Page 36 of The Refusal

I turn to look at her tilted head.

“What?” I say.

“He’s not that stable, is he?”

The fact that Jo can see this when she’s only just met him makes an iron fist tighten around my throat. In a heartbeat, my mind leaps over all his problems to Jo’s code on his machine, and my thoughts barrel forward and out of my mouth before they’re straight in my head.

“I’m concerned that you’ll be sucked into some sort of problem, too.”

But she immediately shakes her head. “Don’t worry about me. I’m in security, we’re always doing this”—she waves her hand around and shrugs, but my sixth-sense alarm is pinging like crazy—“delving into the hacking world one way or the other. There are other people like Fabian. He’s extremely good, but it was weird meeting him today and knowing that he’s breaking into systems, because it doesn’t seem like we’re on opposite sides of this game at all. He’s a nice guy.”

Despite her tiny frame and losing her mom in such an awful way, she’s not in the least bit fragile. I inspect her earnest face and wonder for a beat if she might ever think I’m a nice guy, too—or are my impatience, the women, and what they print about me in the paper all too much for her? I glance down the street at the disappearing red lights of a car. I don’t know how to resolve the situation with Fabian, and I’m still conflicted about the code on his machine.

“What are you doing now? Do you want to get some dinner?” I didn’t even know I was going to say that until it was out of my mouth and I hold my breath; then she smiles and all the air rushes out of me in relief.

“Yes, and I know a great place not too far away,” she says, beaming up at me, and my desperation takes on a totally different edge.

22

Fabian

The traffic is squealing and honking as I cross the street, damp seeping everywhere. The lack of sleep and remnants of drugs in my bloodstream are causing me to zigzag, and the few people hurrying along are studiously ignoring me in the way they do in big cities where there’s too many crazies to count. Jo’s good, I have to give her that; I only found her code on my network by accident. Engrossed in some other problem, I decided to look at the work we did on Sunday and found some timestamps that looked odd. I’ve left her stuff in there happily tracking an irrelevant part of the system; it’ll buy me time to have this little chat.

She’s fucking betrayed Janus. I stamp my feet, trying to warm up, and tamp down the swarm buzzing in my chest. She’s friendly and lovely with that flowing long red hair and tiny body and, Jesus, who would blame any man for being smitten with that? I growl to myself. Someone must see Janus as a way of getting to me, and the escalation, using someone like Jo to put code on my system, is terrifying. The Russians have been a worry ever since I hacked into some military servers and found all sorts of eye-popping documents tracking Western defense activities. I’m not sure what I am going to do with that information, and I’ve covered my tracks, but the hacking world can be brutal.

I stare up at her building. Most networks across the city are easy enough to access if I need to find out something simple like where someone lives. It might have been safer to call, but I want to see her expression when I confront her. The red brick glows in the pale light of the rising sun as it peeps over the haze of the buildings. I glance at my watch, noticing a tremor in my hand.Goddammit. Six a.m. and I’ve got the full-on shakes. Coffee. I need coffee. A guy on the other sidewalk carrying a cup snags my attention, and I shoot across the road, loping up to him. He startles out of his early-morning daze, and I gesture at his hand, but he takes one look at me and doesn’t stop walking, waving behind him up toward the intersection and muttering something about an all-night convenience store. In a burst I am up the street and in the blissful warmth, helping myself to a two-dollar coffee from the dispenser. I scan the energy bars, hungry, but my stomach is fragile these days and I don’t want to puke.

I’m out of the shop in minutes. Fortunately, there aren’t many people around, and the warmth of the cup is blissful as the February chill seeps through my clothes. After another half an hour of freezing my ass off, a small slight figure, bundled up in more wool than you’d find on a sheep, appears at the door. I jog over the road and call her name. Her gray woolen hat jerks backward, and her eyes go wide as they latch onto mine.

“Fabian? What are you doing here? Is everything okay with Janus?” And the concern and worry on her face make everything inside me want to curl up and die. Fuck, she likes him. I turn my head to look up the street: That makes no sense at all.

I bring my eyes back to hers, trying to read her before we say anything more, and she frowns in consternation.

“You’re freaking me out right now.”

“I found the code,” I say, studying her, and I blink as resignation crosses her face, then a half smile. I jerk back. What the fuck? Where are the blustering denials?

“You’re pretty impressive,” she says, and the respect in her voice takes me by surprise. “Three days. That was fast.”

“What the hell, Jo?” She’s so calm, but pressure is building in me like a spring that’s wound too tight. I scan around half-expecting some henchmen to appear out of thin air.

She pulls up a sleeve, searching for her watch, nodding like we are discussing some small trivial error. “Let’s find a coffee place and go chat.”

I try to calm down by talking to myself positively in my head; I can rarely make techniques like this work for me, despite everything past therapists have told me.

We end up in a rough-looking place with steamed-up windows around the corner. I glance at the occupants, staring at a large threatening-looking guy at the back, but he doesn’t even lift his head. After we’re settled in, she puts a calming hand on my arm, and her eyes are fixed and clear, gaze never shifting from mine. No wonder Janus is so head over heels for her.

“I don’t know how much to tell you, but I’m not a natural at hiding things, so I’ll just tell you the story.” She blows out a long breath. “You know someone has been trying to hack Janus’s Industries systems?” I nod. “Well, Janus found a map of his system on a piece of paper on your desk.”

“What?” The alarm cracks out of me. Bloody hell, of all the things that were a possibility, this one never crossed my mind. The spring that has been winding tighter and tighter begins to unravel with frightening speed.Janusinstigated this?

I’m fucked.

I’m seriously fucked.

He thinks I hacked his system. An age-old dread mushrooms like a virus in my stomach. All the people who cared for me have disappeared in one way or another, but he and Adam are still around: the only people I trust.

“Janusasked you to try and track what I was doing?”

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