Chapter 10 #2
I grab what I came here for and shove everything in a backpack.
My hard drive, some skincare products, more clothes …
I hesitate for a moment, glimpsing at my nightstand.
I haven’t been in the mood for sensuality since Lex’s arrest. But hearing Tamika and her friend having fun reminds me of how nice the whole thing can be.
Plus, knocking myself into sleep with a good orgasm has always worked wonders for me, and I’ve been struggling with that lately.
Maybe it’s not completely absurd to take Idris and Jensen back to Lex’s place. Just in case.
Impulsively, I take them out of their drawer and shove them into my bag, along with their charging cords. I don’t have to use them, but I can if I want to. They can help me forget about this whole situation, even just for a few minutes, as I lose myself in fantasies of Lex.
Once I have everything, I return to the living room, closing the door behind me as discreetly as I can.
Now that I’m closer, I realize they’re both noisy.
Whoever she’s with, he got the memo that men moaning is a big turn-on for women.
Too bad Tammy can’t enjoy it. Though she seems to be enjoying herself quite a lot as it is.
Oh, I can’t wait to tease her about it someday—revenge for the time she caught Lex coming out of my room, buck naked.
When I’m back in the entrance hallway, I take my phone out to text Oli. If he’s interested, I can pick him up on my way back to Lex’s place. I send the text and grab a shoe, but a ding in the living room stops me.
Wait … Why did that sound like a Mario coin? And why the fuck do I know that notification sound? I think my brain figures it out but refuses to accept it because I retake my phone to send another text to Oli, an inconspicuous follow-up to my, “Are you available?”
The sound echoes in the living room again, barely audible over the ruckus in Tammy’s bedroom.
“Oh my fucking God,” I whisper-shout at myself, overwhelmed by the discovery.
Is it really Oli in there? No way. No fucking way.
In disbelief, I click on the button on top to call him, coming closer to the living room. Sure enough, a phone rings, discarded in the pair of jeans. And it absolutely is Oli’s ringtone—the same one as the satellite phone in Jurassic Park Three.
“Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God,” I hurriedly and quietly chant to myself. Oli’s secret girl is Tamika. And Tammy’s guy is Oliver.
I need to get the fuck out of here before they finish and find me out here.
The whole time I put on my shoes and skedaddle, I can’t help but freak out.
How did that happen? And how did I not know?
! She’s my roommate. My fucking roommate.
And he’s one of my best friends. How the fuck did I never figure it out?
As soon as the door is locked behind me, I breathe again.
I then walk to the elevator while I replay the past few months in my head, trying to think of when this started.
Oli told me about meeting someone new, or starting to see someone he already knew, a little before Dakota’s Friendsgiving, didn’t he?
As for Tammy, I’m not really sure when she first told me about the guy she was seeing.
I was spending a lot of time at Lex’s around that period, so I couldn’t have noticed her spending the night elsewhere.
All I knew was that she really liked him and couldn’t get enough.
I’m still not over it when I arrive at Lex’s place. Those sounds I heard, which were amusing then, now feel like an affront to my ears. I don’t want to know what Oli sounds like in bed. It’s like, ew, just … no.
A revolted shiver runs through me. I know he has a dick, I felt it under me that time I acted like a lunatic after our one and only date, but my mental image of Oli has become that of a Ken doll—nothing there but blank space.
And now, I have to live with the knowledge that he’s apparently a sex god? In Tammy’s standards, at least.
“I need a shower,” I mumble with a grimace, prone to another outraged shiver.
But because I had one before heading to my old apartment, I decide to be reasonable instead and get to work. Half an hour after I’ve sat down, I get a call from Oli. Shit.
“Don’t make it weird,” I tell myself before picking up. “Hey, man,” I greet. Fuck, I sound weird.
“Hey, what’s up?”
“Uh, not much. The usual, you know?”
“Oh, okay. I saw your texts. And I saw you called as well. I thought it might be important.”
“Ah, hm, kind of? But you can drop by whenever, really. Take your time, recuperate …”
“What?”
Moron! “From your week of work!” I quickly justify.
“Okay …? Are you alright?”
“Yup, never better. You?”
“Yeah, I’m good.”
I bet you are, fucking my roommate and all … “Well, you can come—uh, arrive, whenever,” I say. “I’m here all day.”
“I’ll see what I can do. Are you sure you’re alright?”
“Absolutely. See ya in a bit, mah brotha from anotha motha.”
Dear fucking God, I’m fucking terrible at this. Before the carnage gets any worse, I hang up. I shove my face in my hands with a whimper, wondering where the fuck all that came from. Two months without sex and I get weird as hell about it.
Though I’m not sure the sex is the issue here, but rather them not telling me. They didn’t want me to know, for some reason, but now I do. And I’m not sure what to do with that information, other than be happy for them both.
When Tammy tried to push me to date Oli, I had the thought that maybe she had a crush on him. Seeing her get the guy she’s been pining after is great. And seeing Oli move on from that brief not-even-a-relationship we had is also a good thing.
I’m just disappointed they didn’t trust me enough to tell me.
Twenty minutes after the call, Oliver rolls in. Fuck, I can’t even handle him on the phone. It’ll be even worse in real life. “That was quick,” I tell him, surprised to see him so early.
“Yeah … To be honest, I was worried you were having a stroke or something, so I thought I’d check on you.”
“Ah-ha, no, I’m good. I hope I didn’t take you away from … anything important.”
He squints his eyes at me, suspicious of my deranged behavior. “No, it’s all good. So, what did you want to talk about?”
“Oh, um, I found something in an unlabeled folder. It looks like a hit Lex prepared, but never did. And given the metadata, he abandoned it around the same time he quit hacking.”
“That’s interesting. You’re thinking of using that for the hit?”
“Yeah. I mean, I’ve had ideas of my own, but nothing will ever beat an actual Nammota plan, right?”
“I agree, yes. Should we look into it?”
“Let’s go.”
We go over everything together, and I wait for him to share his thoughts on it. It’s big—huge, even—but it’s exactly what we need. Something only Nammota can pull off, something that will divert the focus from Lex, and trick the entire world into thinking the legendary hacker is still out there.
Oli remains silent for about a minute, intensely processing his thoughts.
While he does, I let my eyes wander to the ring in its box, which I’ve been keeping on the desk as a reminder, my motivation to keep pushing even when my eyes won’t stay open.
One day, Lex will slip it on my finger himself, and it’ll never leave it.
“So, it’s just one bank?” Oli asks.
“Yes. Imperium. They’ve gotten huge in the past twenty, twenty-five years.
The über-rich flocked to them because they offer not only anonymity but also discrete transfers to offshore fiscal paradises, where they also operate.
It’s all very legal, but ethically wrong, which they don’t care about much. ”
“And Lex found a flaw?”
“Yes, he found an unmonitored backoffice API, and I looked. It’s still there. They never fixed it.”
“How much per hit?” he asks.
“A little over fifty-seven million.”
“And how many hits?”
“Twenty at least. Lex meant to do twenty-five.”
“And that’s—”
“Over one point four billion.”
That renders him silent again, as he tries to fathom how huge the plan is. But like me, he knows it has to be monumental. Otherwise, people won’t truly believe this is Nammota.
“And you really think we can pull it off? We can’t waste two weeks on it before realizing it won’t be possible,” he prudently points out.
“With everything Lex left behind and your help, I really think I can. We can. We have to.”
“We have Lex’s shuffling algorithm, so making the money disappear is one thing we won’t have to worry about.”
“Exactly. It needs to be slightly updated, but it’ll still work.”
“And there’s the list of vetted charities, too?”
“Yes. But we’d have to add a few—some created in the past five years.”
“You know what to pick?”
“Well, I’ve been living and breathing Nammota for weeks, so I’ve got a good understanding of how his mind works.”
“You’re also dating the guy,” he jokes.
“True.”
He stares at the screen, rereading some of the information there. “So, one bank with a massive security flaw, twenty-five accounts, one point four billion dollars, and a thousand charities around the world.”
“Yes. The moment it goes through, Imperium will see the crack they left open and fix it. Might as well hit hard on the one chance we have.”
“I agree. So, should we start working on it?” he asks, eager to get the ball rolling.
“Yeah, or—You can have your Saturday if you want. Go spend time with your girlfriend,” I suggest.
Now that I know he’s seeing Tammy, I feel a little bad taking up so much of his time. And I’m not sure what he told her, but I certainly don’t want her to think there’s anything going on between us. I’m not losing my friendship with her over some misunderstanding.
“It’s okay. I spent the night there. She’s probably had enough of me.”
“I bet,” I can’t help but mumble.
He scrolls through Lex’s notes, reading more of them and casually says, “You’ve called her my girlfriend a few times, and she isn’t really that, by the way.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, I haven’t asked yet. Neither has she.”