Hardwired For Ecstasy (12 page)

“We
already did that, remember? How about the sidewalk out front?”

She
laughed again. “Anywhere. Anything. As long as I’m with you.”

He
pulled her closer. “I love you, Emma.”

Emma
was certain her heart would burst from joy. “I love you, too.”

Chapter
Seventeen

The
next two weeks lulled Atticus into a false sense of security. Everything was
too perfect. Even the sex was better, and he hadn’t believed it could be. Every
moment with Emma was like a breath of fresh air.
Real
air, the way he remembered it from the surface.

It
had been a month since the article surfaced, and not one thing had happened. He
hadn’t been able to find anything on any of Emma’s former coworkers that
suggested one of them had written it, and he was almost ready to give up
caring.

They
had everything they needed now. The real names of the thirteen people on the
snippet of conversation they’d pulled off the satellite, plus the real names
and locations of the five hackers.

A
few of the Weathermen wanted to wait until they’d found the locations of each
of the thirteen people, but most did not. They were ready to move forward.
Atticus didn’t want to wait until something else happened and they lost the
hackers again.

One
other thing in his life could no longer wait, as far as he was concerned. He
wanted to marry Emma. She was everything he’d ever wanted, and he loved her
with a passion he’d never known. To hell with the article and the hackers. If
they were all going to die in these cities because no one could stop The
Madeline Project, at least he’d have a few years with the woman he’d searched
all his life for. He wanted those years to include Emma as his wife, not merely
his lover.

He
was on a call with all the others and it was wrapping up. He sent Emmett a PM
and asked him to stay on the call with him after the others left it. Atticus
felt closer to Emmett than to any of the others for the simple reason that
Emmett understood Atticus’s fascination with gadgets. They made small talk for
a few moments and then Emmett asked how the design Emma was working on was
going.

Atticus
chuckled. “She’s almost done. We’ll be ready to construct a prototype we can
actually test in less than two months, or possibly sooner. I’ve never seen
anyone work so hard, or stay so focused. She took my ideas and boom. Off she
went. It’s exactly what I had pictured.”

“You’re
lucky she came to work for you.”

Emmett’s
grin told Atticus he realized there was much more between him and Emma. “Right.
I’m lucky she walked into my life. Emmett, I want to marry her. That’s why I
asked you to stay on the call. What do you think?”

“What
the hell does it matter what I think? I say go for it.”

“I
know Ace is blissfully happy, but are you? Is it really all it’s cracked up to
be?”

“I’m
thrilled to death being married. I mean that. Does Emma want to be married?”

“I
don’t know. We never talked about it. But we love each other, and she knows
that. What could be more natural?”

“You
won’t get an argument from me, but I wasn’t sure that’s what I wanted until I
met Liane. I’d at least bring up the subject, though, just to be sure. Bonnie’s
asshole husband put her through a lot. She might be turned off by the whole
idea for all you know.”

Atticus
knew as much, but he appreciated Emmett saying it. It proved to him how true
that could be.

“Do
you have a ring yet?”

“No.”

“Talk
to Addison. He has a few that his teams have found on the surface over the
years. He can send you pictures and overnight one to you.”

“Great
idea. Thanks.”

“Why
haven’t you told the others?”

“I
don’t know. I guess I’m afraid she’ll say ‘no’.”

Emmett
smiled. “I doubt she will.”

Atticus
went to the only jewelry store in CentralEast one afternoon that week, but he
didn’t see anything he liked. Emma’s engagement ring should be stunning.
Special. Unique like she was. He finally called Addison one morning and told
him what he was looking for.

Later
that day, Addison emailed him three pictures of rings he had in the storeroom,
and Atticus chose the perfect one. It featured a huge chocolate diamond
surrounded by tiny pieces of dark brown jasper. It was exactly what he’d been
hoping to find. He already knew her ring size thanks to some stealth moves on
his part with a ring she wore on her right hand, and as Addison offered to have
it sized before he shipped it, Atticus took care of that as well.

The
only thing left to do was come up with the perfect place and time to ask her.

He
struggled for the rest of the week with a way to casually drop marriage and
children into the conversation, to gauge her reaction, but every time he
thought there was an opening, the words that filled his mind sounded contrived.

His
attention was drawn away from the ring and his plans for proposing on Friday of
that week, when Barclay set up an urgent video call with all of them after
lunch. “Sorry for the short notice,” he said, “but I’ve just heard some
disturbing news from Denise and Patrick.”

Denise
Francis and Patrick Leff were the contacts at HCS Barclay had known for years.
They were also the two who had backed up the Weathermen’s plan to have first
crack at the hackers. Bonnie was Patrick’s supervisor at HCS, and Dave Perry
was Denise’s.

“And
I have some bad news, too,” said Oliver. “But I’ll let Barclay give his first.”

“Denise
and Patrick both called me this morning,” said Barclay. “Dave Perry and Bonnie
Clough have been fired from HCS.”

Barclay
waited until the uproar quieted down before he continued.

“This
is all they both know right now, but I think it’s enough to piece together what
happened. Dave wrote the article and tried to cover his tracks. I don’t know
how his supervisor discovered it was him, but she did. Denise and Patrick are
trying to find out because this might have far-reaching implications for all of
us, depending on how Dave was outed.”

“What
about Bonnie?” asked
Ace.

“Hang
on. I’m getting to that part. Dave tried to make it look like Bonnie had
written the article, even going so far as to set up a fake email path that went
back to her work machine. But he must have left footprints he wasn’t aware of
in the code because what he’d done was discovered.”

“I
thought Dave and Bonnie were thick as thieves?” asked Emmett.

“So
did
we
all. Denise said they had some sort of falling
out soon after Grayson and I met with the four in Central, and have been going
at each other at work ever since. Patrick said he’d heard through the grapevine
that Dave overheard Bonnie talking to some of her friends at work about what
Leland had done with Emma, and Patrick believes that’s why Dave put the
information in there about the police station and a person now working for us.”

“But
that means Dave or Bonnie know Emma is here,” said Atticus.

“That
wouldn’t be too hard to find out,” said Barclay. “Bonnie mentioned Emma by
name, if what Patrick heard was true. All Dave or Bonnie had to do was search
public records, or use their databases at work to track where she’d moved to.
Be thankful Dave didn’t mention her by name in the article, or name Yates
Industries as the place where she worked.”

“They
weren’t his target,” said Grayson. “Bonnie was. He put that in there to throw
us off the track, didn’t he? He wanted us to think it was Bonnie or Leland.”

“That’s
what I believe,” said Barclay. “And based on what Denise and Patrick know from
inside HCS, that’s the way it looks from their point of view as well.”

“With
them both fired, things will only escalate,” said Dominic.

“That’s
not the worst of it,” said Oliver. “I found an email this morning from Sam
Preston. He’s quit, and I have no fucking clue where he’s gone. I’ve done what
I can from my end to block his access to company systems from an outside
computer, and my IT team is looking for any hint he copied files before he
left, or where he might have gone.”

“Son
of bitch!” Grayson banged his fist on his desk. “I knew we should have fired
them all as soon as we found out.”

“Does
Dante still work for you?” asked Barclay.

“As
far as I know he does, but remember he and Sam have been friends for a long
time.”

“What
about Mindy?” asked
Kane.

“She’s
still here,” said Barclay. “What do you want us to do? We have four of them
still, plus most of the thirteen. If we wait any longer, they might all bolt.”

“Blaine
and I know people who can pick them up within a few hours, as soon as we say
so,” said Viggo. “You tell us where to take them and it’s done.”

“Where
isn’t an issue,” said Barclay. “Denise and Patrick both have told me about a
building that HCS no longer uses. It’s in Central and looks like an abandoned
warehouse from the outside. We’d need our own security team, but I’m sure among
the twelve of us we can take care of that.”

“What
do we do with them once we have them?” asked Damien.

“We
need to figure that out before we do anything else,” said Addison. “This shit
has gone on long enough. We have to act soon or they’re all gone.”

“Who
else do we tell this to?” asked Ace.

“I
say we let our wives and fiancées in on it,” said Emmett, “because we might all
be traveling to Central very soon.”

The
others agreed. Viggo and Blaine assured the group they’d set things in motion.
Then once the call was finished, Atticus asked Emma to come to his office. She
took a seat, and he outlined everything that had happened on the call.

“Holy
shit. Do you think Dave is connected to this somehow? Wasn’t he one of the
original programmers on The Madeline Project?”

“He
sure was. I hate to say it, but I don’t know why else he’d do this to us. I
know he didn’t want us going gangbusters on the hackers, but I always assumed
that was because he likes to do things by the book, not because he’s involved
in this. None of us would have believed that of him. We trusted him. We didn’t
like him, but we trusted him.”

“How
come his name never came up in all the searches each of your teams has done?”

“Good
question. Either he’s hidden himself that well, or we’re wrong and he’s not
involved. Or he might be involved but only on the fringes.” Atticus ran his
fingers through his hair. “Hell. I don’t know what the fuck his game is. I only
know he’s the one who wrote the article, and now he and Bonnie are gone from
HCS. That’s going to make them both pissed off as hell because they’ll blame us
for it.”

She
put her arms around him. “What can I do to help?”

“Stay
safe. I’m going to put my security team on you at all times now. You won’t know
they’re there.”

“Okay.”

“Thank
you for not minding that. And I need you to understand that I might have to
leave for Central suddenly.”

“I
understand, but Atticus, this is scary. I don’t want any of you hurt over this.
I don’t mean more bad press. I mean physically hurt.”

He
pulled her closer and stroked her hair. “Don’t you
worry.
I don’t intend to start busting jaws.”

“But
you all don’t have a solid plan about what to do with them, do you?”

“Unfortunately,
no.”

“Well,
I know you’ll figure it out. You always seem to do that. I’ve never seen a
group of men so dedicated to one cause, and so resourceful. You’ve all had so
much shit thrown at you over the years but you just keep going anyway. You
really are our last hope to save the planet.”

Atticus
was beyond flattered by her words, but if she knew the truth of how fucking
terrified he was, she might not be so in awe of him. “We still have the hope of
reversing those fields.”

“Time
to test that, isn’t it? Then you all won’t need to go to Central and bust heads
or jaws.”

He
couldn’t help but smile. “Wouldn’t that be nice?”

“But
then the hackers will have gotten away with it.”

“They
have anyway unless we can figure out how to stop this.”

They
held each other for long moments before he told Emma to return to work. She
didn’t want to go, but he finally persuaded her he was okay and had a lot of
planning to do. After she left, he took the ring out of the box where he’d
placed it in his desk drawer.

It
had arrived this morning, and he still hadn’t figured out how or where to ask
her. Now, it seemed more urgent than ever, but he hated the idea of doing this
with the newest wrinkle in their plan hanging over his head. Still, he wasn’t
about to leave for Central and take on this crazy vigilante scheme—whatever it
turned out to be—without first knowing Emma would one day be his wife.

She
meant everything to him, and God forbid if something happened to him, he wanted
to know she’d be cared for and comfortable, at least materially, for the rest
of her life.