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  “What a coincidence. I came home to check on you and to grab some lunch.” She looked at me, and then past me at the door to my office. “Were you...working in there?”

  “No.” I shook my head, the last few drops of water from my shower flying away as I did so. “I was actually, you know. Writing. On the novel.”

  Her eyebrows went up fractionally. “You were? Really?”

  I nodded. “Really. I think I wrote about fifteen hundred words, give or take.” I blinked, and a small but insistent throbbing took up residence behind my left eye. “I think that's all I've got in me today, though.”

  Sarah looked disappointed. “So I couldn't talk you into calling in sick, and staying home to work on it a little more?”

  “Afraid not. I think I'm all out for today. Besides—” My stomach rumbled, loudly, saving me from trying to explain further. “Tell you what. Why don't I go downstairs and make lunch, and if you want, you can read what I've got so far and tell me that it’s brilliant. Does that sound good?”

  “It sounds great.” She gave me a peck on the lips, then slid past me into my office. “Any naughty bits I shouldn't be reading?” she teased from inside.

  “None that I put there,” I answered, and headed downstairs to make sandwiches.

  * * *

  Sarah was six or seven bites into her sandwich before she said anything. I hadn't asked, hadn't wanted to seem like I was angling for approval or leaning over her shoulder as she was reading. Instead, I concentrated on my sandwich, and on the low-fat low-sodium chips I'd put out on the plates with them.

  “Where did you come up with the idea for the story, Ryan?” she asked, and her voice was low and surprisingly wary.

  “Juf sorra mayv unh,” I said, then chewed a few more times and swallowed. “I don't know,” I clarified. “I just sort of made it up. Why?”

  “Interesting,” was all I got out of her, and then the sounds of thoughtful chewing.

  “Did you like it?” I asked, hating myself for the question.

  She stopped, swallowed, and looked thoughtful for a minute. “It's very well written,” she finally said, and then took a two-handed death grip on the remnants of her turkey and lettuce on seven-grain bread.

  I put my sandwich down and took a sip of soda. “So you didn't like it.”

  She chewed slowly and deliberately, her brow furrowed as her teeth bought time for a response. “It's not that I don't like it,” she said finally. “It's that it feels like I've heard it before, and I don't know where.”

  “You're not a big science fiction reader,” I pointed out, which was true. Our reading tastes generally intersected at places like The Time Traveler's Wife, when science fiction or fantasy topics got themselves remade into book-club friendly versions. Her tastes ran more toward Jodi Picoult and Mitch Albom; mine went from Neal Stephenson on out. “I don't know where you would have come across something like this on your own.”

  Slowly, she nodded. “I know. And I don't think I've seen it in a movie. I mean, it's like a science fiction spy novel, what with the main character jumping into computers and whatnot. Like I said, the writing is good, but you're a little sloppy in a couple of places. You got your pronouns mixed up—you kept switching back and forth between ‘he’ and ‘she’ when you were—honey, what's wrong?”

  I could feel the blood draining from my face. “Did I really do that?” I asked. She nodded mute agreement. I thought about it for a second. “Were most of the male pronouns up front, and the female ones toward the end of what I'd written?”

  She sat back in her chair, the sandwich forgotten and her eyes wide. “Yeah. Why is that important?”

  “It means I don't have the goddamned game out of my head yet.” I shoved back from the table, about as interested in the rest of lunch as I was in performing elective self-surgery. “Bloody hell.”

  “It really is good, Ryan,” Sarah offered consolingly. “Apart from the pronoun stuff, I liked it.”

  I smiled at her, or tried to. It came out mostly a failure. “Honey, it's Blue Lightning. I don't know what happened, but somehow, today I started writing the novelization of Blue Lightning.” I stood up abruptly enough to send my chair teetering backwards; reaching back to steady it just spun the thing into the kitchen floor that much harder.

  Sarah stayed at the table, sitting very still. Her hands were down now, flat against the tabletop, pressed there to keep them from trembling with tension. “I don't see why that's so bad,” she said softly. “If you're not doing the game….”

  “I wanted this to be something different.” I kicked the chair, hard, and it skittered over the floor to crash against the pantry. “If I'm going to write—if I'm going to write at all—I want to write something that's mine. That's not a game, or about a game, or ripped off from a game. That's not another version of what I'm doing at the office. Otherwise, I might as well be doing it at the office. I might as well be at the office. If it's not going to be anything different, I might as well not even try.”

  She took a deep breath, held it for a minute, let it whistle out between her teeth. “Even if it was a game, Blue Lightning was your idea,” she said, each word getting bitten off precisely. “If they're not going to use it, you should. You put so much into it.”

  “And now I just want to leave it alone.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “Oh, Sarah, I'm sorry. It's just that I didn't even realize what I was writing, or how thoroughly that crap was knotted up in me, or, or anything.” I sat down on the floor, heavily. “God, I'm a screwup.”

  “You work too hard. And you're too hard on yourself.” I looked up. She was still sitting at the table, looking down at me. “And this is what happens. Promise me you'll take some time off soon, Ryan.”

  “I—”

  “I don't care if you go anywhere. I don't care if you spend it with me, or by yourself, or hop in the car and drive and don't come back until you're feeling better. But I don't want to watch you blow up every time you make a mistake, and I don't want to watch you tear your own guts out every time you realize you blew up for no reason.”

  “Sarah, I—”

  “I love you, Ryan, and I'll see you tonight. You should get to work.” Smoothly, she stood and carried her dishes over to the sink. With perfect economy of motion, she scraped half the sandwich into the garbage disposal, then ran it for precisely five seconds. The dishes clattered in the sink as she set them down and turned to go.

  “The roses are lovely, Ryan,” she said. “Thank you.” And with that, she was gone, her footsteps in the hall and the sound of the door shutting behind her blending into a cacophonous goodbye.

  “Great,” I said, and sat there for a moment. “Why don't I go to the office?”

  Chapter 14

  Shelly was conveniently near the front doors when I walked through, and she fell into step with me before I'd gotten a yard inside.

  “You look like shit,” she said cheerfully. “Not a good nap?”

  “Not now, Michelle,” I warned her. I fumbled for my office keys. They fell out of my fingers and bounced once. “God dammit!” I dropped to my knees to look for them, then looked up at Michelle. “Would you mind? You're blocking the light.”

  “So sorry.” She took a step back and to the left. The sickly glow from the hall lamp fanned through her hair, giving me just enough light to spot my keys right in front of me.

  “Thank you.” I grabbed them, dusted myself off, and stood. “And whatever it is, can it wait five minutes?”

  She made a great show of looking at her watch, a Hello Kitty number I'd gotten her about six watchbands ago. “Eight. Then you're due in the small meeting room.”

  “Great. What's this one about?” I jammed the key into the door, missing the lock twice before finally nailing it, and shoved it open. It banged against the wall and slammed into my shoulder, leaving me wincing even as I turned on the light.

  “Terry,” she said. “You might want to block off the rest of the afternoon.”

 
“Wonderful.” I dropped my keys and my bag on my desk, in that order, and did a quick email check. There was the meeting invite from Leon to discuss Terry, and it looked like Terry was invited. That felt like bad news; we weren't going to have enough time to figure out what we were going say before it was showtime. I checked the time on my monitor just as a reminder window popped up—five minutes. Maybe I could get down there and grab Leon for a couple of minutes beforehand. Grabbing a pad and a thoroughly chewed-on pen, I hurried down the hall.

  * * *

  To my surprise, Leon hadn't taken the chair at the end of the table in the meeting room. Instead, he was seated along the side, his shoes off and a pen twirling between his fingers. He looked up as I stalked in, and the pen stopped moving. “Who pissed in your cornflakes, man?”

  “I did it myself. I like the taste.” I slammed the pad down onto the table and dropped into a chair. “What have we got, Leon?”

  He shrugged. “Informational meeting, that's all. I just have to let Terry know that we're concerned about his feature, and if he needs to talk about the spec....” His voice trailed off as he made a grand gesture in my direction.

  “You could have just pulled systems design in here. Or given me some warning.”

  “I did. You didn't pick up.” He leaned forward. “And before he gets here, let's just walk through it fast. I'll do the talking, you're here for backup in case he wants to talk about the intention, or if he comes over the table and I need you to restrain him. Got it, man?”

  “I don't think you have to worry about Terry coming over the table at you,” I said. “Whatever. I'll be here.”

  “Thanks.” There was a knock. “Just don't jump in and jump down his throat, OK? I got this one.”

  “Right.” I made a big show of biting my tongue for Leon. He flipped me off, then shouted “Come in” at the door.

  Terry didn't walk in. He just sort of shuffled, like he was perpetually falling forward and insisted on making the smallest movements possible of his feet to avert catastrophe. “Hey,” he said, his eyes flicking back and forth nervously between us. “Where do you want me to sit?”

  “Wherever,” Leon said magnanimously. Terry nodded, and shuffled over to the Daddy Chair. Leon looked mildly surprised. Inwardly, I groaned. We were five seconds in and it already felt like things were going off the rails.

  “So, uh, what's up, guys?” Terry's voice was uneven. He tapped his fingers on the tabletop like he was doing piano scales, and hunched over them like he didn't want us to see. “Is something up?”

  Leon smiled. “I just wanted to make sure that everything was cool with the implementation on your feature, and that you didn't have any trouble with the concept. I know Ryan's kind of a pain to get hold of sometimes,” I opened my mouth to say something, and Leon kicked me under the table. Even without shoes, he kicked hard. “So if you had any questions, or there was something holding you up, I figured we could just talk it out.” He threw a glance my way. “Right, Ryan?”

  I nodded dumbly, watching Terry out of the corner of my eye. His head was practically down to the table, his gaze focused on the spot just in front of his hands. “It's fine,” he mumbled. “The docs are good.”

  “That's cool, man.” Leon scooted his chair over a little closer. I stayed where I was. “But if it's all good, I have to ask, as your lead, if something else is wrong? Cause I'm looking at the Engineering schedule and we’re not meeting it. That means I've got to explain to Eric what's up, and I want to be able to tell him not to worry. So....”

  Terry stared at him, eyes wide. “So?”

  “So what's up?” His face was maybe a foot from Terry's now, his arms crossed in front of him. “Is it something I can help with?”

  “No, no, everything's fine.” Terry turned, hunched over, and stared at a wall. “I'll catch up, don't worry. It's just something else has been taking my attention a little bit lately, and I haven't been getting a lot of sleep, and I promise I'll be back on schedule real soon now.” For some inexplicable reason, he shot me a look that was one part desperation, two parts loathing. “Really. Nothing to worry about.”

  “Don't turn your back on me, Terry,” Leon said in the deceptively soft voice that meant that he was getting seriously pissed off. “In case you didn’t hear me, I’m your lead, and I asked you a question. I invited you in here so we could have a nice friendly chat before I had to get Eric involved. But if you're not going to be straight with me, we might as well all go home.” There was a moment of silence, broken only by Terry's shuddering breathing and the faint tick of the clock on the wall. “Terry?”

  “I'll get the goddamned work done, okay? Just leave me the hell alone, or fire me, I don't care which!” He spun around, eyes bulging, lips pulled back in what could only be called a snarl. “You don't know shit about what I'm doing or how important it is, and at the end of the day, I'll have everything done I need to. In the meantime, you can take that schedule of yours and shove it up your ass!”

  “Wait a minute, Terry.” Leon warned him. “You should maybe think about what you're saying here.”

  “Think? You've got no goddamned idea how much thinking I've been doing. This Salvador horseshit doesn't take any thinking at all. I've got other stuff to think about.” He pulled himself up out of his chair and stomped past me. As he did, I turned.

  “Take it easy, Terry,” I said. “Leon's just trying to help.”

  He stopped and looked daggers in my direction. “Yeah. He's trying to help. I don't know what the hell she sees in you.” He hocked up a wad of spit and looked me up and down before thinking better of it. Instead, he settled for lurching out and slamming the door behind him.

  “You know,” I said idly, “That door gets slammed a lot.”

  “Heh. Funny.” Leon rubbed his forehead like it was causing him pain. “Wow. I don’t know who that was, but it wasn’t Terry.”

  I was still looking at the door. “He's hiding something, that's for sure. Is the feature he's working on really that much of a bear?”

  Leon shook his head. “It's cake. I gave it to him because he was really deep into the guts of the matchmaking stuff on Blue Lightning, and I wanted him to have something relatively easy to work on while he, you know, got over it. Give him an easy win and all that.”

  “That worked out well.” I turned to face Leon, who looked grim as death. “So what now?”

  He made a sour face. “Now that I've officially had a meeting with him, HR says I can go on to the next step and dig into his network access history. And since we had this nice talk, he can't say shit about how I should have talked to him first.”

  “Very clever. But what are you expecting to find?”

  “If he's been accessing something naughty from work, I'll find it, or Dennis will. Maybe he's working on his own thing, maybe he's doing the BitTorrent thing with movies, maybe he's just getting a shitload of porn. It doesn't matter.”

  “What if he's doing a black project?”

  “Hmm.” Leon drummed his fingernails on the tabletop, little tiny clacking sounds accentuating his thought process. “You mean a blue project, don't you?”

  “Same thing.” I thought for a minute. “He had a little knot of guys he was huddling with out in the smoker's quad a while back, and they all had that ‘we're doing something we shouldn't’ look when I came over to talk.”

  “Heh. You're practically management. No wonder they look guilty.” He stood up. “Eric warned Terry about doing anything else on Blue Lighting. Called him into his office for a little ‘come to Jesus’ talk. If he's still digging into it, we'll get the access records from the Blue Lightning database. I might even have to ask Dennis to call in the tape backups from offsite, just to see what he was touching.”

  “Hopefully, not himself.” Leon shot me a look, and I raised my hands to show I was sorry. “My bad,” I said. “What happens if you catch him still working on Blue Lightning?”

  Leon made a face. “I tell him to cut it out. And if he doesn'
t, then I take some steps.” He strode toward the door. “You think I’m handling this right? I mean, that was pretty batshit, what he did just now.”

  “You’re doing fine, man. And I’d try and get more info on what he’s doing before talking to HR or Eric again. Otherwise they’ll just nibble you to death with questions and it’ll take twice as long,” I said. “It could be that all you need to do is tell him that you're not going to get him fired, and he'll calm down. Seriously, he's wound tighter than a spring up a snail's butt.”

  “Eww…. Tell you what. I've got a few ideas to try to figure out what's going on with Terry, man. If things go a certain way, I may need your help with some of it.”

  “Sure,” I said, puzzled. “But what else is there to do besides looking at his records, unless you're going to plant someone in his room to watch him?”

  Leon showed me a shark's grin. “Don't need people, man. I gots me some cameras.”

  * * *

  “Do you have any idea what the hell Leon means when he says he has cameras?”

  Michelle turned her attention from the vending machine to stare me down. “Just that they’d better not be in his bedroom. Why do you ask?”

  I grimaced. “Because he mentioned them in connection with Terry, but after that comment I think I need a few rounds on the brain lathe.”

  She smirked. “Oh really? I didn’t think you were such a prude.”

  “I’m not. But I really don’t need to think about Leon’s skinny ass flapping in the breeze, at least not during work hours.” There was a general cloud of snickering from the other folks getting their coffee or microwaving their lunches. “OK, maybe I should rephrase that, but can we talk about this for a minute?”

  “Hang on, let’s take this somewhere private.” She turned back to the machine and studied the selection of crap junk food—candy bars that had half-melted in the truck on the way over, salty snacks that were more sodium than anything else, overcooked cookies—as if her selection really mattered. I watched her study them. She was wearing some sort of lightweight black blouse, unbuttoned over a sullen pink tank top held up by spaghetti straps. The ensemble made her look like the manager of a particularly stylish roller derby team, and the thought made me grin.