Page 34 of Draco Family Duet

“Yes, and you were never this happy to see me. Tell me what’s going on. I’m happy to help.” He dropped his helmet on his seat and raked his hands through his long, shaggyhair.

Fredo raced from the house, holding the phone out to me. With a solemn nod, I snatched it from his hand and hit the speaker button. “Yes?” I tried to sound as snooty and removed aspossible.

“Come on, Draco. You can do better than that.” The man chuckled. He was using a voice distorter, but I’d have to guess from his verbiage, I was speaking with Sterling Girard. “You’d better, if you ever want to see this pretty little packageagain.”

My free hand curled into a fist. Across from me, Mishal’s eyes widened, then narrowed dangerously. He grabbed the elastic from around his wrist and pulled his hair back. Obviously, he was ready to get serious. When he finished, he crossed his arms over his chest and waited forinstructions.

“What do you want?” I asked with a sigh, as if this call was wasting my valuable time. I closed my eyes and worked to control my breathing. I couldn’t have my emotions giving meaway.

The voice grew agitated. “Listen,freak. I’ll call back later with instructions. For now, you gather as much cash as you can and prepare for anexchange.”

“Cool. Well, I have meetings today, so I would appreciateif…”

There was a growl and then the line went dead. Taking a deep breath, I opened my phone apps and hit the GPS one. The hardest part was waiting for everything to connect and for the map and bubble to finally appear on the screen. I held it up. “This is our target, the warehouse district. This is where Maggie is beingheld.”

Mishal frowned. “How could you know this? What did you do…chipher?”

I shrugged. “Sort of. It’s in hernecklace.”

* * *

Maggie

Ialmost believed him.When I heard Blaise on the phone, acting like he didn’t give a damn about me, my heart was completely crushed. I averted my eyes and tried to hide the tears, which burned like battery acid. I think seeing my reaction made Sterling nervous. “I told you. I’m a job. I’m nothing more to him,” I reminded thecreep.

He glared at Ira. “I thought you said there was something going on with them. I thought you said he couldn’t take his eyes offher.”

Ira squirmed. “I did. He couldn’t. I don’t know what’s goingon.”

“Get the geek,” Sterling growled. Immediately, Ira scampered off and disappeared through a door a few feet away. Once we were alone, he leisurely walked around the table, picked up a metal folding chair, strolled back in my direction and set it up a few feet in front of me. Dropping into the seat, Sterling made a big show of smoothing his pants and crossing his legs before addressingme.

Already, I was bored and I intentionally yawned when he looked my direction. I covered my mouth with the back of my hand. “Oh, sorry,” I murmured absently. “I would’ve done a better job, but my hands are tied.” I held them up inexplanation.

After an almost imperceptible hesitation, Sterling chuckled. “I still think you’re hisweakness.”

I snorted. “Please. Mr. Draco has noweaknesses.”

“Everyone has a weakness.” He uncrossed his legs, leaned forward and grinned. “For example, I knowyours.”

“Well, that should’ve been easy. I barely have any strengths,” Ijoked.

“I know all about you, Maggie Wallace,” Sterling sneered. “How do you think we knew how to lure you out? How do suppose we knew which buttons topush?”

“Lucky guess.” I shrugged. “Don’t most women go soft for kids? Doesn’t prove you’re a genius.” I rolled myeyes.

He stood and slowly circled me. “That’s what you think?” He leaned low near my ear. “You’re cute, but you couldn’t be morewrong.”

The metal door in the back of the building opened and Ira emerged with a middle-aged man in tow. The acoustics in the room made everything echo and seem painfully loud. I struggled to see which geek they’d hired. Though Silicon Valley had numerous programmers, there were few who could achieve what my father had, few on his level, even fewer with the skills to engineer a copycat program. I stared down the guy who seemed to be avoiding my gaze. In fact, the closer he came to us, the more uncomfortable he appeared. When he finally reached the table, I knew why. “Hello, Joel.” As soon as I called him out, he glanced toward me and my brow rose, which made himshiver.

“Ah, I see you two know each other.” Sterling stood straight, his shoulders back, arms crossed over his chest. “I’m actually rather surprised to learn you’ve met your father’s oldassistant.”

I tried to show no emotion, but in my mind, I was putting all the pieces together. Joel had been with my father for years. He even relocated with Dad and reported to our house for work when my father had been fired. He had been loyal, trustworthy, and talented. More than that, Joel truly believed in the benefits and the profitability of this program. Worse, he knew all about it. I swallowed hard. Was Joel being used or was he a casualty of Girard’s ambitions like me? Soon enough, I had my answer. Ira set him up at the table with his laptop. Before moving away from him, he clapped Joel on the back a few times. And now I knew. I was completely on my own. Of course, this didn’t mean I had to roll over and give up without a fight. “Wow. What a disappointment you turned out to be, Joel,” I noted. To my satisfaction, I watched the man’s cheekspinken.

“We found him a while back,” Sterling began proudly. “He was broke, completely unemployable. He’d been blackballed in the Valley for leaving with your father. Naturally, I recognized his talents, and decided to set him up, give him an opportunity to use thoseskills.”

“Broke and unemployable? You just described my father.” I looked past Girard to address the traitor. “You know we’re about to lose our house, right? Did you not understand my father didn’t want to let you go? He ran out of money to pay you, dumbass.” I shook my head. “He agonized over this for weeks. He thought he was doing you a favor so you didn’t go down with our sinkingship.”

The programmer had been tapping away on the laptop, but suddenly froze. “I didn’t know that.” His shouldersdrooped.

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