Chapter 7 #2
“Message received. You don’t approve of money. What do you approve of?”
Kat thought about that for a moment. “Respect,” she said. “Not muscling people around. Not throwing them into vans or helicopters. I favor people who refrain from that kind of activity.”
“I told you,” I said. “I was just trying to—”
“Yeah, said every man ever when throwing his weight around,” she said. “It’s always the same song.”
“If I had left you outside that building, you would be dead. Or worse.”
“Worse?” she let out a sharp laugh. “Tell me about worse.”
I hesitated for a moment, and then decided she was tough enough to deal with the truth.
“The people gunning for me like to inflict pain,” I told her.
“I couldn’t let you fall into their hands.
At the risk of throwing my weight around and pissing you off, and offending you with my gratuitous wealth.
I’m sorry. But I wanted you to live. So sue me.
Call me a bully if you want. God knows, my sister does. ”
“Tell me about this sister. Does she live here?”
“Sometimes she stays in her own private apartment here,” I said. “All of us do.”
“All? How many of you are there?”
“Just the three of us. My brother, Shane, and my sister, Freya. She’s in Seattle, right now, with her husband.”
“How about your brother? What’s his story?” Her voice had a challenging tone, like an interrogation, so I ignored her question. That was no way to talk about Shane.
Later for that.
I poured her a flute of the sparkly, pale pink Polvanera. “Shall we get to know each other over lunch?”
“Lunch,” she said. “Check us out. We’ve run full gamut. From blood and bullets and forcible abduction and imprisonment—to lunch.”
“This is not abduction and imprisonment,” I said patiently.
“This is a disagreement, to be negotiated and discussed. And it is an excellent lunch. The food’s ready, you’re here, you have questions, and I want to learn about you, too.
We might as well do it over grilled antipasti, penne alla vodka, and Angela’s perfectly grilled tagliata. And lemon profiterole, of course.”
“Lemon?” Her eyes lit up. “Lemon profiterole? Really?”
“You like lemon?”
Her mouth tightened, as if I had caught her in some kind of sneaky trap. “Sure,” she said. “I just don’t like talking about myself.”
“We can sit and eat in tense, uncomfortable silence, if you prefer,” I offered.
“Just the clinkety-clink of forks against plates. Chewing sounds.”
That got me a crack of stifled laughter, which I took as a huge win. I proffered the flute of Polvanera to her once again.
“Have a glass,” I coaxed. “It’s not a trap. It’s been a hell of a morning. You must be hungry.” I gazed into her haunted eyes, trying to project good vibes. Righteous dude, trustworthiness, honesty, respect. Dudley Do-Right in the flesh. “Please, Kat.”
She let out a sharp sigh. “Well, hell. I still have a container of leftovers in my purse for lunch. But I will not lie to you—Angela’s lunch smells better.”
My spirits soared as she accepted the glass. I picked up the other one, and held it up. “To unexpected encounters,” I said. “Thank you for saving my life today.”
She sipped the wine with a sigh of pleasure. “Ah, nice,” she said. “You saved mine, too, so we’re even. You can forget about it right now, okay?”
“No,” I said. “It was one of the most memorable experiences in my entire life.”
“Getting rolled in an elevator? Dude. Please. You need to get out more.”
I choked on my Prosecco, and clapped a napkin over my face, lowering it only when I trusted my face to behave. “I was talking about that combat synch, with you.”
Her eyes slid away, but I was certain her gorgeous lips twitched.
“Yeah, that was pretty special,” she agreed.
“How did you learn to fight like that?” I asked. “Were you in the military?”
“I’d like to know why those guys were trying to kill you.”
“Not kill me,” I said. “Kidnap me.” But the less I talked about my problems, the better, in case she really was on somebody’s payroll, and infiltrating any life. “Why did you think they were after you?” I asked. “Do you have enemies?”
Her face hardened. “If I had dragged you to my home by force, and sequestered you in my kitchen, you might be justified in demanding explanations from me. As it is? Not so much.”
Ooh, burn. The woman had a valid point. Time for some distraction.
“Come this way,” I said, gesturing toward the sun room. “Lunch awaits.”
The sunroom was a glassed-in section of the terrace, for when I wanted to eat outside but didn’t want the mountain breeze to blow the candles out. It was filled with plants, had a big wooden table, set for two at the end. Angela’s antipasti spread looked extremely appetizing.
Kat stared out at the view for a couple of minutes. “It’s incredible,” she said finally. “You must feel like the king of the world up here.”
“Yeah, I like the way this place makes me feel. But it’s not a power thing. It’s more a safety thing, like being high up in a watchtower. Being able to see them coming.” I thought about Shane, and added, “Theoretically, anyhow. These days, there’s no place to be safe.”
“That’s bleak, coming from a guy who made his fortune in cybersecurity.”
I poured us both more Prosecco. “I guess it is,” I said. “You’re as suspicious and paranoid as me, if not more so. But you’re safe up here, in my watchtower.”
She nibbled an olive, frowning. “I don’t feel safe,” she said. “I feel like a cat up a tree.”
I passed her the cheese plate. “Some pecorino sardo, or mozzarella di bufala?”
She let out a sharp laugh. “See, Masters? This was the part where you were supposed to say, ‘oh, no, Kat! You’re not trapped! Not at all!’ But you don’t say it.”
I put the cheese platter down, with a slow sigh. “It’s complicated,” I said.
“Well, your complications are not my business,” she said. “I want to be taken back to the city after lunch. If you don’t agree, I’m going to make life extremely difficult and unpleasant for you. I won’t enjoy it, but it’s a matter of principle.”
I considered and abandoned a bunch of different entry points into the case I had to make to her. “Let me explain,” I said. “I’ll give you the short version.”
“I don’t care how long it is, as long as it is true, complete, and convincing.”
Angela bustled in, with a platter of penne alla vodka, and I had a couple of free minutes to decide what I could tell her that would not compromise my family’s security, while still being true.
In the meantime, we loaded our plates with creamy, pink-tinted pasta, and anointed it with grated pecorino cheese, and lots of it.
“You know I design software,” I said, as we dug in.
“I’d have to live at the bottom of the ocean not to be familiar with MasterTech products,” she said, dabbing her mouth with a napkin. “God, that tastes good.”
“That’s gratifying,” I said. “Anyhow, over the past several years, I’ve been developing a security-penetrating algorithm that has some very extreme capabilities.
I started realizing along the way that it was too potentially dangerous to ever be a commercial product.
Then, I concluded it was too dangerous to be used at all, ever.
Too much potential for abuse. But my brother, Shane—”
“The one who also has an apartment here?”
“Yes. Shane, who ran his own executive protection and security company, urgently needed to use it, to do some job somewhere, to protect his client, to prevent a war, I wasn’t sure of the details. But I trusted my brother. So I let him use it.”
“Ah.” She nodded slowly. “I see. So I’m guessing that someone got wind of it. Someone who shouldn’t have ever known it existed.”
“You got it,” I said grimly. “My brother and I were the only ones who knew the code to open it, and how to use it. So, when it was stolen, Shane was stolen, too.”
Her eyes widened. “Oh, no,” she said. “When did that happen?”
“It happened eight months ago. Three other men died that day. Colleagues of Shane. Friends of mine.” It still made my gut ache and my throat clench, talking about it.
“Since then, other bad things have happened. Disasters, very nearly averted. My sister and her husband almost died, too. SmokeScreen is out there on the dark web, but it’s locked up tight.
Frey and I are the only ones who can open it, now that Shane’s gone.
Which is how we want it to stay. But because of that, we’re targets now. ”
“I see,” she said.
“That’s why I’m doing this to you,” I said. “That’s also why I turned down your offer to have coffee. You will never know what that cost me.”
“I’m sorry about your brother,” she offered.
I nodded in acknowledgement. “So that’s it,” I said.
“That’s my explanation. Some really powerful and well-funded assholes want to pry open my brain by any means necessary and get the key to SmokeScreen.
They almost killed my sister and Jed to do it.
The two of them stayed alive by the skin of their teeth. ”
“And your sister and her husband are in Seattle, you said?”
“Yes, with Holly, our niece. Shane’s daughter. She divides her time between Freya and me. She’s nine. The best kid who ever existed. She’s a target, too. And it makes me crazy with anxiety.”
Kat nodded. “I see. Your protective instincts were activated, on my behalf. That is very nice of you. I appreciate that you give a shit. But this is the thing. I don’t know if you noticed, but I have invested a great deal of time and energy in learning to defend myself.
In fact, it’s kind of a thing, with me.”
“I noticed,” I assured her.
“I run a martial arts school for women and girls,” she said. “I’m due there tomorrow evening. I have three classes to teach. The beginners, the intermediates, and the adults. They paid me to teach them, and I will not let them down.”
“Excuse me, people!” Angela marched in with a sizzling platter of fragrant tagliata.
“I just wanted to leave this with you. The fruit plate and lemon profiterole are on the counter. I’ll just get myself out of the way, and go back to the service floor.
I hope medium rare works for you. I didn’t want to interrupt your conversation to ask. ”
“It’s great,” Kat said warmly. “Thanks so much.” She waited for Angela to leave. “Sheesh,” she murmured. “The service floor? What is this, Downton Abbey?”
“That’s what she calls it,” I said. “That’s where I have quarters for all my staff.”
She prodded at the steak, letting out a murmur of approval at how juicy it was. “You should have warned me. I would have left more room,” she complained.
“Knowing Angela, it’s worth overeating,” I said. “Do you like to cook?”
She shook her head. “I can make a decent sandwich,” she said. “I try to sometimes consume a vegetable. That’s about it. After my usual diet of cold cereal and toast, something like this is extremely nice. Almost worth getting shot at by evil goons.”
I winced. “About that. What I said, about them knowing your name by now—”
“Not. Your. Problem.” She looked me in the eye, a stony, uncompromising gaze. “You can’t protect me by locking me up. I’d have to kill you. Please, don’t make me.”
Wow. The woman did not hold back. “Let’s hold off on the death threats until after dessert, okay?”
That earned me a furtive smile, quickly squelched. Small conquests like that made my spirits soar, in spite of Kat’s promise of violence.
Progress.