Hardwired For Ecstasy Read online

  “No. You wanted the whole story so you shall have it, in all its glory. They were both half naked and having sex. She was bent over the desk, and he was behind her.”

  Atticus didn’t want to give her another terse “I’m sorry” so he kept silent. This woman wasn’t in league with anyone, and certainly not with Bonnie. Leland had strung her along for three years, and her fucking coworkers had probably been laughing behind her back the entire time.

  “I threatened him, right then and there, while I watched his cock grow limp and slide out of his wife’s cunt. I told him I would take this public. I told him I would ruin him.”

  Atticus’s pulse raced. “Bonnie heard you do that? Threaten him?”

  “Damn right she did. She moved out from under him, pulled down her skirt and glared at him. She demanded to know who the fuck I was and what was going on.”

  “Did she threaten you, or him?”

  “She barely glanced at me. Her anger was directed toward him, which makes me believe he had done this before.”

  Atticus had to agree with her on that conclusion. “Damn, Emma. You’ve got guts.”

  She crossed her arms. “Excuse me? What would you have done?”

  Atticus couldn’t help the smile playing across his lips. “The same thing you did.”

  “Leland sputtered a few words, but Bonnie stormed out of the office. Once she was gone, I started in on him again, and then he…” She hugged herself tighter.

  “The bastard shoved me up against a wall. His damn dick was still hanging out of his pants, but he grabbed me around the throat and pushed his body into mine. He told me if I ever did anything to try to hurt him or Bonnie, he’d make sure I never got another job anywhere, in any city.”

  Atticus clenched his fists at his side.

  “I left that day. I went back to my desk, shaking and trying very hard not to cry. My bitch of a coworker tried to apologize, but I ignored her. I typed an email, resigning. Then I left. I went home, slept for two days, ate everything in sight, and ignored the calls and text messages from him. I even changed my phone number so he couldn’t bother me again. I started looking for another job, and here I am.”

  “Did you ever speak to Bonnie directly?”

  “Never. The calls and messages after I resigned were all from Leland. He emailed me a bunch of times, too, but I eventually blocked his email address and never read the emails.”

  Which meant the emails were likely gone so he’d never be able to read them, either. It didn’t matter. Atticus was convinced Emma had no knowledge of who Bonnie really was, or what she’d tried to do to the Weathermen several months ago. It was simply an unfortunate coincidence that Emma had been the woman Bonnie’s husband had strung along for so long.

  “Have you heard from either of them since you moved here?”

  “No. I have no reason to think I will hear from them, unless you tell Leland I told you all this. I gave him my word I wouldn’t take it public if he let me leave my job and Central without trying to stop me or hurt me in any way. That was the last conversation we had.”

  “Did that happen the same day you walked in on him and his wife?”

  “No. Three days afterward. I had to return to the station to fill out some official paperwork for my resignation. We spoke in his office, but he couldn’t push me around or yell that day. There were too many people there, listening and watching.”

  “And that was the last time you spoke with him?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who was it calling your phone before you had the argument with him?”

  “I don’t know. I never found out.”

  Which meant it could have been Leland or Bonnie. But why would Leland have done that? More than likely it had been Bonnie. She might have found the number and called it, trying to figure out why her husband had it. What if Bonnie found out Emma was working here? She wouldn’t want any of the Weathermen knowing what her husband had done.

  “Did Bonnie’s reaction when you stormed into the office give you any reason to suspect she had already found out about you?”

  She looked really uncomfortable now. Atticus took a chance and touched her arm lightly. “Emma, I know I’ve already put you through a lot insisting you tell me this story, but I need to know. Do you have reason to believe Bonnie already knew about you and Leland?”

  “Yes. One of the things she asked him was, and I quote, ‘Is this the tramp you took to the Cherrywood Hotel last weekend?’ I have no idea how she found out we were there, unless of course he’s not too smart about keeping his financial records private.”

  “Or if he let her find that one on purpose. You said the two of you went to hotels and restaurants all the time. How did you get caught that one time, but all the others you never did? And right after you had an argument with him about your relationship? You questioned whether the rumors were true, and you told him about the hang-ups, right?”

  She nodded.

  “He realized he was about to get caught, so instead of being a real man and coming clean with his wife and with you, he makes sure Bonnie finds out this time he took you to a hotel. Then he brings her to work at a time he knows you’re there, but it’s a skeleton crew so he can get it all out in the open, but in a way that lets him threaten you into silence.”

  She looked dumbfounded for a second or two, then shook her head slowly again. “It all makes sense. He wanted me to find out. But that means Bonnie knows about me.” She gave him a long, searching look.

  He needed to end this conversation before she asked more questions about Bonnie, so he rose, hoping she’d take the hint. After a few seconds, during which she eyed him closely, she finally stood.

  “Why are you so worried about Bonnie?”

  He’d opened this can of worms. It was his fault. “I can’t tell you that.”

  “Am I fired?”

  “No. Of course not.”

  “Will you tell me why all this matters so much one day?”

  “I’m not sure I can.”

  He watched several emotions cross her face, and wouldn’t have been surprised if she’d pushed some more, but then he watched resignation fill her eyes. “All right. I’d better return to work then.”

  Atticus watched her leave the office, fighting with every ounce of willpower not to run after her and tell her everything. He’d just put her through hell all over again, and in the end, he had no more than a sliver of suspicion that Bonnie or Leland might know she was here now.

  What a waste. No doubt Emma’s view of him had gone from boss to tyrant. No doubt about it. He’d blown any chance of dating her before the end of her first day on the job. Way to go, Yates.

  Chapter Five

  Emma collapsed into her desk chair, still shaking. At least she’d stopped crying. She tried to think of a more humiliating and embarrassing time in her life, but there weren’t many that came this close.

  How could a day begin with such hope and promise then end like this? She thought she’d left Leland and his wife behind. She’d been dead wrong. And what the hell was so damn important about either of them that Atticus had insisted she tell him that story? Leland was a police captain, not a hacker. And his wife … well, Emma had no clue what his wife did. She’d never asked. She hadn’t cared to know. But clearly Atticus was worried about Bonnie.

  Who the hell was she really working for? The Weathermen were known as men who went through women like water. Well, three of them still were known that way, including Atticus. But they were also known as the men trying to save the planet. They supported multiple charities and funded the Storm Troopers.

  Up until the past few months, the teams they each had searching for hackers had been kept a secret. They still were to a certain degree, but information about them had leaked out onto specific message boards and sites where weather control freaks and conspiracy theorists liked to hang out. The men themselves never addressed these rumors in public. They played things close to the vest.

  That image didn’t gel
with the man who had just grilled her for close to an hour about the most painful experience of her life to date, after assuring her he would fire her if she didn’t tell him everything. Why would Leland or his wife be involved with something that had one of the Weathermen spooked?

  Emma knew she wouldn’t get anymore work done this afternoon. She didn’t dare search for background information on Leland or Bonnie using her work machine. She emailed Atticus and asked if she could leave early, using the excuse she needed to buy appropriate work clothes, now that she knew the dress code.

  He wrote back almost immediately and told her she was a salaried employee and he trusted her to keep track of her own hours each week. She interpreted that to mean she was free to leave, so she did.

  She’d been lucky enough to snag an apartment less than ten minutes from the office, so once she was inside it, she opened her personal laptop and accessed the databases she hoped she still could get into. She’d set up accounts at each one for her own private use years ago, but hadn’t tried to use them since leaving Central. To her delight, her usernames and passwords still worked. She was in.

  Four hours later, after consuming an entire large pizza and a bottle of wine, Emma had discovered that Bonnie Clough worked in middle management at Homeland Cyber Security, and according to one obscure article, she’d had a past run-in with all the Weathermen, not merely Atticus.

  Emma wished she’d also found a legit news story that corroborated the article, but it was a start. Buried on the last page of The Whole Truth, a rag mag whose stories were known to be more lie than truth, the story claimed that in June, Barclay Hampton, CEO of Hampton Data Recovery Services, had a secret affair with Bonnie Clough. It had ended when she refused to allow him and the other Weathermen to interrogate the hackers.

  According to the article, there were ten hackers, and HCS had them all locked up inside their secret prison in Central. Emma knew there was no secret prison in Central, and she knew that HCS didn’t have any of the hackers. Unless Atticus had lied to her, which she didn’t believe he had.

  At the time he’d updated her on their progress toward finding the hackers, he hadn’t yet found out about her and Leland. That conversation had occurred before he’d gone snooping and found the performance reviews, so she believed what he had said. They had already found four and were looking for the fifth.

  The Whole Truth was known for embellishing any tiny scrap of information they were able to dig up. She recalled a story about Kane Bannerman, who ran Bannerman Investments, about six years ago. The magazine had printed a retraction and an apology from the reporter, Julianne Wallis. She’d made up ridiculous lies about Kane for that original story, and now Julianne was engaged to Kane.

  Emma believed that somewhere in this nonsense about Bonnie and the Weathermen was a kernel of truth. But which part was true? She had personally seen the holding cells at HCS and knew they were for short-term use only. They didn’t actually jail people inside their facilities. That’s what the local and federal prisons were for. They had interrogation rooms, but those were more like conference rooms where they interviewed people, not like the interrogation rooms inside a police station.

  She knew the part about ten hackers instead of the five was exaggerated. The fact that HCS was holding them wasn’t true either. But Bonnie did work there. That much was a given now that Emma had found information on her background. So why was Bonnie specifically linked to the Weathermen in this story? She obviously had a connection to them somehow, and it had to do with the hackers, or Atticus wouldn’t be so concerned about her.

  Emma’s research had also uncovered Leland’s and Bonnie’s marriage license, issued over twenty years ago, but no evidence of a divorce decree. At least she knew she hadn’t incorrectly assumed anything about Leland. He had lied to her about everything. He had played her and played her well.

  After finding the story in The Whole Truth, Emma had concentrated on Bonnie’s work with HCS. She found out that Bonnie had worked for HCS since before everyone moved underground. She currently supervised a team of investigators and apparently was one of several contacts Barclay had inside the organization. But she didn’t find anything supporting the allegation that she and Barclay had a secret affair. Quite the opposite.

  Bonnie and another contact of Barclay’s, Dave Perry, spoke out publicly once, but only once, against what the Weathermen wanted to do with the hackers once they were found. That information was practically useless because it wasn’t corroborated by anything else she could find, and she found it on a message board, posted by someone claiming to be Bonnie. None of the Weathermen responded to it.

  So, she was right back where she had started, four hours earlier. Why was Atticus so worried about Bonnie? Was it only because she and Dave had posted on a message board, protesting against what the Weathermen wanted to do with the hackers once they were found? Or did it go deeper than that?

  The posting when taken alone seemed a silly reason for Atticus’s over-the-top reaction. Something else had obviously happened. The fact that it had never gone public, except in some reporter’s imagination, didn’t mean it hadn’t occurred. There was a reason he’d grilled her about any encounters she might have had with Bonnie.

  “This is too important to my company.”

  But why? What did that actually mean? He was far more interested in Bonnie than in Leland, which strongly suggested there had been a run-in of some kind. Had he thought she had something to do with it? That she’d been part of it, or that Bonnie or Leland had said something to her about it? Why else would he have threatened to fire her?

  Holy shit. Emma rose and paced her apartment. That had to be it. He thought she’d come to work for him on purpose. His entire demeanor had changed after he dragged the story out of her. His apology had been sincere. He hadn’t known any of that had happened. He hadn’t found out about her and Leland. That wasn’t what had made him send that email.

  He’d found the performance reports and realized Leland had been stupid enough to start signing hers for the past three years. But he had already known that Leland and Bonnie were still married, and he had assumed she had something to do with whatever had happened between him, the other Weathermen, and Bonnie earlier this year at HCS.

  She had a right to know what had happened. She was part of this now, whether she wanted to be or not. Bonnie knew about her. She had probably been the one calling her and then hanging up. Leland wouldn’t have done that. If Bonnie found out she was here, in CentralEast, and working for one of the Weathermen…

  She wanted no part of whatever beef Leland’s wife had with the Weathermen, but now she was knee deep in it anyway. She hadn’t signed on for this shit.

  She glanced at her phone. It was late, but too bad. She wouldn’t sleep unless she knew the truth. But if she called him he might not answer the phone. Then she’d be up all night, worrying. Fuck that shit.

  The only way to resolve this was to talk to him, face to face. If she lost her job, because of it, so be it. At least she’d know she hadn’t simply rolled over and allowed people to lie about her. Leland had hurt her more than any person in her life had done, and his wife sounded like an asshole, too. They deserved each other. She wasn’t going to allow those two to go on hurting her.

  The hell with what she’d promised Leland. She’d already broken her promise anyway. Might as well see this thing through to the end.

  ****

  The building where Atticus lived had a doorman, but when she told him she worked for Atticus, he waved her inside as if he did it all the time. The security guard inside the lobby, however, wasn’t quite so obliging. She had to present ID, and then he called up to the apartment. Emma waited, straining to hear the voice on the other end of the phone. What if Atticus told the guard not to let her up? What if he had someone up there? Fuck. She hadn’t thought this through very well.

  Finally the call ended, and the guard pointed toward an elevator set apart from the rest. “Go on up.”

 
“Thank you.”

  She was more nervous now than she’d been when she thought he wasn’t going to let her into his apartment. Why hadn’t she simply called him? He greeted her with a wary smile, dressed in jeans and a polo shirt, and he was barefoot. Damn. Why did he have to be so fucking sexy?

  “Are you okay, Emma? You look agitated.”

  “I have some questions.”

  “Come on in. I’ve been working and could use a break.”

  He was working this late at home? Did the man ever sleep?

  “Would you like anything to eat or drink?”

  “No. Thank you.”

  He led her through the most lavish apartment she’d ever seen. It rivaled every hotel suite Leland had taken her to. Emma mentally shook away those memories. She had to stay strong and focused.

  He had an office inside the apartment, and it was just as austere as the one at his building. It also smelled like him, and she was having trouble remembering the speech she’d practiced on the way over. Between the way he looked so normal in casual clothes, to the enticing scent inside this room and that damn five o’clock shadow on his handsome face, she found herself wondering what might have happened if she hadn’t told him she was seeing someone.

  Then it suddenly occurred to her that she’d never told him she’d lied about that.

  He gestured toward a leather sofa in the office. “Have a seat.”

  Emma sat down, and he sat way too close to her, but this time she didn’t mind. “I have a confession.” He regarded her with interest and a bit of caution. She could only imagine what he guessed was the reason for this late night visit. “I’m not seeing anyone. I told you that because … well, you can probably guess why.”

  “Yes, I can. Thank you for clarifying it. Is that what you came here to tell me?”

  “No.”

  He watched her for a few moments, his expression guarded, and she wondered whether she was losing her mind. What the hell was she doing here?