
“Stand back!” he shouted, jumping off the porch and spraying the flames.
With those two words, Orrin jogged to the shed. Kyle ran for his truck, which was parked in the back and blocked in by what must have been Keaton’s black Mercedes.
I doused the porch, sending Trudy and her friends running.
Orrin and Kyle retrieved fire extinguishers, and the thorn bush bed was reduced to a smoking mass of brambles in no time. I loosened my grip on the nozzle, and the flow slowed to a drip. I couldn’t let it go. I wasn’t ready to drop the safety net.
Reggie was the first to laugh. Then Kyle. Then Trudy and her friends.
“You.” Johnny, who I hadn’t seen, pointed at Orrin. “I expect better from you. This was some bonehead shit if I’ve ever seen bonehead shit, and I’ve seen some boneheaded shit in my day. Jesus.”
Damon was blind with laughter. Orrin had his head between his knees, and his shoulders shook with it. I stood there with the hose dangling from my fingertips.
Keaton’s voice came from just behind me. “People in dark times do dark things.”
“I didn’t see it coming.”
“Tension’s released for now. Danger’s like scratching an itch, isn’t it? Life’s shit until you try to make it worse.”
I dropped the hose.
Laughter had taken a backseat to deep breaths and relieved chattering. With a red fire extinguisher, Damon fogged the smoking center of the thorn bed using the path Harper and I had made, a lit cigarette drooping from his lips.
Catherine, who had the most to lose from the foolish attempt to clear the bushes, had her back to the scene, her hands balled into fists and placed on her hips. Chris, the guy in the jacket, stood lover close, brows knotted in irritation.
That must be the guy. A day early, and it didn’t look as if it was going well.
I hung up the hose and realized I hadn’t dropped my beer.
Fuck it.
“Waste not.” I tipped my can toward Keaton and drank.
He slid his thumb along the glass of his phone. “They created the worst danger they could then avoided it,” he said, turning the display to me. “Just like a certain technology disruptor.”
ATTEMPTS: 2,007,911,945,365,018
FAILS: 2,007,911,945,365,018
T-MINUS: 00:00:00
I stared at the numbers.
They were the same.
Every digit matched.
And time was up.
The chat from the guys was in all caps with strings of exclamation points.
“You did it, you crazy bastard.” Keaton was happy. Joyful. I’d never seen him with a genuine smile that wide, but when he clapped me on the shoulder, he was a proud big brother.
My heart was on the third floor of a house that had almost burned down.
Had she stopped because of the fire? Had she simply not made it? What had happened? I’d thought she had it. She’d thought she had it. What had gone so wrong that everything had gone right?
“No one got in,” I muttered, checking my own phone. Same numbers. Same time. Same chat thread.
WE DID IT!!!
WE WON, WE WON, WE WON, WE PWNED THEM!!!
CHAMPAGNE AND A BLOW JOB!
“You’re their leader,” Keaton continued. “Do you have something to say?”
“Yeah.” I looked at the trees that had been lit by Harper’s window, and they were dark. “I do.”
Gentlemen. We are now the
proud owners of Silicon Valley.
The responses poured in, scrolling faster than I could read.
You’re the KING!!! Motherfucker!
Pwned!
I’m pissing myself.
Keaton’s trunk smacked shut, and he walked toward the porch with the rest of the case of Dom Perignon. He was a cheap motherfucker until he wasn’t.
Dude, THANK YOU!
I’m calling Deepak, man.
I MISS THAT CURRY-EATING FUCKER.
HAIL TO THE CHIEF!!!
I had to go to Harper. We had to make another strategy. Figure out another way to get her the win she needed. I had to deal with the guys fast and go to her.
Deepak’s coming back. If you’re
interested in being on his team, f
ill out a
form with Raven.
The responses were fast and in the enthusiastic affirmative.
YESSS!!!!
Deepak’s return wasn’t exactly what I’d wanted to talk about. I didn’t want to get so wrapped up in their joy that I brought it upstairs to Harper. She didn’t need to see that.
Guys.
Keep it together.
Make sure the cage stays closed. Celebrate
now, take a few days off. Monday, we need
to analyze the attempts and see who got close.
Then we need to act like they breached
because the next person will.
And as a company, we’re going to do
better. We’ve already made the best product
in the world. We need to be the best
company in the world.
See you Monday.
I logged out. Took a deep breath.
She was my queen, but what was I king of? Technology? History? What was I supposed to do with that shit? I couldn’t live off people’s adulation. But her? I could eat and drink her. She was made of the food of life. She nourished me.
My job was to nourish her in her time of crisis.
I hopped up the steps to the porch and was about to run through the kitchen when I saw the black blur of Keaton out of the corner of my eye and heard the pop of champagne.
My mind was up the steps to Harper’s door, but my body had stopped walking before I hit the other side of the room.
Keaton was indeed popping the champagne over the sink, though he hadn’t lost a drop of foam. Harper stood next to him with paper cups pinched between her fingers, four to a hand, tape on all the joints that had taken the worst beating.
“Hey,” I said. “I was just…” I pointed upstairs.
“I felt better, so I came down,” she said. “Your friend told me what happened. Congratulations.”
She wouldn’t look at me. Just at the champagne falling. I needed to see her face. Read her expression. Hear her words.
“This guy you’re talking to, right here?” Keaton filled the little cups as he spoke. “Taylor Harden. You’re going to tell your grandkids you met him, and they won’t believe you.”
Mrs. Boden swooped in holding three cups in her bent fingers. She pushed her bangly red bracelet farther up her arm. “Just a splash, young man.”
“To remember Paris,” Keaton said, moving the flow of bubbly to her.
Harper paced to the backyard with her four cups in hand and her face down. I tried to follow, but my business partner put one hand on my arm and held up his champagne cup with the other. Mrs. Boden put champagne in my hand.
“That’s the girl?” He didn’t wait for me to confirm. “She’s stunning.”
“I know.”
I didn’t want to be with the man whose support had made tonight’s victory possible. I wanted Harper, who’d almost crushed that victory once and who, by all rights, should have beaten me on the second try.
He held up his cup. “She’s victory number two tonight. Well done.”
I didn’t tap my cup to his. She wasn’t a conquest. She wasn’t a tool for disruption or a mountain I’d climbed.
“Harper!” I went outside after her. My paper cup disappeared from my hand, and I let it go. I didn’t want to drink champagne to celebrate. I wanted to drink Harper’s disappointment to relieve her of it. I threaded her fingers in mine. Her skin was ice, and her taped joints were rigid. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s fine.” She still wasn’t looking at me.
“No, it’s not.”
“It was fair.”
Fair.
Fuck fair.
Fair was a pipe dream. Fair was different for everyone. Fair couldn’t even sit at the same table with justice.
I pulled her close and snarled in her ear, “What’s the point of it being fair if the outcome is wrong?”
She pushed me away, gently at first, harder when I resisted. “There is no wrong. There’s only what is. Don’t make this about something it’s not.”
“It’s about us then. It’s a speed bump. It won’t stop us.”
“Taylor.” With a little shake of her head, she took a hammer to the crust around my illusions. Just a tap. I felt the vibrations from inside, but the shell didn’t crack.
“Come home with me,” I said. “Work with me. We’ll find a way to save Barrington. Together.”
The party was hitting a fever pitch around us. Damon had a near-empty bottle of Dom in one fist as he pounded his chest with the other. Harper shot out a laugh.
“Harper.” My tone was sharp.
“What?” She was sharp back, eyes focused on me, her chin a degree or two higher. The little crease in her lower lip was shallow from tightened muscles beneath.
“This is important.”
“Okay, so?” She went from frown to smile with a glance at Damon, who was pretending to put out a smoldering patch of bush with invisible champagne. He was getting big laughs.
“I’m trying to tell you something, and you’re being entertained by the biggest jackass in town.”
“You know what? Stop trying to tell me things.”
She walked past me to Trudy and a few girls, brushing me aside as if I wasn’t even there. No. Worse. If I’d been invisible, she’d have had a good reason to turn her back on me.
I was less than that. Smaller. More inconsequential than a man she didn’t see right then.
The insistent pressure of my insignificance crushed air from my lungs, weighed my shoulders. It bore down with an exponential force of gravity.
I couldn’t continue to exist.
“Harper!” I yelled with all the air my squeezed lungs could hold.
Conversations stopped. In the periphery, faces turned my way, but the person at the end of the tunnel of my attention didn’t show me her face.
No moment would happen after this one. There was this. Only this. Then a short, painless blinking out before the void.
The only way out was the tunnel.
I chased her to the end of it, touching her shoulder, curving my fingers, pulling.
“Get off me!”
She kicked me down the tube. It was dark, and the only sound was sucking.
“I love you.” Grappling for the edge.
“I know. And I’m sorry about that.” Her voice had a clang, as if she was talking inside a soda can.
“No. You love me.”
“I’m sorry, Taylor. I don’t. I used you. I did a shitty job, and I didn’t get what I was trying to get. But that doesn’t make me your charity case, and it doesn’t make you one of us. It makes you done, just fucking done around here. Go home.”
“You’re lying. I can see it in your nose.” I must have reached for her again, even though I didn’t remember making a decision to, because she slapped my hand away.
“I’ve been lying. This is the first time I’m telling the truth. I don’t even like you.”
The pressure of the air coalesced around my arms in the shape of fingers and hands, gripping, pulling me away.
“You sold the bowls to—”
“I didn’t want to owe you anything.” She was a little flustered, raising her voice and jamming her hand at the air between us. “I didn’t want you to have a reason to come back here.”
“You’re mine.”
“No, I’m not.” Her creased lip quivered. Was she crying? Was it sadness? Guilt? Tension? Or did she love me?
“You belong to me. I didn’t even exist until we met. I wasn’t a man before you. I was an idea. I don’t want to be an idea anymore. I want to be real. I can’t be real without you.” What the hell was I saying? “And you? Living half your life in the shadows? No one in this place knows you. They have no idea what you are. You’re going to live and die a stranger.”
“Fuck you! This is who I am!”
I couldn’t see anything outside her. Couldn’t hear anything but her denial. “No, it’s not.”
If I cou
ld just grab her the way she liked, by the base of the back of her neck, pulling the hair tight, she’d be mine. She’d realize I gave her something she needed. She’d know she loved me.
I went to make that grab, hand out with fingers in tight hooks, snarling to take what was rightfully mine.
Someone moved in front of my vision, cutting off the sight of her. That tunnel between us was my breath. I was pulled and pushed in a dry riptide of forces. I fought as if I was drowning. My feet went from under me. I kicked, struggling for the surface.
I knew people, men, were taking me away. Physically. They were increasing the distance between my and Harper’s bodies, but the proximity of my attention never wavered.
“Harper! You’re mine! No matter where I am! You’re mine!”
She was the bowl of the sky above, and I was screaming for her in a glassy ocean.
A loud hup preceded the darkness.
LX
My hand hurt, but I kept pounding the window. The back doors were locked from the outside. The keys weren’t in the ignition.
The men watched me, lined up between her and me, facing the black Mercedes like a wall between us.
I knew she was out there. Waiting? Sobbing? Laughing?
Keaton got in the driver’s seat and started the car. Flinging his right arm over the front seat, he backed out of the driveway. “I’ve never seen you like this.”
I put my cheek on the cool window to keep my eyes on the yard. The wall of men broke up. In a flash of blond between the side of the house and the edge of the car window, I saw her run toward the back door.
“Let me out.”
“No.”
Was that the last time I’d see her? That flash of blond hair jogging to the back porch and out of sight? Was that the end of the script?
I snapped the door handle. Still didn’t work.
Keaton swung onto the road and peeled out as if he was being chased. He wasn’t.