by J P Barnaby
The empty bedroom.
He peeked out the door and noticed that the door of the spare bedroom, the one Aleks had set up for him, was closed.
He was alone.
ιη͵
“DID YOU and Lizzy sleep okay last night?” Thomas asked the image of his daughter on his cell phone screen. He’d been worried that the excitement from yesterday would keep her awake or give her nightmares.
“There was a monster in my closet.”
“There was? What did it look like?” Her voice didn’t contain the fear he expected. In fact, she seemed rather amused.
“I don’t know, it ran away before I could see it.”
“It ran away?”
“Well, yeah. Lizzy has way more teeth, and she scared it away.”
He laughed then; he couldn’t help it. For a moment he wondered if he could borrow Lizzy to scare away his own monsters. It was a child’s hope, but he’d take all the hope he could get. “How are you feeling today, baby?”
“Tired. I took the new medicine that Grandma gave me last night, but I don’t feel any better.” She didn’t look any more tired than usual, which pained him. Seven-year-old girls shouldn’t look tired. They should be vibrant and alive with dresses, glitter, and bows.
But then, it had been a long few days.
“The doctors say it’s a better medicine, but it’s going to take a while to start working.”
“I need a magic potion.”
“What color would it be?” The Gleevec was as close as they could get to magic potion, but he let her have her dream. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Aleks come into the kitchen. When he turned the phone so Hannah could say good morning, he stopped. Aleks’s hair looked a mess, and his heavy eyes were still crusted with sleep. Oddest of all, he stood there in pajama pants and a thin T-shirt when he should have been dressed for work.
“Hi, Aleks!” the voice on the screen yelled, like he was on the other side of the world instead of the other side of the room.
“Hey, Hannah.” Aleks managed a smile, but it was tight around his eyes. “What’s on your agenda for today?”
“What does agenda mean?” she asked, and then Aleks really did smile.
“It means what are you going to do today?”
“Oh, well, Grandma is on vacation, so we’re gonna go to a hotel and play in the pool.” She sounded as if that were the best vacation idea ever.
“That sounds like fun,” Thomas told her without turning the phone around to face him.
“She said I don’t have to wear my mask too.” That’s what she wanted, and that’s what Grandma said she’d get. She was scared and would probably give Hannah anything. Period. He had no problem with that.
“Okay, baby girl. You go get breakfast, and I’ll call you again tonight.” Thomas turned the phone around to kiss the screen, which made her giggle.
“I can call you too, Daddy,” she said.
“You’re probably better at using this thing than I am,” he admitted. Linux, Windows, and Java he’d mastered, but he’d never been a Mac guy, and the iPhone was just a tiny Mac.
“Grandma, that’s awesome!” Hannah dropped the phone onto the couch, leaving Thomas to stare at the ceiling of his parents’ house, wondering what miracle his mother had found. After two solid minutes of ceiling fan, he hung up. She’d figure out later that she’d left him on the couch, getting a glimpse of how she’d ignore him in her teenage years.
Now that she would have teenage years.
Aleks dropped a pod into the coffee maker and set his favorite cup underneath.
“Is it bring your pajamas to work day?” Thomas asked with a soft smile, trying to engage his husband.
“I’m not going to work. I have at least three or four years of leave built up. I figured I’d take some. Wes is going to take some time too. I talked to him this morning. He’s fucking terrified. They know who he is and that he knows what’s happening. He’s not even a part of it, but he’s screwed. Just something else I hate myself for.”
Aleks slipped a shot of Baileys into his mug as it filled with steaming coffee. Thomas hadn’t thought to make coffee for himself. It was a luxury they hadn’t been able to afford in years. He hadn’t gotten used to the world being at his fingertips. Maybe they were all living in survival mode now.
“Do you think it’s a good idea to change your routine? They’re watching us, Aleks,” Thomas said gently, putting his hand on Aleks’s forearm.
“They can watch me call in sick.” Aleks sat down at the island, next to Thomas, staring blandly at the countertop. He didn’t even pull out his phone to check the four million things he checked every morning. Email, stocks, news—they’d all been forgotten in his fog of angst.
“Don’t hate yourself.”
“Why?” Aleks took a long swig of spiked coffee as Thomas got up and grabbed a croissant from the container on the counter. He dropped it on a napkin next to Aleks. Then he hesitated. Everything in him said to wrap his arms around Aleks. He wondered if it would be for his own comfort or for Aleks’s.
He decided he didn’t care.
“Because no one else hates you.” Thomas wrapped his arms around Aleks from behind, pulling his husband back against his chest. Aleks stiffened, as if he were unsure about the gesture. It took a long moment, and Thomas nearly pulled away, but finally Aleks rested back against him.
“You should,” he whispered.
“I don’t,” Thomas whispered back and pressed a quiet kiss to the side of his neck. Aleks trembled, suppressed tears vibrating through his tense shoulders. As angry as Thomas was about the situation they found themselves in, he didn’t blame Aleks. He’d been nothing but kind and generous to his family since they’d rekindled their friendship. Even beyond the help he was giving Hannah. He’d just been supportive.
Loving.
Aleks glanced over his shoulder, and Thomas caught him in a kiss. Slow and sweet, it had the promise of heat behind it. Thomas touched his jaw, rough and unshaven, and Aleks pulled back before the kiss could fulfill that promise.
“You’re probably right. I’m going to go shower and then head into the office for a while. I’ll go nuts in this house. You should get out for a while too. Go see Hannah, make sure they get checked in okay.” Aleks pecked him on the cheek and left Thomas without meeting his gaze.
He’s ashamed.
Anger flushed through Thomas, filling his skin with heat. Aleks was a good man. He’d been a good man since college. Thomas couldn’t count the number of times Aleks had gotten his drunk ass back to the dorm. His chivalry had been sexy. And now, ten years later, it had come back full circle with him and his daughter.
Fuck this.
Thomas snuck upstairs, which wasn’t hard since he still felt like a stranger in this house. With the sound of the shower as a backdrop, he slid into the bedroom he shared with Aleks. On the dresser sat the neat pile of paraphernalia Aleks took to work each day. His phone, keys, wallet, tablet, and his access card. Thomas slid the access card out from under the keys with the precision of a drunken sailor, knocking them off the dresser. He caught them before they hit the hardwood floor and let out a breath when he returned them to the pile.
The shower cut off as Thomas slipped the card into the pocket of his shorts. He was out of the room before Aleks could even towel off.
“I THINK you’re right about getting out today. I think I’ll hit a bookstore and then head out to the hotel, maybe bring them some food.”
Thomas sat at the island, eating a croissant when Aleks came back downstairs, dressed for the day. He slathered on more jelly and smiled when Aleks dropped a kiss on his temple.
“We should do something tomorrow, the three of us. Lessen all of our anxiety. Hannah has to feel that something is going on right now.” Aleks thought about it for a long moment. “It’s starting to cool off a little. Maybe we could go to the zoo.”
“I’ll bring her home with me tonight, then, and we’ll figure out what to do tomorrow. T
he zoo may be pretty empty on a Friday during school. She hasn’t spent much time outside the house. It will be good for her to go somewhere.”
Thomas pretended to go back to the news on their iPad, but Aleks put a hand on his shoulder.
“We’ll figure something out.”
Thomas knew he wasn’t talking about Hannah but about the guys in the scary suits.
“I know.” And he did.
All he needed was a plan.
THOMAS TOSSED his croissant in the direction of the garbage can and sprinted toward the stairs as the Jag started up in the driveway. He could only hope that Aleks hadn’t noticed he didn’t have his card, or that he didn’t care. In the shower, Thomas forced himself to slow down. Aleks needed to be at work and settled in his routine before he could even think about sneaking up to the server room.
He ran the scenarios through his mind as the water cascaded down his skin. The server room would have a stronger staff during the week than the kid who halfheartedly maintained shit on the weekends. He could call in a bomb threat, but they’d trace it. Then they’d lock down the building and do a sweep of all the rooms. That wouldn’t work.
Steam hung heavy in the bathroom when he opened the shower door and stepped out. An idea struck him as he grabbed a towel hanging from the rack. He could hit the fire alarm. Trip it, get what he needed, and walk out with everyone evacuating. It would take a few minutes of confusion for people to groupthink into leaving the building. If they had a Halotron system, the fire suppression spray wouldn’t be triggered unless heat or flame registered.
With deliberation, Thomas went to Aleks’s closet and grabbed a Polytech polo—the same Polytech polo everyone in management wore. Then he threw on a pair of khaki pants. Aleks wore jeans, but Wes wore khakis, and Thomas couldn’t remember what the kid in the server room had been wearing when they went to the office. Either way, he was probably safer with smart casual.
Thomas grabbed writable CDs and a USB drive from his office on the way downstairs. If the network guys were smart—and they hadn’t been so far—they’d have the USB ports locked down. In fact, Thomas didn’t know a lot about PCI compliance, but it stood to reason that would be a good rule of thumb on secure servers. So he’d have to hope that some machine in that room had a writable CD drive.
His hands shook on the steering wheel of the Prius when he pulled onto the highway. He would be taking a huge risk today, maybe one that could get him sent back to prison. Deep in his heart, Thomas trusted Aleks to take care of Hannah, and he knew his mother would raise her well. He’d risk everything to keep them all safe.
His racing pulse drummed out a harsh beat as the Polytech building loomed ahead. The giant glass and concrete maze waited to swallow him up and spit him out at the feet of Atlanta’s finest.
Thomas swerved back into the left lane and passed up the building. It hadn’t occurred to him that Cash’s men might follow him. They were watching the house—it made sense they’d follow both him and Aleks to keep them in line. A block from the building, he pulled the car into a pay garage and grabbed a ticket. It took a few minutes to find a spot in the middle of an urban workday, but finally he slid in between a huge truck and a tiny post. Why people needed to drive a monstrosity like that into the city was beyond him, but he squeezed out of the car and then stopped with one hand on the trunk.
God, he didn’t want to do this. It was stupid and dangerous. The backups of the software would be on an internal server, not sitting on one exposed to the financial servers. That meant he probably wouldn’t be under federal jurisdiction when they arrested him. He took some comfort in that. But he had to get the code. He had to figure out a way to get them out of this. He had to be better than some goon who worked for the mob, right?
He left the garage and headed in the opposite direction from the Polytech building. His pulse pounded in his temples, and Thomas made random left and right turns before heading into the front entrance of the Shamrock Grill.
“Honey, sit anywhere and I’ll be with ya in a minute,” an older waitress called from behind the counter. She waved at him and grabbed a plate from the line cook with a kiss. He patted her bottom with the smile a man reserves for his wife.
“I’m going to hit the bathroom and then I’ll find a seat.” Thomas kept walking past the counter toward the bathrooms in the back. He prayed they hadn’t renovated since he and his buddies from Jonesboro had lunch here every week.
“Okay, take your time.”
Thomas made the turn toward the back room and thanked God to see the side door stood open to the cool May breeze. He strolled through and back out into the sun. Instinct told him to run, to get away from whoever might be following him, but the most conspicuous people were the ones who were trying not to be.
It took another twenty minutes of backtracking for Thomas to get back to the Polytech building. He cut through the alley and headed to the rear. He walked to the loading dock of the building, and a giant man with a soft face tossed him a wave as he went past. He’d been right to don the Polytech uniform. Just one of the guys taking one for the team, or whatever.
His near-fatal mistake came when one of the freight guys opened the door to get onto the elevator. As he pushed his cart in front of him, Thomas got a glimpse of the camera in the far corner of the hall. He hadn’t even thought about security cameras. The panic slammed against his chest like a ram. His eyes darted around the huge open bay as he desperately considered aborting his idiotic mission.
A Braves hat lay discarded on a nearby bench. Dropped on its side, not like someone had set it lovingly out of the way but more like it had been knocked off in a shuffle of humans and boxes. He glanced around making sure no one was paying attention and picked up the hat as he headed toward the door. In prison, he learned that sneaky people, conspicuous people trying to be inconspicuous—those were the ones who got caught. He needed to blend in and not bring attention to himself.
The hat fit nicely, and he grabbed an empty dolly from near the wall.
“Sir, did you need help with something?”
Thomas whirled and saw a kid no older than twenty-one coming toward him. Short blond hair just touched the top of his green polo, a completely different color than the turquoise one Thomas wore. They must have different colors for different areas of the company, not just levels of management. Sounded like Star Trek. Aleks was such a geek.
“No, we just need to move something in the computer room upstairs. I think we can handle it,” Thomas said in a jovial but stern voice, the kind that requested no argument.
“Oh, okay. Well, you can’t go that way. Mr. Sanna doesn’t let anyone use his private elevator, and that’s the only thing up that hall.” The kid nodded in the direction Thomas had been heading.
He took a deep breath and counted to ten, trying to stop his heart from exploding out of his chest. The kid would be more suspicious if he refused, so he said his thank-you and turned around toward the freight elevator. He’d pushed the cart about twenty feet when two guys with a pallet of wrapped boxes stopped in front of him. The smaller guy, an attractive man with a quick smile and broad shoulders, hit the button to go up, and Thomas had no choice but to fall in line behind them.
They talked about the Braves’ home opener from the Sunday before, lamenting ticket prices at the new stadium.
“They said that the concession prices are practically nothing,” the larger man said as he shifted his grip on the cart handle.
“Yeah, but the ticket prices more than make up for that. And you can’t even buy them direct, you have to go to a resale site. They’re probably gouging stiffs like us this year ’cause it’s brand-new.”
“But have you seen how fucking huge it is?”
“That’s what she said.”
They laughed at their own joke as the ding for the elevator sounded. Thomas wasn’t a huge sports fan, but he’d rather stand there all day listening to their banter than step into that overcrowded elevator and head up to his own destruction.
“Are you coming?” The smaller guy looked up at Thomas and waved him onto the elevator after them. “There’s room.”
Thomas pushed the cart across the bumps of the door track and drove it toward the corner. The guy who’d asked him to get on reached out and hit the number five. The number four was already lit up.
“You’re headed to the office, right? Not to the mail room?” he asked with a smile.
“Yes, I’m going up to five. Thanks,” Thomas answered, not looking up. The elevator had a small camera in the upper left corner. He’d seen it when he’d pushed the cart aboard.
Thomas didn’t notice the next three floors and squeaked closer to the corner as the guys unloaded their huge cart. They switched to talking about the Falcons and the draft when the doors closed, leaving him painfully alone with his fear. He hadn’t done anything yet. All he had to do was ride the elevator back down and walk out of the building.
Just leave.
The doors opened on five and he forced himself out, pushing the cart in front of him. He kept his head down as he headed to one of the rear office doors. He’d nearly made it when it opened in front of him. Glancing up, he saw two guys in eggplant shirts, the same as the receptionist, coming out of the door. They stopped and looked at him. For a moment Thomas forgot to breathe. Then they simply stepped to the side and held the door open for him to pass.
A beehive of cubicles lay ahead of him, where worker bees scurried around accomplishing their assigned tasks. He couldn’t even remember what that felt like. It seemed like a hundred years since he worked in an office, flirting with the sales staff and faking talk about Tech’s last game in the kitchen.
He glanced at the ceiling and saw no cameras, so he ditched the cart in a corner and headed left. Thomas didn’t remember exactly where the server room was, but they’d started out going left.