My situation was precarious, unusual, unprecedented. I couldn’t tell if I was making a mountain out of a molehill or seeing the molehill from so close that it looked huge.

Harper had wondered if I was going to cut her into little pieces because she was imagining me in sections.

My phone was charged, and I got a moment of signal from the balcony overlooking the thorn bushes. Something was getting through the scrambler, or she’d turned it off.

Fuck encrypted texts. I called Deepak.

“Dude,” he said without so much as a hello. “Where have you been?”

“It’s her. Harper. The girl from MIT. She did it.”

“Why?” His voice cracked. He was exhausted.

“Plight of the working man. She wanted to draw attention to the recession. Whatever. I’m coming back.”

“How did she do it?”

Below me, the thorn bushes wove together like a square of steel wool. A bent and cracked white picket fence held the bed to shape.

“I don’t know.”

“And you’re coming home?”

I almost called him crazy before I told him I was coming home for shit sure, but he deserved an explanation. “There’s something off here. It’s like a cross between Children of the Corn and Wicker Man.”

“Are those movies? I’m more of a Bollywood guy.”

“Creepy. It’s creepy.”

“Oh. Well. In that case, come back. We’ll just tell the guys to find another job. Our clients will understand—”

“Deepak—”

“—why it’s so important for you not to be in a creepy place.”

Was he shouting? It was hard to tell with his voice so shredded.

“You don’t get it.”

“I get it, my friend. I fucking get it.” He’d never taken this sharp a tone with me, and for that reason alone, I shut up. “You’re in a new place with someone who has it out for you. Taylor Harden is a target and feels bad. Boo-hoo. Now get over it. You’ve had it easy your whole life.”

“Wait a minute. I worked my ass off.”

“But your head’s buried in it. Creepy is working your ass off for nothing. You worked your ass off for something.”

I could have argued, but I couldn’t have argued with his intensity. We were going to have a long, hard talk over beers when I got back.

“Fuck you, Deepak.” That was as close to capitulation as I intended to get.

“You too, baby.”

The line of the factory roof was solid brown against the horizon. A V of birds headed south along it. If I showed my face in the office without QI4 in one piece, I was going to be a laughingstock. Distance insulated me.

“I’m coming back as soon as I figure this out, and I’m not playing into what she wants. Make sure no one talks about where I am.”

“They don’t know.”

“Not a word to the press. No exposure. Nothing. My whereabouts are unknown.”

“Agreed.”

I peered into my room. Empty. Door closed. I did the same with the master suite. Empty.

“Can anyone hear you?” I whispered.

“I just got home. I live alone.”

Just got home? He’d probably combed through hardware and code for twenty-four hours or more.

“You’re working hard for something.”

“Make sure of it.”

I ended the call just as Harper came onto the balcony from the master suite. She had a disturbingly self-satisfied look that I wanted to kiss right off.

“How’s everything back home?” She leaned her hip on the railing, arms crossed, indicating the phone I’d left facedown on the railing with a quick twirl of her finger.

“About as wonderful as you’d expect. I left a full complement of guys with their limp dicks in their hands.”

She smirked. “That imagery is so appealing.”

“Does it make you nervous, at all? Being out here with me? The guy you’re in the process of fucking over? I could pick you up and throw you off this balcony right now. Leave you in the fucking thorn bushes.” I’d never threatened a woman with violence before, and the threats came out of my mouth so easily I scared myself a little.

Harper didn’t seem half as nervous about it as I did. “Who would unlock your system then?”

“I’ve cracked harder cases than you, miss.”

I was a little closer, my finger pointed right at her like a punctuation mark. She looked away. Now she was nervous. The idea of violence didn’t faze her, but the idea of being outwitted went right to the core.

“I didn’t think you’d actually come.” She touched my elbow, just brushing along it.

The normal reaction to being touched by an enemy would have been to pull away, but her electrical current didn’t throw me back. It created a closed circuit between us.

Luckily, my right hand knew what my left was doing.

I grabbed her arm with my other hand and held it there. “What do you want?”

“A lot.”

“What?”

“In five years? A house on the lake and a kid or two. Short term?” She put my hand to her chest. I was never going to get a straight answer. She was crazy and fucking gorgeous and too smart for her own good. All those things at once.

I was trying to put all the pieces together. She tilted her head, and I tilted mine. She leaned in a little, and I leaned with her as if I could hear her better. I was curious what she wanted short term because a clue to my fate was there.

“Short term I’d just like to—”

I leaned a little too far, brushing my phone off the railing. I grabbed for it. It bounced off my fingers, twisting in the air, off the back-porch overhang, spinning faster and away into the thorn bushes below.

“Fuck!”

I wanted to choke her, but it wasn’t her fault. It had been my elbow leaning too far left.

I ran downstairs, past Catherine puttering in the kitchen, and stood at the edge of the thorn bed. It was bordered by a two-foot-high white picket fence. The thorns went to the top of it and not an inch past it.

When I tried to part the brambles where it looked like the phone had fallen, I was rewarded with blood from two slashes.

Harper was right behind me. “Let me call you!”

“You know my number?”

She slid her finger over the glass. Of course she knew my number. I leaned over the bed.

“Is it ringing?” she asked.

“Fuck!” It wasn’t ringing. There was no light. No buzz. No nothing. “Is it ringing on your end?”

She put the speaker on. Half a ring then a cut to voicemail.

“Shit.” It had hit the wall and the ground from the second story, but the way it had smacked the porch overhang had probably had an impact.

“Maybe it just shut off when it fell?”

Her optimism was fucking touching. I didn’t hold out much hope that it would ever work again.

“I’m gonna hack the shit out of whoever stole my laptop,” I grumbled, scanning the bushes for an opening. “They won’t be able to buy a pack of gum again.” I walked around the perimeter, cursing myself for leaving it in the trunk.

Having circumnavigated the entire area, I crouched, trying to catch a glimpse of my lifeline to my world. The branches were so thick I could barely see an inch into the depths.

“Can we get in there?” I asked.

“I guess I can see if one of the guys can come by?”

“When?”

“Tomorrow afternoon, probably?”

I couldn’t tell if she was sincere. Couldn’t read her. Didn’t know if she was full of shit or if “the guys” weren’t available in the morning because no one did anything in a hurry. Didn’t matter. Every word out of her mouth was a lie.

Fuck it.

Wasn’t like it could ring anyway.

“Tomorrow, phone or no phone, you tell me what you want. I’m not staying around here without clarity on what I have to do to get my code back. If you won’t give it to me, well, they can all laugh at me. I don’t care. I will walk right out onto the interstate if I think you’re wasting my time.”

I didn’t wait for a cute excuse or a snotty word. I couldn’t tell up from down. I couldn’t be sure if I’d pushed the phone over the edge or if she’d made sure I knocked it over.

Didn’t matter. I was done with Harper Barrington and her bullshit.