Hardwired For Ecstasy (9 page)

Chapter
Twelve

Emma
kept waiting for the punch line during the next two weeks. She was certain
she’d walked into a cosmic joke, because no one was this perfect. No man was
this attentive and kind, nor did any human make love the way Atticus did. It
couldn’t be real. Surely any day now he’d dump her, realizing he’d made a
horrible mistake. Or he’d show her a dark side. Or she’d wake up and find out
she’d dreamed the entire past five weeks.

But
none of those things happened. Instead, he paid more attention to her, and
delighted in finding new, inventive ways to have fun with her, in every room of
his apartment. His sexual appetites were insatiable, and the more time she
spent with him, the more her own desire increased.

It
was as if he’d flipped a switch that first night when he’d made her watch while
she masturbated, and now, she was no longer shy around him and couldn’t get
enough. She attributed it to him making her feel like the sexiest woman alive,
each and every time he so much as kissed her.

They
attended several hockey games, and she even taught Atticus the German folk song
he’d caught her singing in the tub that first night they’d made love. She still
spent several days a week working closely with him on the project, and he was
thrilled with her progress so far.

Six
weeks after she’d started working for Yates Industries, Emma worked alone for
several days on her project because Atticus was tied up in meetings. She had
reached a point in the design where she needed to know how users of GPS systems
on the surface had liked specific features of those systems. There was no point
in including features that people had hated, or that hadn’t worked the way
they’d expected them to.

To
research this, she decided to spend one morning surfing the same types of
message boards that Atticus’s hacker teams used to look for clues and names.
She wanted to read the comments of gadget enthusiasts, but she needed sites
that went back several years, or ones where people liked to talk about gadgets
that were once used on the surface.

The
members of his hacker team gave her a list of sites to try, so she started
there. They also gave her a list of top usernames they were looking for, in
case she came across any of them in her searches.

Emma
hadn’t done more than give the list of usernames a quick glance before
returning to her own work. While she appreciated the need to find that last
hacker, Atticus already paid his team to do that. She needed to focus on her
project first.

Most
of the sites the hacker team had given her hadn’t been around long enough to
contain any discussion of what she was looking for, but she did find references
on a few of them to the kind of features she was thinking of putting in the
design.

She
finally found a site on her own that had been around for over twenty years, and
where there was even a sub-forum dedicated to devices such as GPS systems.
After spending a couple of hours poring over threads that didn’t give her what
she needed, she stumbled on a small one that proved to be what she was looking
for.

Emma
made notes, intending to put them into a graph to determine the best way to go
about designing the features she had in mind. She worked without really
thinking beyond collecting responses, when a username popped out at her. She’d
seen that name before. She had tracked InkStain, AKA Shawn Castle, multiple
times in her former job for the police in NorthEast.

Shawn
had been arrested for cyber crimes in that city more times than Emma could
count, but somehow he’d always either been acquitted, or the DA hadn’t been
able to prosecute for one reason or another. It was rumored the officers in one
of the NorthEast district stations had named an interrogation room after him
because he’d been in it so often. He used the moniker InkStain because he was
literally covered in tattoos from his face to his toes, front and back.

But
where had she seen his username recently? She knew she had, which was why seeing
it again had pulled her out of her work. Was it on this site? He had only
posted a few times in this particular thread.

Emma
did a search for his username, but it didn’t come up on this site except where
she had noted it. That must have been where she’d seen it today, but the
question nagged at her because she knew she’d seen it somewhere else.

She
leaned back in her chair and stretched, then glanced at the items on her desk,
including the lists the hacker team had given her.
The lists…
She stared at the one with the usernames on it while the
hairs on the back of her neck prickled.

“No
fucking way,” she whispered.

Emma
picked up the list with shaking fingers. InkStain was on it, right at the top.
She’d glanced right over it earlier, and it hadn’t even clicked. “It can’t be…”
What if she hadn’t seen his name on this site? She’d have completely missed
this. She was so damn focused on her own work that she had nearly passed this
right over.

She
picked up the phone, intending to call Atticus, but knew he couldn’t be
disturbed except in an emergency. And while this could easily be classified as
one, she first wanted to be absolutely certain, so instead she called one of
the hacker team members.

“InkStain
is one of the hacker names you’re trying to find, correct? I mean you’re trying
to find his real name, right?”

“Yes.
He’s the final hacker. Why?”

“I
know his real name, and I know where he lives.”

****

There
was pandemonium at Yates Industries for the remainder of the day. Atticus was
called out of his meeting by the hacker team. When he heard how Emma had found
InkStain’s real name and whereabouts, he picked her up and twirled her around
until she became dizzy and begged him to put her down. Atticus had champagne
brought in for the entire building, and the hacker team gathered in one of the
large conference rooms on the top floor for an impromptu party.

Atticus
brought his laptop into the room and hooked it up to the large monitor on the
wall so everyone could see and hear his video call with the other Weathermen. Emma
had never felt so proud in her life. If she had decided to simply wing it with
her design, or use different features instead, she might never have learned
that Shawn was the final hacker they’d been searching for. She might never have
come across his username in her surfing.

She
had asked Atticus why they hadn’t found it by searching criminal records, and
he told her it had never occurred to them to do so. The other hackers didn’t
have records, and had hidden their identities so well that they all assumed the
fifth one had hidden his, too.

Once
the call was connected, Atticus reiterated Emma’s question to the others, as
well as his answer. “I feel foolish now that we never thought to search
criminal records for any of these people.”

“We
can search them now,” said Dominic. “I’m betting Shawn Castle isn’t the only
one with a record.”

“He
was right under our noses,” said Viggo.

“All
of them were right under our noses,” said Barclay, his voice dripping with
sarcasm. “Not having a record doesn’t make their behavior any less criminal.”

“Agreed,”
said Oliver. “But the important thing is that now we have all five identified.”

“What’s
the next step?” asked Ace. “How do we want to proceed?”

Emma
glanced around. Granted, they had found the fifth hacker and he wasn’t on
Atticus’s team, but was this something they should be listening to? Was it
something
she
should be privy to?

She
caught Atticus’s eye and realized he was thinking the same thing. He addressed
the Weathermen. “Hang on a moment. I’m going to let my team take the rest of
the day off, and then we’ll decide where to go from here.”

No
one on his team seemed upset by being asked to leave, and Emma started to
follow them out the door but Atticus stopped her. “You need to stay.”

“Why?”

He
gave her a look of incredulity. “Why? Because you found him, Emma. Without you,
we wouldn’t be here right now.”

She
leaned close, even though they were far enough away from the laptop that it was
unlikely the other Weathermen could hear her. “You trust me that much?”

Atticus
gave her an intense look filled with desire. “Emma, I would trust you with my
life.”

The
urge to kiss him was strong. She lowered her voice even further. “But do they?”

“They
will if I tell them that I do.”

She
gave him a quick kiss then walked back in front of the camera on the laptop and
sat down next to Atticus. It wasn’t the first time she’d been on a call with
all the Weathermen, but this was different because now she felt like part of
their inner circle. Before, her calls had been to talk about software and apps.
This was a strategy meeting, and it wasn’t meant for others’ eyes or ears.

When
Angela Davidson, Rissa Kerry, Valerie Garfield, Blair Adams, Harper Easton, and
Liane Radcliffe joined the call, she realized these women weren’t simply
married or engaged to one of the Weathermen. They were part of their respective
teams, and integral members of this group of dedicated people determined to
take back their planet.

She
was in awe of everyone on this call as she listened to them plan their next
move. She also learned more about what had really happened during the days that
Barclay and Grayson had visited HCS headquarters in Central. Bonnie was more of
a first class bitch than Emma had realized, and she hoped the Weathermen
wouldn’t now have trouble from her.

Apparently
they had the go-ahead from key personnel at HCS to do whatever they wanted with
the hackers once they found them, on the condition that they let HCS know they
had them. It sounded shaky to Emma, but the others on this call were ecstatic,
so who was she to offer a dissenting opinion? They’d been in on this from the
beginning. She had not.

They
also discussed thirteen other usernames that had been intercepted on a snippet
of conversation that Barclay and a team at HCS had both accidentally come
across. They knew the real names of all but a few now, and as they talked about
them, Emma realized those remaining usernames were also on the list Atticus’s
hacker team had given her.

The
Weathermen knew all thirteen had once worked for NSSL, and they had access to
the information on the servers that the hackers would have had to know in order
to do what they had done. The Weathermen also wanted to find these thirteen,
but for now they made plans to move forward.

Their
immediate plan was to work on a scheme designed to get all five in the same
place. They agreed it might be awkward to do that for Shawn and Clyde Medici,
who was HeadHonchoYDNNTST, because they didn’t work for one of the Weathermen
like SmartGuy2102, TornadoTess, and SDCowboy did, but they were determined to
come up with a plan.

Before
the call ended, Angela asked where they were on reversing the magnetic fields,
and then they discussed where Corbin and Harold were in their research. Emma
was skeptical on the whole reversing magnetic fields theory, but she had to
admire their willingness to think outside the box and try anything.

Even
gathering the hackers together in one room and threatening them was no
guarantee they’d give up a solution. And the absolute truth was that there
might not be a solution. No one had been able to hack back into the program.
The failsafes that had been built into it, and had been overridden once, were
now impenetrable.

If
someone—hacker or not—didn’t figure out a way to break back in and stop it, and
if reversing the magnetic fields didn’t work, all the work, money, and effort
the Weathermen had put into finding the hackers would be for nothing. They’d
all die underground from lack of oxygen in less than three years.

Chapter
Thirteen

That
evening, after Emma and Atticus had eaten dinner and discussed the excitement
of the day again, Emma wanted him so badly that she didn’t care to wait until
they were in a more private place. She had grown used to his staff hovering and
then discreetly disappearing when it was obvious she and Atticus were about to
have sex, so she’d also grown more bold in her sexual adventures with Atticus.

This
particular evening, she waited until they were finished with dessert, then rose
and shut the door to the dining room. Atticus grinned as he watched her. She
took off her sweater and bra, then pulled down her jeans, taking the panties
with them, but she left on her short boots.

“Oh,
I like that.”

His
voice was filled with lust, and as usual, it sent shivers up and down her
spine. He started to undo his own jeans but she stopped him.

“No.
You just relax and let me do all the work.”

“Baby,
do you have any idea how fucking sexy you look right now?”

“I
love to hear you talk to me like that.”

“And
I love it when you do things like this.”

She
knelt in front of him and brushed her hands up his legs, smiling into his eyes
the entire time. Then she buried her face in his crotch, her pussy growing wet
as he groaned softly and grasped her hair.

He
pushed her face closer. “Please don’t tease me, Emma.”

“I
like to tease you.”

Atticus
tugged on her hair, which never failed to excite her. She undid his jeans and
took out his dick, but tortured him a bit more by licking up and down the
length before she finally took it into her mouth.

“Oh,
God!” Atticus gave her hair another hard tug, then held onto her head with both
hands as he inched more of his cock inside her mouth. She didn’t mind. She
loved doing this to him so much because she was always rewarded afterward with
the most powerful orgasms he could give her. Not only that, but she loved to
please him in this way. She loved
him
,
but he didn’t know that. Not yet. She was still too afraid of his reaction to
say the words.

“I’m
going to come, baby.”

She
braced herself, then tried to swallow all his cum but some dribbled onto her
chin. When he finished, he shook his head slightly then helped her stand.
Placing one hand on each shoulder, he gazed into her eyes with what Emma swore
was love. She almost let the words spill out, but fear held her back.

“That
was amazing. Thank you so much.”

She
smiled in return because she knew if she spoke right now, she’d tell him how
she felt.

“Your
turn, my love.” He kissed her, then took her hand and led her from the room.
She was still naked except for her boots. They’d left her clothes on the floor
in the dining room, and Atticus hadn’t tucked his dick back into his pants. He
seemed completely unaffected by this as he crossed the apartment to the
library.

He
closed the door behind them and grinned at her in a way that made her pussy
even wetter than it already was. She’d only been in here a few times, but loved
the atmosphere. Old, dusty, and very quiet.

“We
haven’t been in here often enough.” He pushed her down on the leather sofa,
then knelt between her legs and licked her pussy and clit until she was certain
she’d go out of her mind. He pushed two fingers into her wetness, moving them
in and out at precisely the correct speed and rhythm until she came, screaming
his name.

She
clutched at his hair, riding the waves as he kept it up long after the
contractions finished. He was determined to force another orgasm out of her,
and she could do nothing but give over to it.

When
it happened, all she had left were whimpers and soft moans. She lay there,
unable to move or think. Atticus gently crawled on top of her and gathered her
in his arms. “Emma, you’re an incredible lover.”

“So
are you,” she whispered.
Everything about
you is incredible
.

“We’d
better go and retrieve your clothes.”

She
smiled. “But I don’t want to move right now.”

“I
suppose we could simply sleep here.”

“What a wonderful idea.”

She snuggled back against him and
didn’t realize she’d fallen asleep until a noise woke her. She had no idea how
long she’d been out.

Atticus was in the room, talking,
but he was no longer next to her. She sat up, wondering when he’d retrieved her
clothes. They were folded neatly on the coffee table, so she put them on and
then crossed the room to where he was on his phone. His laptop was open on the
desk.

Emma sat next to him, and he gave
her a concerned frown. She was afraid to look at the screen so instead she
listened to his side of the call. It was Emmett on the other end, and although
she couldn’t make out all the words, he was clearly very upset.

“I’ll speak with Emma and see if we
can’t make sense of this, but first I need her permission to tell all of you
about her prior relationship with Leland.”

What
? Emma moved his laptop so she
could see the screen. At first, she had trouble concentrating on the words,
mostly because she was still focused on what Atticus had just said to Emmett.

The article wasn’t posted in one of
the rag mags. This was a legit news source based in Central. It was a small
one, but that meant nothing. It would go viral because of the content.

No!
This had
not
happened. It couldn’t be true.

“Right,” said Atticus, his gaze
trained on her. “Got it. I’ll let you know what she says.” He disconnected the
call and then reached across the space between their chairs to put an arm
around her shoulder. “It’s all right.”

“No. No, it’s not all right. What
the fuck is this, Atticus?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

“What? Why would I know anything
about this?”

He didn’t answer, but he didn’t
have to. He believed she had something to do with this.

She forced her brain to function
and read the article again. An unnamed source who worked for HCS had told
reporters that the Weathermen knew the exact location of all the hackers who
had sabotaged The Madeline Project, and were deliberately keeping the
information from HCS.

It went on to say that one of the
civilians who used to work in the Fourth District police station in Central
tracking down criminals across the country now worked for one of the
Weathermen, and had fed him inside information that she’d gleaned from the
Central police so they could find the hackers. It intimated that this unnamed
woman was in on the scheme to hide the hackers’ identities and whereabouts from
HCS.

“Oh my God. Bonnie. Who else would
have done this?”

“Leland.”

Emma moved her chair so she could
face Atticus. “To what purpose?”

“Revenge.”

“Bonnie has more reason for revenge
against me and all of you than Leland does.”

“Unless
he found out you went back on your word to him.”

“But
how would he have found out? You didn’t tell him, and you’re the only person
who knows besides me and his wife.”

“I
said nothing to either of them.”

“I
know that, but neither did I. Bonnie found out I was here another way.”

“Or
Leland did.”

“I
don’t see Leland doing something like this.”

“And
I don’t see Bonnie doing it. She’d lose her job with HCS.”

“Only
if they find out it was her.”

Atticus
laughed, but it wasn’t a soft or easy one. It was snide and derisive, and the
sound made her want to cry. “Emma, you’re naïve where HCS is concerned. Whoever
the source was, they
will
find out.”

“Then
let them do their investigation and the truth will come out.”

“That’s
all fine and good, but what the fuck do I do in the meantime? What do the rest
of us do? Do you understand what this means? It means Mindy Tesserone, Dante
Herrera, and Sam Preston, as soon as they read this, will start comparing notes
and examining every nuance of anything said to them, anything they read in
company memos, and every action that Barclay, Grayson, and Oliver have taken in
the past six months or longer.”

He
slammed his fists on the desk so hard Emma was surprised the computer hard
drive didn’t crash.

“And
once they do that, the truth about Hallee and Dirk will come out. They’ll
realize we’ve been onto them for months now, and they will alert Clyde Medici
and Shawn Castle. The jig is up. We’ve just lost all of them again, and there
is no fucking way they will ever let us find them a second time.”

He
rose. “I have serious damage control to start on, beginning with your
relationship with Leland. I need to tell them about that.”

She
nodded.

“Does
that mean I have your permission to do so?”

Why
did he sound so skeptical? “Yes, of course you do. Tell them whatever you have
to in order to get to the bottom of this.”

“Thank
you.” He eyed her with a hard stare that had her confused. “Are you sleeping
here tonight?”

“I…”
She swallowed hard, fighting against tears. “Not if you’d rather I didn’t.”
Most of her things were here now, but screw that. She’d deal with it.

“It’s
probably best you… Shit. I don’t know.” He ran his fingers through his hair,
clearly conflicted about her. Emma’s heart was breaking, and she didn’t know
what to do. “Stay here. It’s fine. But I’ll likely be working all night.”

His
computer pinged with an incoming video call, making her jump slightly.

“That’s
the rest of them. I have to take this.”

She
rose. “I’ll go upstairs then. Atticus, I didn’t do this. Why would I? They
might not have mentioned my name, but clearly the woman they’re talking about
is me.”

His
frown deepened, but his expression gave away nothing.

“I
don’t know which one of them did this, but it was either Leland or Bonnie. My
money is on Bonnie. But it wasn’t me. I need to know you believe me.”

He
gazed at her for long moments while the constant pings from his laptop told her
the other Weathermen were waiting for him to join the call. Fuck them. This was
more important to her right now.

“I
don’t know what I believe right now. I need time to think about it. Get some
sleep. We’ll talk in the morning.”

She
opened her mouth, but nothing came out. Emma felt like someone had just stuck a
pin in her and drained all the air out of her lungs. If she hadn’t been so
determined not to show him weakness, she’d have collapsed onto the floor.

She’d
found the final hacker. They’d just made love. Everything had been perfect. And
in the space of a few moments, because of an article she’d bet a year’s salary
on that Bonnie had planted, it was gone. All of it. He no longer believed her
or trusted her. And whatever might have been was over, just like that.

She
turned around and forced her feet to move toward the door. Behind her, she
heard him answer the call, but he told them all to hang on a moment. He didn’t
want her to hear any of this. That was the last straw.

Emma
walked through his apartment, swiping at the tears falling down her cheeks,
grateful his staff was nowhere around. She went into the bedroom where she’d
put most of her clothes and personal items weeks ago, and stuffed them into her
large duffel bag.

Then
she went into Atticus’s bedroom and gathered up the items that were in there,
shoving them into the bag as well. There were still some things in the
apartment, but she’d get them another time. This would at least allow her to
live at her own apartment for a while until she figured out what to do.

She
grabbed her laptop bag and left the apartment. Atticus must have still been in
the library because she couldn’t even hear his voice. No one saw her leave,
which was what she wanted. She couldn’t deal with explanations right now.

Once
she was back home, she tossed her duffel on the floor of her bedroom and curled
up on the bed, letting the rest of the tears come. Maybe she’d be able to
sleep. Then in the morning she’d figure out what to do, starting with tracking
down who had planted that article. It was her best skill, after all. Finding
people.

Just
before she drifted off to sleep, she remembered that tomorrow was Tuesday and
Atticus would be expecting her at work. Fuck that. She’d send him an email in
the morning saying she was ill. She couldn’t face him. She couldn’t face any of
them.

The
best thing to do would be to quit. She had some money saved because he paid her
a hell of a lot more than she’d made at the police station. She’d find the
source of the article on her own and prove to Atticus he’d misjudged her, while
she looked for another job in a different city.