Chapter 2 #2
Uncle Max was also the one who told me a smart man knows what he wants and goes after it.
I was ready to repeat his advice, but I haven’t been taking it.
I know Pixie isn’t what I want. She’s just a fantasy.
Julie wasn’t what I wanted, either, although she was more of a nightmare.
I want what Logan has. I want that joy. I want a girl dancing around my kitchen singing the morning after.
I want her to still have a warm bottom from my hand while she does it.
I want her to be able to make me harder than I’ve ever been just by looking up at me with her dark eyes and calling me daddy.
I know what I want; I need to start going after it. If that means I have to go to this playgroup thing and give it a chance, well, that’s what I’ll do. Uncle Max didn’t raise a dummy.
Hacking the Ohio DMV database, following the lead I have on a Wilson for Logan, is interrupted by class. Yes, class. The Navy offered me a college degree, but when I saw how much bullshit officers had to deal with, I dropped to auditing classes and ducked out of getting a degree.
Since my discharge, I’ve discovered that lots of credits in computer programming on my resume doesn’t impress anyone.
So, I’ve enrolled in NYU to finish up my degree.
I’m only taking two classes per semester, and I’ll graduate in another twelve months.
Ty, the little shit, thinks me being a student at the ripe age of 31 is hilarious and laughs his ass off as I get ready.
Now that he’s calmed down, cleaned up, fed, and back on the right track with his crush, Ty’s eager to go in for the afternoon.
I tuck a ten-dollar bill into his backpack when he’s not looking and then swipe a chocolate bar out of my hidden stash and pop it in as well.
In case his mother hasn’t remembered to put money on his student card, which would not be the first time, he has enough money for lunch.
He can eat the chocolate bar for dessert or use it to entice his girl.
Given how long he takes, preening in the bathroom, after he makes the decision to go in for the afternoon, I expect it will be the latter.
I forge a note from his mother, call an Uber, and drop him off at the gates of his school on Third Avenue.
There are herds of kids milling around the school’s side yard, presumably on lunch break.
I see the brown-eyed brunette drift to the edge of one little herd as Ty climbs out of the Uber.
She grins when she sees him; he swaggers into the yard without a backwards glance.
I tell the Uber driver to head to the second stop with a big grin of my own.
I’m not the only “adult learner” in the embedded systems design class, but most of the shiny young things sit at the front and hang on every word out of the professor’s mouth.
Lindren Jolie. He’s a year younger than me but already a multi-millionaire.
He came out of MIT the same year I went into the Navy.
Orelo, a West Coast company no one had heard of, snapped him up.
A few years later, while I was sweating my balls off in Northern Africa, Orelo developed the first successful algorithm to operate self-drive cars.
After their little company went public with an IPO that raised six billion, everyone had heard of them.
Last year, everyone heard about Orelo again, but not for the same reasons.
Given his net worth, I should hate Lindy on principal, but I actually like the guy.
He’s as socially awkward and uncomfortable being the focus of attention as I am.
Today, his light brown hair is standing on end like it’s never met a hairbrush.
He’s wearing a T-shirt with the alchemical formula for the Philosopher’s stone on it, and his jeans look like they fought a battle with grass and lost. Why he took a teaching position at a school where he’s under the microscope every day, I haven’t figured out.
He can’t possibly need the money. We’ve been out for drinks twice.
He gently hit on me. I gently told him no.
I think we’re on the way to being friends.
After class, I drop down the steps in the amphitheater-shaped classroom until I stand in front of his desk.
I lean back against the half wall which separates the lectern from the seats and watch with a grin while Lindy fends off a very persistent red-head with hair teased up taller than my six-one, who is trying to get extra-credit by shoving her tits under his nose.
I keep my chuckle to myself and resist the urge to tell her she’s barking up the wrong sexual orientation.
Lindy finally gives the girl a worksheet and escapes her coffin-nailed clutches. After she pushes through the classroom door, already jabbering on her phone, he rolls his eyes at me.
“Code bunny,” he says.
I snort. “Not a thing.”
“It is when she’s got to keep her GPA above three-two for her scholarship. You got time for something to eat?”
Since Ty ate most of our “breakfast pizza,” I nod. “Just came down to see if you did. I got a call I want to talk with you about.”
His eyes shift left and right. He can guess who called me. “Let me tell my TA.”
I follow him to his office, which is a hole in the wall and probably feels like a rat-warren in comparison to the plush space in Mountain View he left to move east. Other than digital whiteboards, the walls of his office are bare, except for a huge portrait of Lindy himself.
It’s on the school website, too. Him sitting at his desk with a whiteboard of code behind him.
It’s honestly one of the worst pictures of a human being I’ve ever seen.
His hair’s slicked back like he hasn’t washed it in a month.
He’s forcing a huge grin; I swear I can count each molar.
His eyes are bugging out slightly behind thick black frames.
He could be Peter Pettigrew’s long-lost rat-shifter cousin.
The picture’s made worse by contrast with Lindy’s blond, hunky TA who is sitting at a desk under it. The guy’s all smiling blue eyes when Lindy tells him we’re going out and Lindy promises to bring him back a coffee. Probably a half-caf, soy, blonde macchiato. Definitely what that guy drinks.
As we walk off campus toward the taco bar Lindy likes, I ask, “You tapping that?”
Lindy sputters in mid-extol about the taco bar’s vegan queso, which sounds foul. “No, he’s an undergrad.”
“So am I.”
“No, you’re not. You’re, like, an adult learner or whatever they call you. You’re older than I am and you know more about cyber security than I do. They should’ve given you an honorary and offered you a teaching position instead of taking your money for two semesters.”
He checked my age, which makes me grin, since I did the same to him.
“Besides,” he continues. “I just finished being a headline for the wrong reason. I don’t need another expose ‘cause I hopped in bed with Chad.”
“His name is not Chad.”
Lindy snorts. “I’m not actually sure what his name is. But he’s a Chad.”
I grunt in amusement, even though I feel a sliver of pity for Lindy.
Part of the impetus for him moving east was that his mother’s in New York and not in the best health.
But the bigger part was why his company made headlines for the second time.
The financial papers had a field day when Orelo’s stock tumbled by a third when the CEO and CFO began battling for control of the company.
The tabloids had an even bigger field day when the CFO filed for divorce from the CEO on grounds of infidelity.
What everyone got wrong, after an eventual out-of-court settlement, was who Lindy was sleeping with.
Still, my sympathy is tempered by the fact that Lindy’s bed partner was very much married, if still in the closet.
While I’ve been researching this whole daddy rabbit-hole Logan’s started me down, I’ve come across the concept of “hard limits”: things you just won’t do.
Married people are one of my hard limits.
I don’t let even the sliver of pity show, though.
I made that mistake the first time we went out for drinks.
Lindy ended the evening very abruptly. I might be as awkward as Greg called me, but I can pick up on clues people put out with neon signs.
Whatever Lindy feels about what happened in California, he doesn’t want anyone’s pity.
I respect that, since there are places in my own past that I don’t want anyone turning a pitying eye on.
Once we’re seated at a 1950’s diner-style booth with a tray of hand-cut tortillas between us, I bring up the thing I really want to talk to Lindy about. I know he’s come across blackhats before because we talked about it when we went out to drinks.
“A got a call from the bad guys,” I tell him. “They want me to come in on a job.”
Lindy inhales several chips smothered in vegan queso, which I have to admit isn’t as bad as it sounds, although I stick to my cheesy version after trying it, before he asks, “And you said?”
“No. But if they can’t find anyone, they’ll ask again. More forcefully.”
“How forcefully?”
I shrug. My personal security’s damn good, but they could make life difficult enough that I have to dig in and spend some time in the bunker in my building’s basement. They could also go after people close to me. Not much I wouldn’t do to keep Manny, Logan, Emily, Ty, even Lindy himself safe.
“Pretty forcefully. They’re not good guys.”
“What if you go in as a mole and then turn them over to the good guys?”
I take a long drink of my soda to wash nachos and the slight bitterness of fear out of my mouth. “Any that I miss burn me to the ground.”
“How big a group are they?”
“I only know four of them and one’s in jail. But I think there are at least three more, just based on the communications traffic of the leader.”
“Think I might know them?”
I shrug. “Let’s not go there. I was hoping you could take a poke around my systems. Rough up my firewalls. See if you can find any weaknesses they might exploit.”
“Security of your systems isn’t going to stop them from snatching you off the street if they really want you.”
I nod. “I’ve got a guy I can call to watch my back.
” I finger the black stud in my left ear, which probably made Lindy think I’d be receptive to his advances.
It’s one of three panic buttons I wear at all times; Manny’s got me chipped like a fucking dog as well.
A sensor goes off if my heart rate drops below fifty or goes above two hundred.
If they knock me out, or snatch me, Squid will know in less than a minute.
Probably wouldn’t be a bad idea to chip everyone close to me, too.
“It’s not foolproof, but I’ve got some cover. ”
“Okay,” Lindy says before stuffing his face with more nachos.
“Thank you. Anything I can do for you?”
Lindy swallows before he grins. “Pay for the food.”