Chapter Seventeen

Hawk

After downloading both of the movies, I snuggle into the couch and wait for Waverly to return.

I’ll admit, I feel a little pang of jealousy, even though I know that’s ridiculous. It’s not as though I think she’s actually gone to see someone else. She was right when she teased me about that – if there were anyone else, I’d have seen plenty of evidence during all of our time working together.

No, it’s the fact that she didn’t give me a straight answer. She’s hiding something.

Well, why not, right? People keep secrets from each other all the time. And even though it may feel like we’ve known each other a long time after all the time we’ve just spent together, the truth is, we’ve only been part of each other’s lives for a short while. I shouldn’t expect her to have told me absolutely everything about herself yet. Relationships are a process during which trust is built. I haven’t really been in an actual relationship for a long time, so I’ve forgotten that. Patience is required.

But...

I know it’s irrational, but I don’t want to be patient. I want to know everything about Waverly, all of her secrets, right now, this minute. I haven’t felt so voracious to learn all there is to learn about something since I started coding. Yes, that’s what she reminds me of – the first time I saw this machine language, this secret cipher of ones and zeroes, and desperately hungered to understand every part of it, to be in on it.

Plus, whatever reason she had for leaving, it seemed like it must be fairly important for her to stammer around it nervously and give silly excuses. What’s so big that she’d feel like she needed to hide it from me? And if it is that big, why hasn’t it come up in the past week while we’ve been together?

I wonder whether I should ask Waverly about it when she gets back. Her first instinct might be to hide it again. But if I tell her that it’s okay – that whatever it is, she can trust me with it – maybe she’ll feel safe enough to let her guard down. Especially if I tell her my reasons for wanting to know. I’m not used to sharing my feelings like this, but if I’m going to have any real future with her like I want, I’ll need to become comfortable with it.

Besides, it seems like she’s not used to communicating on this level, either. So at least we’ll be feeling our way through the darkness together. My shoulders droop at the thought, and I want to snatch the thoughts back. As I accept the fact that I’m already in too deep, I find there’s perfection in my fear.

I hear the front door open and close. It’s the same sound I’ve heard almost every day since we started working on this project when she’d go out to pick up food for us. My heart flips over, and my body tightens as I wait for her to make her way into this room, just like every other time.

Then I turn around. Dante stands in the doorway, and my blood turns to ice in my veins. How does this fucker keep bypassing my security?

“You shouldn’t leave your door open, even in a nice neighborhood like this,” he comments mildly. “You never know what kinds of desperate characters might try to walk in.”

I try to sound tough and stand my ground. “No gas can this time, Smokey the Bear?”

Panic snakes its way up my spine even though I mask my expression. I can’t believe I dropped my guard enough to forget the constant threat of Dante Giovanetti. I got too tied up thinking about where Waverly might have gone to bother checking the doors. Stupid, stupid, stupid. He could probably shoot me through the head right now and grab the software, and there’s nothing I could do about it.

“No, I won’t be needing a gas can. That little fire was to make you see reason, but since you’ve proven yourself to be an unreasonable man, I’m not here to try to convince you of what might happen if you defy me.”

“Then why are you here?”

He flashes me a grin that’s almost charming. “Quite simply, to inform you of what will happen since you have.”

“Your threats mean nothing to me.”

“I don’t threaten, Hawk Stryker, if that’s your name. I’m a businessman, and businessmen don’t threaten. They issue guarantees.” He pauses for a moment, then says, “You know, when I was just starting out, there was a guy named Sullivan Carmichael. He owned a club on the strip called The Silver Tiger. Made a lot of money. I decided that I wanted a cut of his profits...I had big dreams then, you understand, and I knew I’d need to finance them by putting something of my own together.”

“You seem to have confused me with your biographer,” I sneer. The words strike fear into my core, and I’m reminded of another time. Another place. When I was thrown away like trash. “What is this, Confessions of a Cheap Hood?”

He smiles and nods, then continues easily, as though I’ve just interjected a small joke. “I went to Sullivan and, quite reasonably, explained how things were going to be. But Sullivan was a proud man. He’d seen too many movies, you know? He saw himself as some kind of Gary Cooper type, standing up for what he believed in despite seemingly-impossible odds. He thought he knew how that story was supposed to end. He stood up to me. Made accusations, hurled insults, swore he’d never bow down to people like me. He threw me out of his club.”

I lift a shoulder. Let it drop. “And why should I care about this little Hans Christian Andersen moment?”

“I wasn’t impressed by his bluster. But I was embarrassed by it. It offended me. It made me look weak in front of my people. It couldn’t be tolerated.” Slowly, the smile begins to fade from Dante’s face, replaced with a somber and vaguely menacing expression. He spears me with a look. And in that moment, everything changes. “When I walked in the first time, all I wanted was a little slice of his action, that’s all. But the second time I walked in, that wasn’t enough for me. He needed to be punished for defying me. I took his entire operation from him. Along with his house. And his car. And his right hand.”

His eyes seem dead now, black and empty.

All I can do is hold my breath.

“Because I take what I want, you see,” he goes on. “People can say no, they can strut and preen and posture, they can pretend they’re Bruce Willis in Die Hard. I just reach out and take it anyway. And more, so the next guy will know how things will go. Hasta la vista, mother fucker.”

“You’re taking my house and my car?” I ask, trying to keep the fear out of my voice. It doesn’t feel like it’s working. “Go ahead. I’ll hand over the keys right now. I was getting bored with them anyway, and I can afford new ones.”

Yeah, great line, jackass. But he mentioned something about a hand, too, didn’t he?

“I have people who know computers,” he replies evenly. “They’re not smart enough to invent something like what you and your sweet little piece of pussy have put together, no. But they’re smart enough to hack into the systems of people who can and steal from them. So, all of your bravado will have amounted to precisely zero. You thought you were so clever, coming up with a face recognition program to spot blacklisted cheaters in casinos. But you were thinking too small. My hackers have already gained access to every law enforcement database from Los Angeles to Cape Cod, plus Interpol. Once they’ve plugged that into your software, I can set up cameras in every business I own and immediately spot undercover cops, Feds...even people from other criminal organizations who might be looking to make a play against me. Anyone working for that tiny-peckered fool, Caldwell.”

Damn. I hadn’t even considered that someone could use our program for something like that. If he does, no cop in the world could get close enough to his operations to build any case against him. He’d be damn near invincible. And he could make a fortune selling bootleg versions of our software to other gangsters too.

Plus, it’s not like undercover cops or agents could fool the system with disguises. What we’ve built is deliberately programmed to see through fake beards, wigs, glasses...anything a cheater could put on to try to scam his way back into a casino after being thrown out.

“Why do you hate him so much?”

Dante holds up a hand, ignoring my question. “And I won’t stop there. I’ll take everything from you. All that you’ve built in your life, I will destroy. Including your relationship with Ostrich. Great pair of tits on that chickadee, isn’t there? I’ll ruin you completely, along with everyone you’ve ever cared about. And the next time I want something, and some rotten little punk tries to stand up and tell me I can’t have it, well, maybe that time, I won’t tell them about Sullivan Carmichael. Maybe I’ll tell them about Hawk Stryker. And maybe that will be enough to make them see that life isn’t like the movies after all. That in real life, people who try to stand up against a steamroller only get run over and crushed.”

“Okay, fine. You’re a steamroller, and I’m getting crushed. So why tell me about it beforehand? It’ll just give me a chance to try to stop you. For someone who claims life isn’t a movie, you sure seem to be acting just like a villain in a James Bond flick.”

As soon as the words leave my mouth, I kick myself. Why the fuck am I keeping him talking? For all I know, Waverly could come back at any minute, and I definitely don’t want him here when that happens. I care about her way too much to risk having her in the same room as this psycho.

Dante’s lips curl upward into a sneer. “You’ve answered your own question. I’m inviting you to try to stop me. I want you to. I want you to go over it in your mind, again and again, making every plan you can possibly think of. I want you to worry about it, obsess on it, lose sleep over it. I want you to wriggle around like a fly caught in a spider’s web, so you’ll eventually realize that no matter how hard you fight and struggle, it will all have been for nothing. I want you to feel that moment of sheer hopelessness right before you’re devoured.”

I just can’t seem to keep my smart mouth shut. Being a geek means I don’t play well with others. Especially, when the others are assholes. “I’m a fly now? I thought this was a steamroller thing. Are you a spider? These weak analogies have me confused.” I’m hoping these remarks will frustrate and annoy him, but if they do, he gives no sign. “I know you said you weren’t here to threaten me, but I have to tell you, the mixed metaphor sandwich is getting caught in my throat. Anyway, message received. You can go now.”

Still smiling, Dante reaches into his sport coat...and pulls a gun from a shoulder holster, pointing it at me.

I freeze.

I’ve seen guns before, but I’ve never had one aimed directly at me. The barrel seems as huge as a tunnel, its black depths infinite and terrifying – the cave of a remorseless metal predator, waiting to jump out and bury itself in my flesh before I even have time to blink. I feel vaguely hypnotized, like a bird being stared down by a snake. My ass clenches, and my bladder suddenly feels three sizes bigger, pushing against my abdomen in a surge of heat.

Most of my brain screams I don’t want to die over and over, like an alarm ringing. But there’s another small part that tells me that’s not important – that if he hurries up and does it, he can still leave before Waverly comes back, and maybe she’ll have a chance to be safe from him.

But there’d be no guarantee of that.

Only Dante’s threat that he’d deal with her anyway, and I’d be too dead to stop him.

“I can go now,” Dante says, as though we’re casually discussing the weather. “Or I can shoot you through the head. Then I can wait for your little girlfriend to come back, and shoot her – maybe right away, maybe after having some fun with her first. Then I can call my professional cleaners, take your software, and bury you both in a hole in the desert. I can do all of those things whenever I want to, and I’ll never be arrested or even listed as an official suspect since I own over half the cops in town.”

He continues to point the gun for a long moment, then puts it back in its holster. I want to relax, but my stiff body quivers like it’s one big muscle cramp.

“As I said before, that’s not what I feel like doing today,” he says. “Today, I feel like making you sweat and suffer for a while. But later tonight, after you’ve both gone to bed, or tomorrow, or the day after...well, who knows how I’ll feel then? My moods are mercurial, after all.”

And with that, Dante turns and walks out.

Once I hear the door shut behind him, I force myself to move. It’s not easy. For a few crazy seconds, I actually have to remind my feet how to walk, that’s how frightened I am. I lurch toward the door and lock it behind him. It’s a dumb thing to do, I know. If he really wanted to come back in, I’m sure a lock wouldn’t stop him. At least I’d hear him coming before he got through the door. At least he wouldn’t just be able to stroll in any second like he owned the place.

My mind yammers in a wild rain dance of fear. I look down and stare at my shaking hands.

Dante’s words float into my brain. Real life isn’t like the movies at all. In the movies, when someone stops pointing a gun at you, the spell is broken, and you stop being scared. In real life, the gun might be put away, but it doesn’t go away – it still hangs in your mind’s eye, seeming to grow bigger by the second.

The first time I saw the gun, it surprised me.

Now the idea of seeing it again screams through my brain like a banshee. The thought of the breathless anticipation, followed by the flash and the bang, and then the bullet ripping through my body. Would it pass through me, leaving a massive exit wound? Or would it hit a bone and bounce around inside, devastating every soft part it comes in contact with? If it goes through my brain, will it kill me instantly? Or will I have seconds, even minutes, of the conscious horror of being shot in the head? Would the bullet still feel hot from the mini-explosion that released it? Would my body go cold almost immediately from the shock?

I feel something hard against my shoulder and realize the weight of the door supports me. Mostly to feel like I can keep it closed for a few more precious seconds if someone tries to force their way through, but also because my body just doesn’t feel like it can stay upright now. I’m a puppet with its strings cut, and I slowly sag to the floor.

I’ve never felt so utterly powerless in my life.

I’m not sure how long I stay there, sitting against the front door with my head in my hands. It feels like hours. Then my phone rings, and I nearly jump out of my skin.

Get a grip, Hawk. You really think Dante would go through that whole scene with you, then call you a little while later just to freak you out? What’s he going to say? “Just wanted to remind you I’m still going to kill you and fuck up your life, asshole?” It’s probably Waverly, asking if I want her to pick anything up.

Waverly. Fuck. What will I say to her? How can I tell her about what just happened? It’ll scare her to death. We’re computer programmers, for Christ’s sake, not FBI agents. Gangsters with guns aren’t supposed to intrude on our safe little world of keyboards and screens.

The phone keeps ringing. I haul myself off the floor and totter over to it, picking it up.

“How’s it going?” It’s the calm, reassuring voice of the very Caldwell Dante hates more than life.

I clear my throat. “Uh, it’s...” The rest of the words stick in my throat like fish bones. I can’t tell him what happened. I can’t say it out loud. That will make it too real.

There’s a long pause, and when he speaks again, his tone is measured and gentle. “Hawk, did something happen with Dante?”

“Yes.” I force the word out.

“Okay. Did he come to your place and threaten you?” Caldwell sounds like a crisis counselor talking someone down from suicide.

“Yes.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“No, but, um...”

“But he scared the shit out of you. Of course. Anyone would be terrified. Listen, I know this probably won’t help you feel better – not much could right now, I’ll bet – but for what it’s worth, this is Dante’s MO. He likes shaking people up. Psychological warfare. He figures when they’re rattled, they’ll slip up, make mistakes. Plus, he’s just an asshole on general principle. Is the software safe?”

“Yes.” For the moment.

“Was Waverly with you when it happened?”

“No.”

“Are you going to tell her about it?”

I think about this for a minute. I know I should, but again, the thought of saying it out loud... “I’m not sure. I haven’t, um, decided yet.”

“I can respect that. You don’t want to scare her too. As long as you don’t want to say anything, neither will I. If you change your mind, that’s fine too. Okay?”

I nod, then realize I’m on the phone. “Yeah. Okay.”

“Now, I know this is going to be difficult after what you’ve just been through, but I need to talk to you about something else. You know the annual Helping Hearts and Hands charity ball I host at the Armónico?”

“Yeah, of course. The thing to raise money for cerebral palsy.”

“Well, it’s tomorrow.”

“Huh. Has it been a whole year already?”

“Yep. Time flies, I know. And I’ll be using the occasion to officially unveil the new casino software. Which means I’ll need you and Waverly to be there.”

I try to consider this, but my brain feels like it’s full of bees. All I can think of is staring down the barrel of the gun, on the verge of shitting myself.

“Again, I know this is a lot to ask after the day you’ve had,” Caldwell continues. “But you know Vegas. Everything runs on perception here. To look like we have a strong product, we need to show off the people who created it and make them available to answer questions. If you two aren’t there, folks will assume we’ve got something to hide. Does that make sense, Hawk?”

I take a deep breath. “Uh-huh. It’s just, the last time you invited me to something like this, it was to surprise me with Waverly. Which, I mean, eventually ended up being a nice surprise, don’t get me wrong...I just...I’m not sure I can handle any more surprises right now.”

He sighs into the phone and the sound thunders through my eardrums. My entire body feels extra sensitive to light and sound. “No surprises this time. I promise.”

I feel myself starting to breathe harder, losing control.

“Nixon, um...he said he’d hack it. He told me he’d get it from us that way. Steal it.”

There’s a moment of silence. Then, “Well, you’ll just have to find a way to keep that from happening, won’t you, Hawk?”

“But what if I can’t?”

“You can.” His tone left no room for argument. “I know you can. I believe in you. And besides, we’ve all worked too hard on this to let anything happen to it now. Go. Splash some water on your face. Have a drink. Hell, have three. I know it feels like you’re going to be terrified for the rest of your life, but trust me, you’ll snap out of it. That’s how it works. I’ve been there.”

I close my eyes. “Okay, Caldwell.”

“I’ll see you tomorrow night at the ball. And remember to dress up, all right? It’s black tie, but I don’t expect you to get a tux on short notice. Wear a suit. The whole ‘rumpled genius in an ironic t-shirt’ look is cute for conventions and seminars, but these are some of the richest people in Vegas. We need to make a good impression. Make sure Waverly knows that too. And seriously, try to keep calm, if you can. This is almost over. Once the software’s been released, there won’t be anything else Dante can do about it except line up at Best Buy for a watered down civilian copy like everyone else.”

And with that, he hangs up.

Jesus, Caldwell’s a hard man to read. Does he really care about my well-being? Or will he just say anything to keep me productive, so he can have his precious software?

I don’t know. I don’t care. I’m too tired to guess at people’s hidden motives right now.

The gun.

The gun.

The gun.

I hear the knob on the front door jiggle, and I jump like I got zapped with an electric shock. Someone’s trying to get in. I picture Dante coming through the door with his gun drawn and slap my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming like a toddler being forced to sit on Santa’s lap.

Then I hear Waverly’s voice, irritated. “I’m away for a few hours, and you lock the door behind me? What the hell?” She starts banging on it.

I walk to the door quickly, unlock it, and open it. “Sorry about that.”

She looks like she wants to give me hell about it, then stops herself, her eyes filling with concern. “You’re pale. And you’re sweating. Did something happen? Is that why you locked the door? What? What was it?”

I open my mouth, then close it again. I still can’t say it. And besides, what if Caldwell’s right and this whole thing will blow over soon? She shouldn’t have to live with the same terror I’m experiencing right now, not if all of this can be fixed without her having to know about it.

“Nothing happened,” I say, trying to sound light. I hear the slight tremble in my voice and cough, hoping she won’t notice.

“Well, something must have. You look like shit.”

“We’ve been pushing ourselves really hard. Even after getting so much sleep last night, I must still be tired.”

“I’m tired too, but I don’t look like shit.” She cocks her head. “Do I? You can totally tell me if I do. I mean, I’ll break up with you and probably hit you, but you can still tell me.”

I force a laugh. “You look beautiful. How did it go?”

Her eyes narrow almost imperceptibly. “You mean my Tinder gang bang?”

“Whatever you were doing.”

“It went fine.”

She’s definitely hiding something from me. The knowledge of this digs into me like a splinter, and it makes it easier for me to hide the Dante thing from her. Now we both have secrets.

I just hope whatever hers is, it’s not as awful as mine.

“Caldwell called,” I tell her. “He needs us at the Helping Hearts and Hands charity ball tomorrow. He’s announcing the software launch there.”

Waverly nods. “Makes sense. It’s not exactly my usual scene, but Nixon probably wants to show us off, right? Be available for questions?”

“That’s what he said, yes.”

She smirks, and I only wish I could go back in time a few hours so I could enjoy it. “Then I’ll have to dust off my dress Converse and wear my best scrunchie, won’t I?”

“He, uh, said it was black tie...”

She raises an eyebrow and nudges me hard. “It was a joke, goofball. Of course, I’ll dress up. God, you are really out of it, aren’t you? Are you sure there’s nothing you want to tell me? No other woman slipped into bed with you while I was gone and sucked out your brains with her Kung Fu pussy?”

I swallow hard. “You look beautiful.”

“You already told me that,” she reminds me with a smile.

“Well, it bears repeating. I downloaded the movies. Which one do you want to do first?”

She chooses Sneakers, and as we watch Robert Redford and his merry men spell out the movie’s plot with Scrabble tiles, I hold her as tightly as I possibly can. I already don’t want to lose her. And something inside my gut flips over, portending that it’s entirely possible that I will.