Burning Ultimatum (Trevor's Harem #4) Page 13

  I stop at a gas station and ask for directions. Apparently, nobody has done this in ten years (especially not a man, har-har) because the gas station guy looks at me like I’m nuts. He finally tells me where to find the club, I buy the fucking toilet paper, then manage to get lost on the way back, too.

  Bridget asks me how it went. I tell her great. I love this. I love counting every penny and shopping for my clothes at discount stores. It’s awesome. I’m not plotting every night and scheming every day. I’m not trying to find the right lever to recover my fortune — not just so I have money, but so I can destroy those who took it.

  But did they all take it? I’m not so sure.

  I spend some time on Bridget’s computer, researching Alexa Mathis. Of course I only find her books, and of course there’s no indication she’s anything but an author of erotic novels. But I do eventually find mention of her in an article on an obscure spiritual school of thought called anthroposophy, whose followers believe that technology will one day be the key to allowing humans to access their higher, innermost selves. Jokes that others on the board made at Alexa’s expense make more sense as I delve into research. Searching for Digital Jesus, indeed.

  This was always a higher-mind pursuit for Alexa. Her own little erotica-front empire was impressive enough to buy her way onto the Eros board and attract the attention of her various partners. She’s a long-term thinker content to wait, and that’s something I’ve always known. So why go for such a petty power grab? The more I read, the more I’m convinced: She wouldn’t have. This was Welty’s doing. Alexa knows I’m an asset. I built Eros, and I — arguably alone — understand the mentality required to underpin it in the future. Especially if Digital Jesus is out there waiting for his Second Coming.

  It’s after midnight when I slip out of bed and leave the comfort of Bridget’s warm body behind. I don’t try hard to be quiet. Bridget’s like a guy. After we’ve made love, she’ll fall right asleep if I let her. Then explosions won’t wake her.

  I slip on a pair of boxers, snatch Bridget’s phone from the end table, and sneak out into the front room. I shut two doors between me and Bridget, then dial.

  It rings then goes to voicemail.

  I dial again, and again it rings. Again, it goes to voicemail.

  On the third try, a sleepy female voice answers.

  “This had better be good,” she says.

  “Alexa. It’s me.”

  There’s a pause, and I imagine Alexa pulling the phone from her face to look at the screen. But I’m not calling from my phone, I’m calling from Bridget’s.

  “Daniel,” I say before she can ask. “Daniel Rice.”

  I hear the quick shifting of bedcovers. I don’t know if Alexa sleeps alone, but at least I’ve made her sit up and pay attention.

  “Daniel?”

  “I’m sorry to call so late. I don’t want Bridget to hear.”

  There’s another pause.

  “So you’re with her.”

  “Of course I’m with her.”

  Another pause. It almost sounds like Alexa is disappointed in me for bottom-feeding, but she knows full well what I chose when Welty cornered me at that final elimination. A different explanation for her tone dawns to give me hope: Maybe Alexa’s only heard Welty’s side of the story. She would have seen the elimination footage live as it happened, but wouldn’t know all the context. She might not even know about Peanutgate, if that little squealing shit Tim only called Welty, and not the board as a whole. It’s a closed environment. Welty could have told the others whatever he wanted, then erased his tracks to hide the unfiltered truth.

  Then Alexa says something I don’t see coming.

  “Daniel, I’m sorry about what happened.”

  “Then help me fix it.”

  “I can’t. I’ve tried. You broke too many rules. You went behind our back.”

  “For the good of the company.”

  Alexa laughs. “Right. That was why.”

  I’ve thought a lot about how to approach this. It’s almost down to a script. Still, my heart is beating hard and uncertain.

  “How do you test faith?”

  There’s a long silence. Then: “What?”

  “How do you test faith?” I repeat, knowing that faith — even if not in a traditional deity — is right in her wheelhouse. “Do you just believe something blindly to have faith? Do you avoid any alternative ways of seeing things, and choose to believe what you want?”

  “I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

  “Sure you do. So tell me: Is an untested faith one worth having?”

  Slowly: “Okay, Daniel. I’ll play. No, I suppose it’s not worth having.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if it’s too weak to stand, you’d be stupid to believe it.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And? Why does this merit a middle-of-the-night phone call?”

  “Because you’re right. I did break a lot of rules. I tried to cheat the system from every angle. I brought Bridget in when she never should’ve been at the mansion. I gave her special treatment. I chose challenges I thought she’d do well in, and in the group challenges, I paired her with people she could defeat, like the rock-climbing day with Kylie. I urged alliances. I used my knowledge of the systems to my advantage. I erased footage when I could, then once Jessica found the glitch in Halo, I exploited the hell out of it. I cheated to keep Bridget in the game.”

  Alexa waits a few seconds to see if I’ve finished. Then she says, “This is a great apology, Daniel. Let me get on the phone right now and start trying to convince the board to take you back.”

  “Don’t you see? I was trying to break Halo. I was testing our faith in it.”

  This time, Alexa pauses so long I almost think she’s hung up.

  “So I’m supposed to believe you did what you did in support of Halo, not against it. To test it and make it stronger.”

  I have to be careful here. Every bit of what I’m telling Alexa is true, but it’s also tightening the noose around my neck. But does that even matter? I’ve been kicked out. I’m already hanged, bait for crows as I dangle dead from the lynching branch.

  “No.” I take a breath, steeling myself. “I wanted to prove Halo wrong. I saw where the board was going. I knew what you were trying to do. Or what Welty was trying to do, along with Victor, and maybe the others. I knew you’d mostly usurped me. I still had my authority, but only by a thread. I was in the board’s way. So when Halo came to the fore, I knew it was positioned to be a crown jewel. And if it was a success and its findings netted the company the trillion dollars predicted in the next decade, that would be it for me. It was the board’s pet project, not mine. I opposed it. Halo’s success was the worst thing that could happen to me. And its failure would be the best. So I did all I could to throw wrenches into its works. If I could prove that Halo was flawed, it would be scrapped as a failure. And then I’d have my coup. I still held sway with the private stockholders, and when your pet project fell apart, I knew I could get them to vote how I wanted, and reclaim my company.”

  I hear Alexa shift in bed again. “Well, this is very nice, you confessing. But it’s moot. Halo found its winner.”

  “But I admitted to messing with the results so it would choose Jessica. I tested it, Alexa, and it still chose Jessica, even though the raw results clearly picked Bridget to win.”

  Alexa’s tone changes, and I can tell she’s getting tired of this discussion. She’s not buying my reframe, about how my “battle testing” the algorithm was ultimately good for the company. I’ve planned to argue that without what Jessica and I tried to pull — and almost got away with, if not for an innocent mention of peanut butter — Eros would never have discovered Halo’s weakness. But I can tell that arguing it now would be wasted breath.

  “The board chose Jessica, not Halo. You know that, Daniel. Once Tom fed all the footage you deleted into the system from the backups, the results were clear. It picked Bridget to win, a
nd you know it. Just as it should have. We chose Jessica to salvage what we could of your mess. We’d love to have disqualified her for what she did, then kick Trevor out, right along with you. But how would that have looked?”

  “Then you still don’t have your test. You don’t know if Halo is flawed.”

  “We’ll repeat the test, Daniel. This time, with your exploited error fully repaired. We’ll find another avatar, if Jessica isn’t our girl.”

  “But … ” I stop, unsure where to go. I tried forcing Bridget toward the final rounds to prove that Halo was flawed. On paper, she wasn’t special. She had none of the key indicators. We didn’t even prescreen her or complete our entrance testing. She was the wild card and remained so — I figured that manipulating the system into Bridget’s win would be proving Halo was flawed. It’s ironic that she turned out to be the best candidate. That in the end, the very thing I was trying to do is was supposed to happen all along.

  Halo isn’t flawed. It chose the right girl in Bridget — my choice and admission forced the board to shuffle and marry-in Jessica instead.

  “I respect you, Daniel,” Alexa says, stifling a yawn. “I truly do. And if it were my choice, I’d bring you back. But I can’t. The rest of the board is dead set against it for what you did, and nothing you’ve said tonight will change it. Maybe the way you tried to cheat really did do us a favor, by testing our faith in Halo. But that doesn’t change your intentions. You were trying to sabotage the experiment and oust the board. You failed, and now you have to live with it. Our pet project is every bit the success we believed it would be. It chose our avatar, and all that’s stopped us from capitalizing is the fact that you stole her away. So consider that the next time you try to argue your case: your final act as Eros CEO, after admitting to industrial espionage, was to steal the asset we’d spent years working to find and develop.

  I want to say, But your “winner” wouldn’t even have been in the contest to begin with, if not for me. But I don’t.

  “I hold no ill will against you, Daniel. As I said, I like you. But it doesn’t matter. You took a risk and lost it all. The board controls the votes to force your resignation and seize all company assets, which turned out to be everything you had. It was predatory. It was cruel. It was underhanded and unfair. But that doesn’t change that it happened, or that I can’t help you. And you know you can’t call Trevor, right?”

  I sigh. “Yes.”

  “He controls nothing, same as always. He’s a salaried employee. Doesn’t matter what the media thinks. They can believe he’s the man who built it all, but he can’t give you company assets, or rehire you. And I tell you as a friend, Daniel, that if you try to turn him, you’ll add another two casualties to the pile. This company is not so committed to the front of Trevor Stone and his forthcoming bride that we won’t cut them loose if your meddling forces our hand. Four of you betrayed us, but we only punished two. Don’t make us punish them as well.”

  I look for a loophole. But there is none. She’s right, and I was stupid to call. But at least Alexa was willing to hear me out. If I’d called Welty, there would have been no understanding. No respect. No compassion. He’d have simply cut Jessica and Trevor, then all four of us would be buying generic toilet paper and getting lost in Inferno when our GPS failed.

  “All right,” I say, defeated.

  “For what it’s worth, I’m sorry it had to be this way.”

  “Me, too,” I say.

  “And I wish you the best of luck in rebuilding. Honestly.”

  “Thanks, Alexa.”

  I hang up the phone and look out Bridget’s living room window to the sleepy little town beyond.

  I’m glad Bridget can’t see me right now.

  Because it’s over. I did my best to protect her, and I failed.

  There’s a sharp sound from behind me. I turn, but the fog of midnight is thick around me, and for a long moment, it almost sounded like a single knock. Now I’m sure I imagined it. But as I return to bed beside my sole (and most important) prize, something on the floor, by the slash of light beneath the front door, catches my eye.

  It’s an envelope.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Daniel

  There are five sheets of paper inside the envelope.

  The first is a piece of stationery. It’s blank, but I recognize the embossing. Before the board pushed Eros out of the shadows and decided to install Trevor as its socially friendly frontman — the fake billionaire behind the throne, as it were — that stationery was on my desk. Now there’s only one person who’d use it, and it appears he and his fiancée haven’t abandoned me after all.

  The other four slips are dense and scientific. At first, I don’t understand what I’m looking at, but then I read the tops and see that they’re summary reports from a lab I’ve used in the past, showing gene sequencing results and a chemical assay.

  Two are Bridget’s. Judging by the date, it looks like one of her tests was done before her arrival. I’d guess one of our snoopers stole something suitably biological from this very apartment. The second test was the day she left.

  The other two, shockingly, are mine, for the same timeframe. I didn’t know anyone was peeking over my shoulder and testing me, but then I remember that Caspian did exactly that before three contestants became two.

  All four results — Bridget’s and mine, before we entered the mansion competition and after it was over — show me an oxytocin blood analysis and the gene sequence of a brain receptor called arginine vasopressin receptor 1A, or AVPR1A for short.

  I know a lot about neurology, but I don’t know every receptor. I do know this one, though. Not from humans, but from prairie voles — the cute little hamster-like creatures that interest scientists because of their natural monogamy.

  My eyes scan the papers. An hour passes, then another. I don’t know why Trevor would send these. I have no idea what possible significance they would have. He knows, per Alexa’s warning, that it’s not a good idea to associate with me, so coming here (or sending someone) was a risk. Why take the risk for a couple of lab results?

  It’s 4 a.m.

  It’s 5 a.m.

  It’s 6 a.m., and still I have no answers.

  Are they souvenirs? Did Trevor send them to me because he wants me and Bridget to have a keepsake from our time at the mansion? In a way, it’s oddly romantic. Here’s who you were when you met each other, says the first set of results. And here’s who you were when you left to start your life together as a couple, says the second set. A nerd’s version of a relationship scrapbook, chronicling the changes we went through as we grew together in our first days.

  It’s 7 a.m., and those last words are still circling my mind, telling me nothing but refusing to leave, buzzing about like obnoxious houseflies.

  The changes we went through.

  As we grew together in our first days.

  I jump at the hand on my shoulder then look back to see Bridget watching me from above. She’s in a sleep shirt and panties, her hair a rat’s nest. I’m sure she’d say she looks horrible, but I don’t think I’ve ever found her more beautiful. It’s as if this girl is a drug. As if she’s changed me.

  Changed me.

  Like a drug.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t mean to surprise you.”

  The changes we went through together.

  With each other, as drugs.

  “Have you been up all night?”

  As drugs.

  As we grew together.

  The changes we went through.

  As she changed me. Drugged me.

  And I changed her.

  Change.

  I blink up. I can’t answer. My mind’s wheels are turning, trying to grab something from the tip of my mental tongue. Bridget circles around and sits on the couch beside me. She’s warm, fresh from the covers. I must feel cold out here, like a corpse.

  She snuggles up against me, pulling a blanket over to warm us. Her eyes fall to the paper
s in my hands. “What is that?”

  “Research,” I say, unclear how to make it less confusing, less obtuse.

  “‘Oxytocin,’” she reads from the assay header. “Why do I know that word?”

  “I have no idea.”

  She holds a finger up, like Eureka! “Wait. I feel like it has something to do with my friend Alice’s baby, or pregnancy, or — ”

  Something clicks. A puzzle piece falling into place.

  “It’s a — ”

  (drug)

  “—drug. Doctors sometimes give it to women giving birth to speed up delivery.”

  Drug, I hear in my head, like an echo.

  Bridget looks at the papers, sees the names on them, and for some reason doesn’t even flinch. Doesn’t ask questions, like Why or How.

  “Well, I’ve never had a baby,” she says, eyeing one paper. Then she looks at the other and giggles. “And neither have you. So what’s this about oxytocin?”

  “It’s not just for delivery rooms,” I tell her, something slowly dawning inside me. “It’s a natural hormone.”

  “What’s it do?”

  “It … ”

  I stop. My mouth is open, and Bridget is looking at me.

  “It what?”

  But now I understand. I know why Trevor sent these test results, and what he’s trying to tell me.

  Bridget plucks one of the papers from my hand. When she can’t make sense of what she sees, she flips it over, hoping the back is more familiar.

  “Who is Parker Barnes?”

  I look down. Bridget is pointing at a name written in pen on the back of one of the pages, in Trevor’s handwriting.

  A name.

  And an address.