Bad Influence, page 11
She debated whether to tell him about Bad Bachelors and that she knew exactly why this was happening to her. But she kept her mouth shut. It was the only way she could see to get through this mess.
* * *
Joseph kept himself busy while Annie took a shower. The last thing he needed was to think about what her luscious body looked like with water streaming all over it. Shower sex had been one of their favorites. She’d often snuck into the bathroom while he was getting ready for work, stripped down to nothing, and climbed in behind him, her hands slipping over his soap-covered skin to work him into a frenzy.
He couldn’t even count the number of times she’d made him late for work. They’d never been able to get enough of each other.
“Focus,” he said to himself. “Figure out what to do about the situation now.”
He drummed his fingers on the kitchen counter. This whole thing with the stalker had his stomach in knots. Intuition prickled, raising the hairs on the back of his neck. Before he’d followed in his father’s footsteps on the path to CIO, his bread and butter had been internet security: white-hat hacking, social engineering, penetration testing, and studying the bad guys. He knew the internet had an evil underbelly. By now, that was common knowledge, but he’d seen it in action. Analyzed it. Tried to learn how it behaved.
And he knew that despite the perception that what happened online wasn’t part of the real world, the internet wasn’t the safest place for women. He’d worked on many a case where the victim was female, where old threats were made new and more effective with technology. But there was always a motivation for an attack, always something that sparked the flame. A catalyst. And even though he had no right to demand it, he wanted to know what trouble Annie was in.
“Why are you getting involved in this?”
The question could have come from his mind. It was a legitimate one. Joseph looked up to see Annie standing in the doorway. “If memory serves me correctly, you came to me.”
She had her hair wrapped in a towel. Faded blue jeans and a pink sweater covered her body. “I’m grateful that you helped, but all I asked was for you to fix my computer. You didn’t have to take me in like some stray.” As she walked forward, her bare feet made soft slapping noises against the hardwood floor. “I’ll be fine.”
“Then why did you tell me you’d go to a hotel?” He watched her stifle her reaction, the quick flash of vulnerability telling him everything he needed to know. “Is it because you have nowhere else to go?”
“Of course I have somewhere else to go,” she said. The irritation in her voice was only further evidence. Annie never got mad when she knew she was in the right. “But I’d rather not worry people.”
“So you do think there’s cause for worry?”
She licked her lips. The action was quick, and the flash of pink did little to stop Joseph from thinking about what they might have been doing if this was them three years ago. He wanted to catch her tongue between his lips, press her against the kitchen counter like everything was good and right and safe in the world. Like they hadn’t fucked their relationship into the ground.
“If this was happening to Sofia or Allegra, what would you tell them to do?”
She nailed him with a stare. “I would tell them to get help. I would tell them to get out of their place and go somewhere safe.”
At least she could acknowledge that. “It’ll be easier for me to help you if you tell me what’s going on.”
She didn’t trust him. And why would she? Right now though, the fact she was here with him and not with any of the other people in her life said a lot.
“How do you think you’re going to help me? Are you planning to sit outside my door and guard me all night? Are you going to monitor my emails? Because what else am I supposed to do?”
He flipped his coffee machine on, desperate for something to occupy his hands so he didn’t have to stand there locked in this argument. It was like the chicken and the egg: she wouldn’t tell him anything until she knew how he could help, and he couldn’t help until she told him what had happened. For all he knew, if she went back to her apartment alone, there was a very real chance something bad could happen.
“Do you want to know why I left Singapore?” The coffee machine whirred to life. He pulled the cupboard open above his head and grabbed two mugs. “The real reason.”
“I thought you said you got what you needed,” she replied.
“That’s part of it.” He stuck a mug under the spout and pushed the button for a double shot. “I thought working in Singapore would change things. I thought it would make my career, and then my life would be exactly what I wanted it to be.”
“Aren’t you the banking industry’s youngest CIO? Isn’t that what you wanted?”
He turned and offered her the mug, and she hesitated a moment before accepting it. But then she wrapped her hands around the smooth white china and leaned against the breakfast bar. A tendril of damp, dark hair escaped the confines of the towel and hung softly against her cheek. “I wanted the whole package. The prestigious job, the loving wife, a life that would make my parents respect me.”
Emotion simmered in the depths of her dark eyes, something like the love child of fury and regret turning her sweet face hard-edged and brittle. “You could have had that, with me. With my family. Here.”
So he was still fully to blame in her mind? He felt the past rear up inside him, like some smoking demon that he’d tried—and failed—to bury. To shackle in the depths of his mind so that it wouldn’t come out without his permission.
“I wanted it with our family. Ours.” He jammed another mug under the coffee machine and jabbed the start button with his finger. “I’ve been an afterthought in my family for my whole life, so why the hell would I want to be an afterthought in yours?”
“I don’t want to get into this.” She shook her head. “I didn’t come here to rehash all of the conversations I hated having the first time around.”
“Maybe if we’d had those conversations properly the first time around, we wouldn’t be needing a do-over.” Dark liquid spilled into his cup, and steam curled upward. Being around Annie dredged everything up, all the good memories and the bad. The things that haunted him. Everything.
“Did you think it was easy living with you? Did you think it was easy trying to keep everyone happy? I wanted to go with you, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t leave my mom.” She stared into her cup, her eyes dry despite the wavering emotion in her voice. “And I stand by my decision.”
“You stand by the fact that you made such a momentous decision without me? A decision we were supposed to make together? You didn’t think to discuss it with me before you decided to change things?” Now his thoughts spilled out, like a champagne bottle that had been shaken and uncorked. Everything they’d bottled up and tried to forget was fizzing up and over. “How was I supposed to feel like we were a team when you shut me out like that?”
That was the part that had hurt him the most. Being shut out. Because it was like all those times he’d tried to go to his father for advice or help or to share some excitement, and he’d watch that big, heavy door swing shut in his face. As he’d gotten older, he’d stopped trying to build that relationship. There was only so much rejection a person could take before it became easier not to try.
“What was I supposed to do? Say, ‘Hey, Mom, I know you have cancer and all, but I really need to leave you behind and go overseas with my boyfriend because his career is more important than your life’?” She set the cup down and curled her hands over the edge of the breakfast bar, her knuckles turning white. “I don’t know how that situation would have gone down in your family, because frankly, I’d have a better chance understanding aliens than I would understanding them. But in my family, we look after one another. We don’t leave when things get tough.”
“No, and I imagine you don’t stop communicating when things get tough either.” That was exactly his point. There had been a set of rules for her family, rules for how to love, and nurture, and support. Binding contracts that they all held in the highest regard, because they knew the love they had for one another was more important than anything else in the world. And, ultimately, her love for her family had been more important than what she felt for him.
All he’d wanted was for her to prioritize him the way he prioritized her. In his life, Annie was the be-all and end-all. She was his everything. The reason he woke in the morning, and the reason he worked his ass off all day. And it had killed him to know that he would never be that important to her.
“For the record,” he said, clearing his throat, “it was never about the fact that you wanted to stay behind with her. It was about the fact that you didn’t even give me a chance to be part of that decision. I would have done anything to make it work.”
“Then why did you leave?” Now her eyes shimmered. Tears brought out the tiny, almost imperceptible flecks of green that he knew were there only because he’d stared into her eyes for so many years. Since they were kids playing in his parents’ house, since they were lovesick college students. “Do you have any idea what I went through?”
When a tear dropped onto her cheek, she swiped at it angrily with the back of her hand. Annie had always hated crying in front of people.
“You were it,” she continued. “You were the only man I ever wanted, and then I had to watch you put my ring on someone else’s finger.”
Her ring? He swallowed. The ring he’d given his ex-fiancée was a family heirloom, a treasured item from his grandmother that should never have been used for such a farce as his engagement to Annika Van Beek. In his desperation to move on from the past, he’d done something monumentally stupid. Annie had never seen that ring…had she?
“I found the ring, in case you hadn’t worked that out already.” She looked at him dead-on. That was his Annie, never one to shy away from the tough things in life. “In your sock drawer.”
He could practically hear the question bouncing around in her head. When were you going to ask me…?
What she didn’t know was he’d had it all planned out. A fancy hotel room in Singapore, booked for the night they were due to land and start their new life together. He’d arranged for the best suite in the place, with all those clichéd things like flower petals on the bed and a bottle of champagne chilled and waiting. A bouquet of flowers to be delivered shortly after their arrival. It would have been the most special moment of his life. Only, he’d boarded the plane alone. Arrived in his new country alone.
Her eyes bored into him. “Are you going to make me ask?”
“Why does it matter? It’s in the past.”
She bobbed her head slowly. “You’re right. There’s no point rehashing this.”
The buzzer rang and they both jumped, the harsh sound cutting through the tension like a knife. It was the delivery guy. Joseph had almost forgotten he’d ordered them dinner. He paid for their food and set it out on the table, boxes of stir-fries and noodles and saucy dishes in almost every flavor. He didn’t want to assume her tastes had stayed the same, so he’d ordered a little of everything.
While he was setting up dinner, Annie went into the bathroom and returned without the towel on her head. Damp, dark hair hung around her face, curling and kinking every which way. It was something that had always made him smile, the way her hair was so unruly. A bird’s nest, she called it. Not that anyone outside her house would ever see her like that. She kept a tight handle on her appearance at all times. But he was one of the lucky few that got to see her unfiltered and unedited, the real her.
The fact that some of their old comfortable habits lingered made him feel tight in the chest.
“So what happens now?” she asked, taking a seat at his dining table and reaching for a bowl. “I stay here tonight, and I skip work tomorrow. Not exactly a long-term solution.”
“The main thing we need to establish is whether you’ve been doxed. I’ve still got accounts on some of the old forums I used to go to, white-hat forums, so I can ask around. See what I can dig up.” He reached for a pair of chopsticks and pulled them apart with a sharp snap. “If your address and phone number have been published, then your place will be unsafe for a while.”
“And if that information hasn’t been published?”
“Then hopefully we’re only dealing with one sick fucker instead of multiple.” He grabbed a piece of chicken with his chopsticks. “If we’re only chasing one person, we’ve got a better chance of figuring out who he is.”
“You’re assuming it’s a he?” She raised her brow.
“In most of the instances I’ve seen, the person doing the stalking was a man.” He shrugged. “But that’s speculation until I find out more.”
She toyed with her food, digging her chopsticks into the small pile of noodles in her bowl, picking rather than eating. “Don’t you have anything better to do with your time than look after me?”
“I have plenty of better things to do.” He tried to muster a smile, hoping to take the seriousness of the conversation down a notch. “I’ve got a white paper on big data and intelligence metrics that I’d much rather be reading.”
The twitch of her lips told him she’d picked up on his note of sarcasm. “Don’t tell me your big important job only involves reading a bunch of white papers?”
“The higher you go, the more you read and the less you do. It’s all spreadsheets and board packs and emails these days.”
They ate in silence for a few moments. Annie looked deep in thought, her brows furrowed as she hunted out a piece of tofu with her chopsticks. He wanted to tell her that she could trust him, that he would do what he could to help her. But without knowing what she was hiding from, he was hunting for a needle in a haystack. And to make matters worse, his brain was now clogged with all other kinds of questions. Angry questions and defensive questions that would do nothing but open Pandora’s box. So much water was under the bridge that he was worried it might drown them.
She looked up at him, her expression unreadable. “Have you heard of Bad Bachelors?”
He blinked. “Yeah, actually I have.”
“I created it.”
Holy. Shit.
She didn’t say anything further. She didn’t need to. But that one piece of information put everything else into context. It was like going from a single puzzle piece to zooming out until you could see the entire picture. This was a hell of a catalyst.
“I don’t want to talk about it. But you wanted a reason, so that’s it.” Her eyes challenged him. “You’re staring at the most wanted woman in New York City.”
Chapter 9
“Dear Bad Bachelors, thank you for standing up for the broken hearts.”
—Ms.Manhattan
Joseph dropped down into the leather chair in his office, both hands coming up to rub vigorously over his face. He was running on three hours of sleep and twice as many cups of coffee, which made for frayed nerves, a wavering attention span, and a short temper.
After dinner last night, Annie had retired to his spare room and hadn’t come out again. They hadn’t spoken further about her confession, but armed with this new information, Joseph had started digging. When Annie had called herself the most wanted woman in New York City, she wasn’t joking. Bad Bachelors was the topic on everyone’s lips—or was that fingertips? It came up in news articles, gossip columns, blogs, forums, and on every social media platform there was. With equal strength, she had supporters and those who wanted to see her fall.
There were entire websites dedicated to finding out who was behind Bad Bachelors. Though it seemed little had been dug up, what he’d seen written on some of those message boards had made his skin crawl. It was like she’d roused the demons of the internet, the slithering, gutter-dwelling bottom-feeders of the internet. Angry posters on 4chan…and worse. They wanted blood.
However, knowing the root cause of her troubles gave him more opportunity to figure out who was after her. Annie had given him access to her emails and anything else he might need, and it hadn’t taken long to pinpoint how the hacker had gained access to her computer. It looked as though many others had tried. Annie had absorbed at least some of the lessons he’d taught her back in his internet security days. She’d been careful. Meticulously so.
But one piece of brilliant social engineering had tripped her up. On the day the malware was installed on her computer, she’d received an email with what looked to be a Word attachment containing answers to interview questions. To the untrained eye, it would look completely innocent. But the Word document was not what it appeared to be. The file had installed the spyware that allowed someone to take the picture with her webcam.
The brilliance of it was that Annie had asked them if they would like to be interviewed, based on a short, emotional email praising her site. They must have hoped she’d take the bait…and she had. Social engineering at its finest, because she wouldn’t have thought twice about opening that attachment.
Who knew what information they’d taken? But they’d been watching, that was for damn sure.
“Knock, knock.” Joseph’s assistant, Dave, poked his head into Joseph’s office. “Just wanted to check you haven’t passed out on your desk.”
Joseph laughed and looked at the stack of empty cups in front of him. “Given the amount of caffeine I’ve had today, I’m not likely to sleep for a week.”
“That’s a benefit in your job.”
Joseph had been in his new role for a little over a week, and in that time he’d decided he liked Dave. The guy was organized, efficient, and most importantly, was well connected to the other assistants in the company. If there was one thing Joseph’s career had taught him, it was that information was king. Especially the kind of information that wasn’t available through any official channels.
