Lick Is A Four-Letter Word (20 page)

Chapter
Twelve

Josh
shifted his weight, a little sore from last night’s dining room table
adventures.
Not that I minded at the time
, he thought, bemused at how
much he’d liked it. He’d never in his entire life ever once thought about
having sex with a man. Yeah, sure, he’d admired
Troy
for a long time, even thought about what
it would be like to kiss a guy from time to time, but the whole gay sex thing?
Nope. He honestly hadn’t considered it.

“
You doing
okay?”
Troy
asked, leaning over the desk.

Josh
rolled his eyes.
“Yes, darling.”

Troy
scowled. “So, we’re not talking about this?” He pulled up Felicity’s extra
chair and sat down.

Josh
sighed and leaned back, grateful that Felicity’s den came equipped with a
really nice office chair. There was no way he’d be able to sit on a hard
folding chair, like the one he used for his desk back at his apartment. “We can
talk,” he said, then waited. As expected,
Troy
’s
face went through a flurry of emotions: irritation, amusement, fondness, and
finally shyness. That was what Josh was waiting for.

“You
know I love you, right?” he said, smiling. He did. He’d loved
Troy
for a very long time. Now that their
relationship had expanded to include Felicity, he loved
Troy
even more deeply.

Troy
rubbed the back of his neck.
“Yeah.
I love you too,”
he mumbled.

Josh
grinned.

Troy
smiled back.

“I want
you to fuck me again. Just like last night,” Josh said.

Troy
stopped breathing.

Josh
laughed. “Only not too soon, okay? I need to recover.”

“So do
I
,” Felicity said, walking in. “But we are definitely doing
that again.” She chewed on the inside of her cheek. “And maybe not on the table
next time, okay?”

Troy
chuckled.

Josh
sat there, drinking her in. She wore a white, flowing dress with tiny pink
flowers embroidered along the bodice and edges. Her blonde hair flowed loose
around her shoulders. She was barefoot.

“Damn,
you are so beautiful, Felicity,” he breathed.

She
smiled softly at him. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

Troy
laughed. “That is true. Josh here is a looker.” He leaned over, and to Josh’s
astonishment, kissed him on the lips.

“You
two can do that anytime, but preferably where I can watch,” Felicity said,
walking over. When
Troy
reached for her, she perched on his lap. “What are you doing?”

Josh
held up the flash drive they’d found in the basement yesterday. “Want to see
what’s on it?”

Her
face sobered abruptly.
“Yeah.
Plug it in.”

He
nodded once and swiveled back to the desk. Her laptop sat on the smooth wood
surface, still closed. “Okay if I use your computer?”

She
nodded.

He
opened it and waited for it to boot up. He glanced at Felicity. She was chewing
on her lip.

“Hey,”
he said, concerned. “We’re here. Whatever it is, you know we’ll be here with
you the whole time.”

“I
know,” she smiled tremulously at him, almost breaking his heart. “It’s just…”
She stopped and tried again. “I had no idea Peter was keeping things from me.
Why would he do that?”

“Maybe
there was something about his job he couldn’t talk about. When I did contract
work, there were all sorts of non-disclosure agreements I had to sign.”
Troy
slid an arm around
her waist and she leaned into him. “I even had to get some security
clearances.”

“It
could be something as simple as his company’s financial stuff. He wouldn’t have
been able to show you that,” Josh added.

She
nodded. “You’re right. I’m just paranoid. The day he died, we were in the car,
talking about where we wanted to go for dinner. The other vehicle came out of
nowhere. We were parked, in the lot. The whole thing was so strange.”

Josh
frowned. “Let me pop this in and see what it is before we jump to conclusions.”

“Okay,”
she said.

He
inserted the memory into the side of her computer,
then
opened it up. As soon as he clicked on the icon, a password prompt came up with
six slots. “What’s your
birthdate
?” he asked her.

“Four,
thirty-one, eighty-three,” she said.

He
punched in the number, adding a zero before the four. The flash drive opened.

“Whoa,
I didn’t think that would work,”
Troy
exclaimed.

“Why not?”
Felicity asked.

“Using
your loved one’s
birthdate
is the worst password
ever,” Josh explained absently. He clicked open the main folder, then his eyes
widened as he read through the information. “Oh shit,” he mumbled, clicking
again.

“What?
What is it?” Felicity leaned in, reading the information. “None of that makes
any sense to me.”

“That’s
because you’re not a programmer,”
Troy
said, voice tight. “Is that what I think it is?”

Josh
nodded. “If you think it’s the long-lost algorithm a certain company was
touting could break even the most complicated encryption three years ago,
you’re right.”

Felicity
looked from him to
Troy
,
confused. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

Josh
swiveled his chair toward her. “I don’t think Peter was an accountant,
Felicity.” He took her hand.

“What
was he, then?” Her voice sounded thin and very young, suddenly.

“If
this information is correct, he was a programmer for the
DoD
.”

“But,
Peter didn’t work for the government,” Felicity argued, totally confused. She sipped
her coffee, grateful for the caffeine.

“He was
probably a contractor,”
Troy
explained. “I did a few jobs for them, but technically, I wasn’t on their
payroll. I worked for a small contracting company.”

“The
thing is
,
it’s stupid that anyone would even want this
algorithm. Sure, it can break certain kinds of encryption, but most hackers go
around the password stuff, phish for information from clueless users. Trying to
break encryption is the brute-force method of hacking into something. It’s
expensive and pointless.” Josh sighed and ran his hands through his hair.

Felicity
thought about this. “Even so, we need to call someone. As long as these people
think I still have it, they’ll be trying to get it from me.”

“Well,
it’s not like we can put out an ad on the internet,”
Troy
said, tension in his voice.

She
shook her head. “I know. I’ll call Charlie.”

Both
men looked at her. “Who’s Charlie?” Josh asked.

“Peter’s friend from work.
He’s the
only one I ever met from his job.” She sighed. “I guess he’s not an accountant,
either.”

An hour
later, a plain sedan parked in front of her house. Felicity watched from the
upstairs window as Charlie got out of the car. He looked a little older, had
maybe a bit more gray at his temples, but otherwise he still looked like the
kind man Peter had claimed was his only friend at his job.

“That him?”
Josh asked.

She
nodded.

“That’s
a fed, if I ever saw one, and I’ve seen plenty,”
Troy
said.

“You
get picked up by the traffic cops for doing absolutely nothing wrong, but you
have really high security clearance for the government?” Felicity shook her
head. “That’s so stupid.”

“The
cops don’t know I was one of the people who coded their databases.”
Troy
laughed.

“It’s a
good thing you have a sense of humor about it,” Felicity grumbled.

Her
doorbell rang.

She
took a deep breath. “Here we go.”

Josh
put a hand on her arm just before she went down the stairs. “Don’t stress.”

She
half-smiled and pulled away. “If it wasn’t important, he wouldn’t have shown up
within an hour of calling, not after three years.”

Josh
shrugged. “I know, but
Troy
and I are here now.”

She
nodded and went down.

Charlie
sat in front of her desk, holding the flash drive in his hand. “I can’t believe
it.
After all this time.”
His dark blue eyes were
calm, but showed his concern. “I looked for this for a long time.”

“If I’d
known it was in Peter’s stuff, I would have called you a long time ago,”
Felicity said.

Charlie
shook his head. “It’s not your fault. I packed his stuff myself. It must have
fallen inside.” He rubbed his face.
“My God.
You know
what this means?”

Felicity
was afraid she did.

“Peter’s
death wasn’t an accident.” Josh pulled Felicity into his arms. He was leaning
against the desk and she sank into him gratefully, still trying to process the
knowledge that Peter was murdered.

“What
do we do now?” she asked eventually.

Charlie
sighed. “You don’t have to do anything. I’ll take the algorithm with me and
it’ll be out of your hands. We’ll have to have an investigation of the car
crash, of course.”

“What
about the men who attacked Felicity?”
Troy
asked.

“I’ll
be going straight from here to where they’re holding them,” Charlie answered.
He leaned forward, eyes serious. “Felicity, I’m so sorry about this. You have
to know, Peter was my good friend. And I’m to blame for his death.” He looked
like he’d aged ten years in as many minutes.

She
shook her head. “It’s not your fault. Peter never told me he worked for the
government. And he always said nice things about you.”

“He
couldn’t tell you, you know,” Charlie said.

She
nodded. “I know.” She pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment,
then
let her hand drop. “What are you going to do with
that?” She pointed to the tiny piece of technology in his hand.
It’s weird
how something so small could create such upheaval in my life
, she thought.

“I’m
going to publish it on the internet,” Charlie said.

“Wait,
seriously?” She didn’t believe it. After all the secrecy, he was just going to
put it out there?

“The
only way to keep you safe is to make it public. I’ll work with my bosses on it.
They’ll probably want to distribute it first to those corporations and
government systems that could be most directly affected by the algorithm, but
then we’ll put it on the web.” He snorted. “It’s already mostly obsolete
technology, anyway.”

Felicity
leaned back into Josh. “I don’t like being stalked.”

Charlie
closed his fingers around the slim device. “I know. I’m so sorry that happened
to you.”

“How
soon can you go public with it?” she asked, not wanting to think about it.
No
sense dwelling on stuff I can’t change.

“I’d
say a week.
Two at the most.”
Charlie smiled grimly.
“I’m motivated. And I want those assholes to pay for attacking you. Hopefully
I’ll be able to find out who was behind the car crash that killed Peter, too.
The sooner I get this out
there,
the sooner loose ends
will start unraveling.”

Felicity
frowned. “How can you do all this? I thought you were a programmer, too.”

He
shook his head. “No, I’m a cyber-crime investigator. That’s why Peter was
working with me on this.” He held up his fist. “We were using it to lure in the
bad guys.”

“Like
bait,” Felicity said.

“Exactly
like bait,” Charlie agreed.

“I
can’t believe it’s all over,” Felicity murmured a little while later, lying
back against
Troy
in her bed. She was exhausted.

“What
is?” he asked, stroking a hand down her hair.

She
shrugged. “For years I was really torn up about Peter’s death. Like, why me?
Why did I survive? I didn’t get it.” She sighed. “Now I find out it wasn’t an
accident. It’s disturbing.”