Ruthless Temptation (16 page)

She
rose and went to stand beside Viggo, slipping her hand into his. Dave looked
like a caged animal, but one that was ready to give up the fight. She felt
sorry for him. He had to be a damn genius to have worked on such a complicated
program, yet right now he was nothing more than a criminal.

Or
were the twelve men in this room the real criminals? Dave was right about one
thing. Public opinion had changed over the past year toward the Weathermen.
She’d seen that for herself. There were so many rumors and stories floating
around out there that the average person had no clue what to believe any
longer.

She
felt Viggo’s gaze on her, and looked up to find him glancing down at her with
nothing short of love in his eyes. He never had answered her question, but she
felt the love in his touch and she saw it on his face. He
did
love her. One day he might say the words, but right now all his
focus was on what Dave could tell them. She understood that.

“
Dave,” said Ace, “if you won’t do this for us, do it
for my father. Do it for Brent. You two were thick as thieves in college. He’s
told me what a damn genius you are.”

“
Your father? Yeah. You should talk to your father
about this program, Ace.”

“
What does that mean?”

When
Dave stood slowly and Madison saw the venom in his eyes, a nasty shiver ran
down her back.

“
What does it mean? Ask him about Ronnie Treadway. Ask
him how many hours I spent on this program, only to have the glory go to
another man.”

“
You and Ronnie were supposed to be partners,” said
Ace. “I know that. My father told me all that.”

“
Then how can any of you ask me now to fucking help
you?”

“
Ronnie is dead,” said Emmett. “But you know the
program as well as he did.”

Ace
flipped the toggle switch off so Dave could no longer hear the conversation in
the room. “Maybe I should see if my father can travel here and talk to Dave?
The
witty me storm
duo, together once
more. We’re not getting through to him.”

“
What is that?” asked Madison. “Witty me storm, I
mean.”

“
It’s a catchphrase those two used in college when they
had trouble writing code.” The corners of Ace’s mouth turned up. “My father
still talks about those days with nostalgia-filled eyes. He and Dave were close
friends. We might get somewhere if my father was here.”

“
Then call him,” said Dominic. “We’re out of options.”

Madison
rolled the words around in her head.
Witty
me
storm.
What a curious combination of words.
“How did they come up with that phrase?”

Ace
grinned. “It’s an anagram of
I met Mr.
Towsty
. Dr. Bingley Towsty was a visiting professor in one of their
classes, and he challenged them with complex coding problems that not even Dave
could figure out. From that moment on, whenever they ran into a coding issue
they couldn’t resolve, they used the phrase
witty
me storm
.”

“
If he was a professor, why didn’t they use doctor
instead of mister?”

“
They couldn’t come up with anything they liked that
way.”

Madison
was intrigued. “But what led them to finding a catchphrase at all?”

“
Someone in their class made an offhand remark one day
about having met the professor years earlier. My father and Dave said something
along the lines of, ‘Oh, I’m
important
.
I met Dr. Towsty,’ and it stuck. But they used
witty me storm
instead of
I
met Mr. Towsty
so no one would know what or who they were talking about.”

Words
flashed through Madison’s brain as the letters rearranged themselves in her
head. She let go of Viggo’s hand and walked around the room.
No … it can’t be that obvious
. She tried
the letters again, just to be sure, but she already knew they fit.

Viggo
walked over to her and placed a hand on each shoulder. “Are you all right?”

“
The phrase … there’s another anagram that works.”

“
What is it?”

Tears
sprang to her eyes. She hated to have to tell him this. Their admiration for
Dave, despite his betrayal, was palpable. “Tommy Twister.”

“
What
?”

The
Weathermen plus Angela and Julianne crowded around Madison.

“
Are you sure?” asked Viggo.

“
Do it yourself. It fits. Witty me storm is an anagram
for Tommy Twister.”

“
Holy shit,” said Ace. He strode over to the window and
flipped the toggle switch up. “You wrote it. You wrote the virus. You wrote the
Tommy Twister virus, didn’t you?”

Dave
and Ace stared each other down. Madison didn’t need to hear him confirm it. She
saw it on his face.

“
Finally,” said Dave, his voice flat and dull. “Took
you fucking long enough, didn’t it?”

Chapter
Eighteen

Viggo
wanted to go into the room and beat the shit out of Dave. If Madison hadn’t
been holding his hand, he would have. Everyone was talking at once, and none of
it made any sense. His mind raced. Dave Perry had written the virus, but did
that also mean he had uploaded it? Viggo couldn’t believe that. He didn’t want
it to be true.

Damien
whistled loudly and finally the noise died down. “Hang on. Just hang on.” He
faced the window. “Dave, are you telling us you hacked into The Madeline
Project and uploaded the virus?”

“
No.” He walked up to the window. “I was
not
the one who did that.” His voice and
face were desperate once more. “Please let me come in there and talk to you all
of you, face-to-face.
Please
.”

Viggo
glanced around the room. What harm could it do now? Dave was beaten, and he
knew it. There were twelve of them, plus the henchmen he and Blaine employed.
Dave wasn’t going anywhere. “Let him in here. He was our friend once.”

They
rearranged the chairs and tables so everyone could sit in a circle and see
Dave. The other men stood near the entrances to the room. One of the men stood
directly behind Dave.

Dave
leaned forward and rested his elbows on his knees. “I didn’t know they were
going to fuck it up.”

“
You didn’t know who was going to fuck up what?” asked
Kane. “Be specific.”

“
The five of them. Sam, Dante, Mindy, Clyde, and Shawn.
I only wanted to take back what was mine. The Madeline Project was
my
program. Ronnie got all the credit
because he put in the tweaks that made it work, but I had the original idea. I
told him we could harness the fields to make it run. It was
my
baby.”

Viggo’s
blood ran cold. “How and where did you find those five?”

Dave
shrugged. “How did you all find each other? You didn’t start out looking for
future billionaires. You met people and became friends through mutual
interests. That’s how I met each of them over the years. Weather control geeks,
coding experts, et cetera. One thing led to another. Most of the other thirteen
you have were simply on the fringes and got pulled in for various reasons. But
only those five had my code.”

“
You mean your virus,” said Blaine.

“
It
wasn’t
a
virus. It wasn’t written with that intention. They called it one afterward, but
I didn’t write it specifically to act like a virus.”

“
So you didn’t plan any of this,” said Atticus. “You
didn’t set out to fuck up the program on purpose.”

Dave
gave him a look of disgust. “Of course not. Why the hell would I do that? Why
would I seal my own fate?”

 
“
So
what did happen?” asked Barclay. “Was it really a coding error? Was it really
something that fucking stupid?”

“
Forget the coding error,” said Blaine. “
Why
? Why wait this fucking long to say
anything? We’ve all been underground for eight years! Why did you let this
happen?
How
could you let this
happen?”

Dave
put up a hand. “Let me back up first. You need to understand something. I
didn’t start out wanting to sabotage the program. I only wanted to restore it
to what it was supposed to be. I wanted to take it back.”

“
What the hell did you hope to accomplish by doing
that?” asked Grayson.

“
They’d be forced to acknowledge me! I wanted to hold
it hostage until I got the same fucking credit as Ronnie had!”

“
So this was about your ego,” said Damien, his voice
filled with disgust.

“
Yeah, it was about my ego, Damien. The same way each
of you are all about your own companies, and making sure everyone on the planet
knows you exist, and how much fucking money you have. Don’t sit there and
lecture me. No one ever took something of this magnitude away from you. You
don’t know how this feels.”

Damien
stood. Next to him, Ace placed a hand on his arm. “Easy.”

Damien
took his seat again, but his face was filled with anger. “You took away my
planet, you dumbass. You took that away from all of us. Don’t sit there and
tell me I don’t know how this
feels
.”

“
Okay,” said Dave. “Touché. But I never meant for this
to happen. By the time I realized the five people I thought had enough
expertise to help me do this had other intentions, it was too late.”

“
Why did you need help in the first place?” asked
Dominic.

“
I no longer worked for NSSL. I needed their inside
information. The others got it for me, in bits and pieces. Those five became my
main contacts over time. I was at HCS by the time they copied that wrong string
of code into the program. There was nothing I could do without jeopardizing my
position at HCS.”

“
Then why did you fight us the whole time?” asked
Addison.

“
I didn’t. Not at first. I thought I could undermine
the hackers from within. I tried to get HCS interested in forming a team and
tracking them down, but they didn’t care. You remember what it was like at
first. The whole fucking planet was in chaos. No one above me believed this was
anything but a mistake in the coding. A switch someone forgot to flip. No one
believed it had been deliberate. Not at first.”

“
You were going to rat them out by helping your bosses
at HCS find them,” said Oliver.

“
Yes. Exactly.”

“
And you couldn’t simply give them up because then
you’d be caught, too.”

“
Yeah. That’s it in a nutshell.”

“
So what was with the dog and pony show you and Bonnie
put on that day?” asked Barclay.

Dave
shook his head. “Bonnie. Now there’s a fucked up piece of work. I had an affair
with her, okay? I thought she was an ally. I trusted her. I told her everything.
She said she’d help me, but when all of you got too close to the truth, she
panicked. The more hackers you found, the more she became convinced we’d be
found out, too.”

“
You wrote the article and it screwed you both,” said
Emmett. “Why did you do that?”

“
I’d been with HCS for thirty years. I got sloppy and
complacent. I never thought I’d be caught. Never. I thought they’d believe it
was Bonnie who had written it, and then I’d be rid of her.”

“
Didn’t you think she’d rat
you
out?” asked Blaine.

“
Hell no. Do you realize what I have on that woman? You
have no idea the shit she’s done.” He glanced toward Atticus. “Take your
fiancée, for example. Bonnie’s husband is the one who strung her along for
years before she found out the truth, right?”

A
muscle twitched in Atticus’s jaw as he nodded.

“
He’s the first person I would have gone to. I’d have
let him know a thing or two about his wife”

“
Pretend I know nothing,” said Emmett, “and lay it out
for me. You and Bonnie. I want to know the progression there. I want to know
why you practically named Emma in the article.”

Dave
sighed loudly and rested his elbows on his knees. “I did that to try to
implicate Bonnie. Bonnie shot off her mouth at HCS about her husband’s
indiscretions. Emma wasn’t his only one. Too many people had heard her mention
Emma. It was easy for me to find out where Emma went after she left the police
station. I knew she’d gone to work for Atticus.”

“
So you never meant to hurt her directly,” said
Atticus.

“
That’s right. She was collateral damage. Leland had
threatened Bonnie when she told her husband she’d get back at him for having an
affair with Emma. He knew about all
her
affairs, including the one with me. Bonnie told me everything, you see. She’s
like that. She doesn’t give a shit who she hurts.”

Dave
leaned back in his chair. “I put the info about Emma in the article to
implicate Bonnie because enough people heard her shoot off her big mouth. I
thought it would be easy for them to reach the conclusion that Bonnie had
written the article.”

“
Okay,” said Atticus. “You’ve explained it.”

Viggo
didn’t imagine Atticus wanted to discuss what Leland had done to Emma any
longer, so he spoke up, changing the subject.
“
Is there really no way we can get
back into the program?”

Dave
sighed and rubbed his face with both hands. “There is one thing. One possible
way, but it’s a long shot. I never tried it. And we won’t know if it worked
unless we have people watching on the surface at the same time.”

“
Why didn’t you try it?” asked Blaine. “In all this
time, why the fuck didn’t you try it?”

Dave
gave him a look filled with pain. “Because everyone would know it was me. What
I think might work is traceable. If I’d so much as tried and failed, there
would still be a footprint. The next person who tried to access the program
would find it. Or if one of you got too close and stole
my
laptop, you’d have found it.”

“
Fuck that! Stole your laptop. You of all people
understand why we took Rob’s.”

Dave
held up his hands. “Okay, okay. You’re right. I sat on this for eight years because
I was afraid, okay? Are you fucking happy now, Blaine? I didn’t want to get
caught. I didn’t want all of you to know I betrayed Brent, and I betrayed each
of you.”

“
But
now
you
claim you can fix this?”

“
I said maybe.
Maybe
this will work.”

“Tell
us what you need,” said Ace.

****

Everyone
took a break while Ace and Emmett tried to get in touch with Merrill Taber, one
of the few Storm Troopers they’d all trust with a project this important.
Damien and Kane had the necessary computer equipment brought to the room.

Madison
and Viggo went into another room to talk, at her request. “Do you believe him?”
she asked.

“
Yes. We all do. He knows he has no time left, and he’s
backed into a corner.”

“
So all that work you did to track the others down … I
mean, how do you feel about that? It turned out to be unnecessary.”

He
shook his head. “No. That’s not true. Each piece of this puzzle fit together.
We needed all of it. Without the information from Rob’s laptop, we wouldn’t
have the background that led us to Dave. All he did was fill in a few blanks.
If we hadn’t found the others, and if you hadn’t recorded that conversation, we
never would have had a reason to pick him up. And
you
… Madison, do you realize what you’ve done for us?”

“
It’s just an anagram. He gave you the clue himself.
One of you would have figured it out eventually.”

“
Maybe. Maybe not. But we have it now because of you.”

The
admiration in his eyes was almost too much for her to deal with. She put her
arms around him and held him close. “If this doesn’t work…” She couldn’t even
finish the thought.

“
It will work.” He stroked her hair and back. “It
has
to work.”

In
a few moments, they’d call him back to the room. It was now or never. She took
a deep breath. “You never had the chance to answer my question.”

He
sighed so softly she almost didn’t hear it. Her pulse raced. Should she have
waited to ask? He placed a finger under her chin and lifted her face toward
his. Madison didn’t bother blinking back her tears. What would he say?

“
I’ve never said this to any woman before.”

“
Oh, God,” she whispered.

His
gaze softened, and all she wanted to do at that moment was return to the hotel
and make love to him until neither of them could walk. The hell with the
experiment, and the hell with Dave’s idea.

He
brushed her tears away. “I do love you, Madison. I never thought I would fall
in love. Never. I didn’t want to. But God help me, I do love you. I love you so
much! I want you with me for the rest of my life.”

She
was sure her heart would burst from joy. “I love you, too. The only place I
want to be is in your arms.”

He
kissed her, and she was lost in his scent and the feel of his mouth on hers.
Her joy couldn’t be contained. She pictured it spilling out of her pores and
running down the hall, out into the street, where it blanketed the city.

Until
she heard someone cough and the spell was broken.

“
Sorry to interrupt,” said Ace, grinning like a teenage
boy watching porn for the first time. “They’re ready for the test.”