“Sit down, and shut the fuck up.” I stood and stalked toward him.
Chris stared back. “We still have to do work, even though your boyfriend’s not here.”
Was he really…? I wouldn’t get into a dick measuring contest with him, because he’d lose and then he’d be butthurt and then we’d have to hear about it all day. “We also have processes that don’t involve guessing where the issue might be, but discovering where the problem actually lies. Every person in this room knows that, and they don’t need to hear your random assumptions. Sit. Down.”
I’d learned a long time ago that all I needed in order to look imposing was to stand my ground. I looked at Chris, not saying anything else, until he walked back to his desk.
Great. “Show’s over. Each team knows where to focus. Check in with the group when you find something. We’re on a timer. Don’t let that freak you out, but find this issue.”
I returned to my own computer, and dove into work. The conversation with Chris wasn’t right. It wasn’t just that he got bossy and aggressive, it was how he’d approached this issue.
Like he wanted us to look in very specific places.
What bothered me even more was that when Team Beta checked in, they’d found the problem exactly where Chris told everyone to look. Stranger still, while the crash was hard enough to take the game down, the fix would only take a few hours to put in place and test. The crisis would be averted before most of the world even knew the game was down.
I wanted to call Elliot. I was desperate to talk to him. Not just because of this, though that certainly added to the urge. There was simply a longing to connect again. Over game crashes. Over anything. The only reason I didn’t dial him was because if it got out that I’d consulted with him, it could make his situation worse.
He needed to be back here next week. I wasn’t going to jeopardize that.
I could bounce some of my thoughts about Chris off the other developers. Alys was great because her experience gave her a lotof insight. Landon was great because his inexperience kept him from thinking things weren’t possible.
Both were horrible ideas because this conversation was going to drift toward Fallyn, which would mean bringing up that I was still talking to her, that I was unlikely to stop… Why was I keeping my relationship with her a secret again?
Because she asked me to, and that was the only reason.
The longer we worked, the more the tampering became evident. If I hadn’t been looking for it, I wouldn’t have seen it, but now it was like shining a blacklight over an adult movie theater.
Gross.
Infuriating.
Covered in Chris’s filth.
We brought everything back online within a few hours. Amazing how much faster things went when we had an idea of the cause and exactly where to focus our efforts. The job well done wasn’t enough to cool my simmering rage, though.
I needed to walk away for a couple of hours, and blow off steam in a way that required more than just thinking my way through it. A short scroll through my contacts landed me onLuther, and I dialed the instant I saw his name.
The phone call was long enough to sayhiand agree I’d meet him at a boxing gym a few miles away for a late lunch punch session. I told the other developers to call me if things went south while I was out, and I took off.
I’d met Luther in jail. He came from a family with money, parents who didn’t care for his hobbies, and a quiet but intense desire to find a place he fit. Apparently, I liked my men rich and broken with daddy issues. Biggest difference was that Luther was actually just a friend, and Elliot had never been anything so simple.
Luther had wanted to be CIA, digital ops. Even twenty years ago, he’d been a brilliant hacker. He’d found himself involved with an older man who promised to show him the ropes and hold the door open for him at the agency. Instead, the asshole had used Luther to take the fall for a botched operation.
When Luther and I met, I taught him how to defend himself and he taught me the basics of programming. His criminal record meant no one was hiring him for any position that required security clearance, so he’d gone into private security. The wealthy needed their digital lives protected at least as intently as their physical ones.
Luther was waiting outside when I pulled up at the boxing place. He was tall, wearing a suit that was a stark contrast to the white, cold weather, and looked like the single pillar of him was worth more than the rundown building he stood in front of. It was still weird to see him without glasses, even though he’d gotten rid of them years ago in favor of laser surgery.
He gave me a tight smile and an abbreviated nod when I approached, and we headed inside.
In the locker room, we changed into more appropriate clothes for beating each other up, then grabbed an empty ring at the edge of the main room.
We knocked gloves, then circled each other, each of us looking for that first opening.
“So what’s up?” Luther’s tone was casual and friendly, which was immediately a red flag.
I never heard him docasual and friendly. “I can’t just call to sayhi?” I threw a testing jab before he could.
He ducked and swung. “We’re not that kind of friends.”