Incriminated (11 page)

MEREDITH ERIKSSON, 42, WAS HIGH WHEN

HIT-AND-RUN DRIVER STRUCK

Paolo focused on the headline on his cell phone. A mixture of emotions assailed him. Mostly, relief.

Meredith had been reported dead, killed outright by a hit-and-run driver, up in Malibu Canyon. At the Malibu Lawn Tennis Club, Paolo had been too cautious to ask a single question that related to her. He'd even been too scared to set up a news alert on the internet—didn't the NSA monitor searches? Instead, he'd checked the local news every day. This latest headline confirmed it—he was in the clear.

Climbing directly up the spiral staircase from the boardwalk outside, Paolo put his phone in his desk drawer and changed quickly into the short wet suit he'd just bought; black with turquoise trim. Then he took his keys, some
cash, and skipped back down the stairs. Maya and her tutor, Jack, were outside now, on the ground floor, by the front door.

“Just popping out for a spot of kitesurfing, old bean,” Paolo said in his best English accent, grinning at Jack.

“Kitesurfing, are you out of your mind?” Maya folded both arms across her chest, swept her eyes up and down Paolo, examining his short wet suit.

“You're taking lessons?” Jack said, impressed.

“I've taken
a
lesson,” Paolo confirmed. Now he was eager to fly solo.

“You got it after one lesson?” Maya asked.

He hadn't. But what was the point paying a tutor to tell him the same thing over and over? Paolo knew what to practice, he just needed water, wind, a board, and a sail.

Jack said, “I did a bit of that myself, on Eton Dorney. It's an artificial lake, at school.”

“Your high school had its own lake for kitesurfing?”

“Mostly for rowing eights.”

“You ever take him surfing?” Paolo asked Maya.

Jack looked curiously at Maya. “You surf?”

“Not very well,” Maya admitted. “But I can catch a wave, once in a while.”

“You're a woman of many talents, Miss Soto,” marveled Jack. “And I would absolutely love to go surfing with you, one of these days when we're not both up to our eyeballs in work.”

“Don't hold your breath,” she said dolefully. “Promisr is eating up all my time. But I bet you're pretty good at surfing.”

“I'm a Cornish lad,” he said, “so I'm not totally inept. I, too, can catch a wave, once in a while. Anyway, Maya, I'd best be off. I'll keep you posted, all right?” With a light kiss to her cheek, he was gone.

“So,” Paolo said, hooking a thumb at the tutor's retreating form. “You and the Brit?”

“So?” Maya said with a quiet smile, closing the front door on him slowly. “You and Lucy?”

“You're way behind,” he called after her. “That's old news.”

Left on the outside, Paolo headed for the surf rental store. Most places wouldn't rent equipment unless you were taking classes or already had some kind of badge. But John-Michael knew a guy who knew a guy. Paolo felt pretty sure he'd be allowed to rent some gear today.

Along the crowded boardwalk, he saw Lucy sitting cross-legged on a bench.
Of course, after just talking about her.
Next to her was a guy with shoulder-length black hair. One arm was entirely covered in colorful tattoos from shoulder to wrists. Around him were abstract paintings made from some kind of rubbery streaks of paint. When she saw Paolo she waved. “Hey, King, you know my boy Luisito, right?”

Paolo gave a short nod in Luisito's direction. “Hey, man.”

“Where're you headed?” Lucy said. “Surfing?”

He stopped in front of the paintings. “Yup. Not waves, though, I prefer to stand up, right from the beginning. Gonna get me a kite.”

She frowned. “Isn't that super-dangerous?”

“Nah, it's cool.”

Lucy sprang to her feet. “Okay if I walk with you a little?”

Paolo shrugged. Ever since the Meredith incident, he'd almost stopped thinking about Lucy. She hadn't sought him out, either, but then that was normal. Could it be that she was actually feeling guilty? It was over a month since their little moment of misunderstanding. It had really stung at first but now . . . compared to what had happened to Paolo since, a fumbled romantic situation with Lucy barely registered.

“That'd be nice,” he said with an easy smile.

Lucy fell into step beside him, and he soon picked up the faint trace of her perfume—Flowerbomb. He'd noticed it on her nightstand about six weeks before, had made a mental note to buy her some at the next gift-buying opportunity. That was when he'd still hoped to get into the gift-giving zone with Lucy. Paolo was only faintly surprised to realize that this thought didn't sadden him.

“I've been meaning to talk to you about something,” Lucy said. “Somehow, you're always busy . . . or avoiding me.”

“Me? No way,” Paolo said, holding up both hands. But she was right and he knew it. Meredith's death had preyed
on his mind almost constantly. If he stayed home too long he became anxious. It was better to be out, to be distracted.

“Well,” she said, and her fingers took his elbow in a sudden grip, hard enough to halt his progress. “This is important, so listen up.”

Paolo stared at her curiously. Lucy looked serious and he had no clue what else she might be about to say. For a moment, he wondered if Lucy somehow knew about Meredith. It was beyond comprehension that John-Michael would betray that confidence—not when he'd made himself an accessory to whatever crime Paolo may have committed.

It took a few seconds before Lucy was able to form the words. “Grace . . .” she began with difficulty, “I get the impression from John-Michael that Gracie's having a hard time lately.”

Gently, Paolo pulled his elbow from her grasp. “Okay? What does that have to do with me?” Lucy was steering him toward another girl in the house? This, he really could not believe.

“You haven't noticed at all?” Lucy said with an almost-smile.

“Have I noticed Grace?” he said candidly. “Of course; she's beautiful.”

“But you don't . . . y'know,
like
her?”

“I try to limit my interest to one girl at a time,” he said, more sharply than he'd intended. Evidently, Lucy had expected more of a flirty response and was taken aback by
his brusqueness. “Why're you telling me this, Luce?”

Lucy's eyelashes fluttered for a second before her jaw clenched. “No, sugar,” she said, her voice taut. “I thought I'd tell you because honestly, I don't know what's going on with you these past few weeks but there's somethin'. I thought maybe another girl? And I wanted you to be aware that Grace, for all she tries to hide it, is into you, Mr. King, whether or not you deserve it, which by the way you do not.”

“Grace is a nice girl,” Paolo said with a smirk. “Too nice for me.”

“I just thought that maybe if you knew she liked you, you'd be sweet to her.”

“You think I should let her down nicely? That's what you're saying? Like you did with me?”

Lucy broke into an amazed chuckle and pulled away from him. “Man, you're uptight right now. What's going on with you?”

“I'm uptight? Ever stop to think that maybe you broke my heart?”

“Did I?”

“No.”

Annoyance flashed across Lucy's face. “Stop playing games, Paolo. And don't play games with Grace.” She backed off some more, staring Paolo hard in the eye. Then she turned, began to stroll back toward Luisito and his paintings.

Paolo watched her go, then shrugged. He could feel a
pleasant afterburn from their tense exchange. Grace liked him? Interesting. She hid it well.

She really was beautiful. Not as stereotypically pretty as her stepsister, Candace, for sure. Grace had a whole different vibe—brains and a quiet, understated beauty. She still had a girlish quality, a sort of adorable cuteness. That was probably why he hadn't thought of her that way, Paolo reflected.

He'd assumed that Grace found him kind of skeezy. It wasn't at all disappointing to know that she liked him. Once he opened up his mind to the possibility, imagined Grace in any romantic situation, he found himself responding with a pleasant warmth.

He was on the verge of catching up to Lucy to ask how she knew, but thought better of it. That certainly wouldn't look too smooth. After a few more moments, Paolo pushed the idea out of his mind. Kitesurfing was more dangerous than he'd let on to Lucy; enough to require total mental focus. Danger was what his body called for—he needed that pure rush of adrenaline—to feel alive, invincible. No more hiding and waiting, no more praying that what happened in Malibu Canyon would stop haunting his nights and crowding his days with omnipresent anxiety.

The sun was warm, heating up his wet suit enough that he longed for the chill of the ocean. Ahead, he spotted two bright blue and red kites on display at the surf rental shop. He picked up his pace a little, smiling.

He had to stop worrying, accept that the whole Meredith
situation was over. He was home free. Nothing could touch him. And now, he had the chance to be with someone he could laugh and hang out with. Someone who really liked him, not just for the way he looked or played tennis. Someone real.

Grace.

“Wake up, Maya. Time to start the rest of your life.”

The cell phone was on the pillow next to her head, the voice coming out of it was Jack Cato's. But even he couldn't make her a morning person, especially with how exhausted she'd been lately.

“But it's Saturday,” she grumbled, then peered more closely at the time on her phone. “And it's only seven thirty!”

She could actually hear a smile in his voice. “Ah, that'll be why I'm at a breakfast meeting. Come and meet me when it's over. I promise the waffles will be worth your while.”

She rubbed her eyes. “Jack. What are you talking about?”

“That café on the boardwalk, say, two hours from now. How does that grab you? My treat.”

Maya rolled away from the wall and glanced at the other two beds, where John-Michael and Grace were dozing. Like
a slap in the face, she suddenly remembered the phone call she'd overheard between Ariana and Dana Alexander. A groan escaped her. She'd have to do something about it. But not right now. Jack obviously had something important to tell her about her app project. Whatever she decided to do about Dana and Ariana, it would have to wait.

“Sounds good,” Maya said as she drew her feet up beneath her and curled up into a ball. She resisted the urge to fall back asleep. “I'll be there.”

She hauled herself out of bed and into the shower, dressed, and applied makeup to a degree that would have delighted her mother, who often despaired of Maya's perfunctory concession to all things girly. An hour later in the boardwalk café a little down the beach, she and Jack split a plate of waffles with strawberries and cream.

Jack told her he'd spent Friday night drinking with Kyle Joseph and some of the guy's investment banker buddies at a fund-raising seminar on campus. This morning they'd “done” breakfast. A good sign, apparently. “These blokes don't even crack their eyes in the morning unless there's a deal on the table,” Jack assured her.

Maya tried to focus her mind on what really mattered—the potential investment in her app. “Jack, can you bottom line it for me?”

“Ha-ha. I love it when you talk business.”

“I'm serious.”

“I was getting to that,” he said with a grin. “Kyle Joseph posted the link to the alpha version of your app on some
private tech-investor network, who forwarded it all over the bloody planet, and the downloads are insane. We're talking a thing of epic proportions.”

“You mean it's gone viral? How many downloads?”

“It's not about the numbers,” Jack said breathlessly. “It's about who's seen it. Half of this game is about visibility. If your app is seen by enough people, it has a better chance of being seen by the people who count. And Promisr just happens to have been seen, used, and frigging
loved
by one of the people who count.”

Maya was perfectly still, fully awake now. “Who? Zuckerberg?”

“Alexa Nyborg.”

“The woman who started Kilowant?”

“The very same.”

For a few seconds, Maya was speechless. Against her silence, Jack continued, “There we were, eating croissants together, Maya, and the woman is
stoked
. She's working on some megasecret, multiplatform social networking app thingy. She wants to embed Promisr. Says it's just at the right stage, development-wise. She wants to meet you.”

“No kidding . . . Alexa Nyborg? She's amazing. I read her book. It's all about how women have to ‘leverage their network' to get ahead.”

“And now she wants to get ahead with
you.
Alexa and Kyle reckon that together, they want to put in another hundred K each to get to fifty-one percent between them. They'll do some of that as an equity swap to you for shares
in Nyborg's new thing. When she sells that, your shares should easily be worth between two and five million.”

The numbers were beginning to swim around in Maya's head. She picked up a napkin and asked a waitress to lend her a ballpoint pen. She made Jack repeat himself and listened carefully, jotting down figures.

“You think there'll be enough cash for the additional development we need to do?”

“No problem at all.”

Maya peered in amazement at the numbers she'd written down. Now that Jack had explained them, they didn't seem totally insane. Within twelve to eighteen months, Maya could be a multimillionaire.

“I need to process this,” she said.

“By all means,” Jack said, calmer now. He freshened up her coffee cup. “Let's both think about it and have another chat later today.”

They fell silent as both began to work on the waffles, which were delicious. A glow of wonder was slowly sweeping through her. She felt light-headed with disbelief.

The initial offer of a hundred thousand dollars had blown her mind—for about five seconds. Then she'd realized they'd need to spend the entire amount on paying extra programmers. There wouldn't have been a spare nickel for Maya. But for someone like Alexa Nyborg to put Promisr inside a more substantial social networking app, for Maya to get entry-level equity in something that big . . . It could be like getting in on a ground-floor investment like Instagram.

Maya's family had never had much money. Her dad worked as a fermentation technician in a pharmaceutical plant, something that required a lot of specialization but didn't pay all that well. No one in her extended family was rich. She'd hardly been anyplace other than Mexico City or California. Just once, the family had blown some savings on a trip to Acapulco and stayed at a fancy hotel. The next trip they'd dreamed of taking as a family was to Disneyland.

Maya was still waiting on that one.

To be rich
. More money than the mere cushion needed to make life bearable. Enough never to have to worry again. She hadn't even imagined that. It just didn't happen to people like Maya and her family.

The real American dream. Maya put her fork down for a moment, wrapped her arms around herself, as though trying to hold on to some semblance of reality.

She glanced up to find Jack's eyes on her. He smiled then, warm and comforting. “It's so good to see you this happy.”

“Thank you,” she whispered. “You did this. You made this happen.”

Jack reached across the table. He teased one hand free from where it was clasped to her upper arm, and intertwined his fingers with hers. “Nonsense,” he chided softly. “Maya, this is happening because of you. You're the one who worked hard at your app, who kept improving it. You're the one who came up with this amazing new idea.
I'm the one along for the ride, not you. Frankly you could ditch me now and never look back.” Jack gave a hopeful grin. “Obviously, I'm hoping you don't.”

“Why's that?”

“Well, I'm pretty much in this for the kissing, that's pretty obvious . . .” He smiled, squeezing her hand so she knew he was joking. “Clearly, I'm hanging out for more of that.”

“Sounds doable,” Maya replied, blushing.

Jack's cell phone began to buzz once again. He shrugged in puzzlement when he saw the number, picked up the call, and mouthed at Maya with pantomime gestures,
Alexa Nyborg!

He listened for a moment, punctuating the silence with the occasional “Ah-ha. Mm-hm. Great. What about the equity split? Interesting. I'll certainly ask her.” When he finally ended the call, Jack's eyes looked like they were about to catch fire.

“Maya.” He sounded ready to burst. “Guess what she said.
Alexa Nyborg
, Maya! Go on, try.”

Maya shook her head with a cynical smile. “‘
Too late, loser
'?”

“No, Maya. Dead wrong. She said, and I quote, ‘Maybe she'd like to talk it over in Napa, soon?'”

Maya was momentarily speechless. Then, “Alexa Nyborg wants
me
to go to Napa Valley?”

His delight was infectious. “Alexa's got a property there, nice and private, swimming pool, tennis court, great walks.
She suggested that we fly up there on Friday and join her for lunch. Asked if there's any food you don't like and . . . let me see, let's be sure I'm not forgetting something. Oh yes, and
casually
mentioned that if you do agree to partner up, she'd be happy for you to stay there whenever you like. ‘
I'm hardly ever there, so I kinda like to share the place with my friends
.'”

Maya gasped. “Friday? You gotta be kidding. I got a ton of coding to do before I show the beta version of Promisr.”

“I know!”

“Does this kind of stuff really happen?”

Jack said, “I guess this is what happens when an investor really, really wants your technology.”

Maya gave a tiny shrug of her narrow shoulders. “But why? I mean, the whole thing only took me a few weeks to build. She could easily rip it off and start over.”

“First off, no,” he said. “It took more than a couple of weeks. You started with the basic code from Cheetr,
which took you months to develop. Second, that's not how people like Nyborg do things. It's not just your tech she wants; it's you. Your mind, Maya. She likes the way you think. She wants you on board.” He pushed away from the table and rose to his feet, approaching.

The sensation of lightness returned. Maya could swear that the soles of her feet were no longer in contact with the ground. Ariana was forgotten, Dana Alexander, too, as Maya allowed Jack to enfold her in a tight, blissful hug.