Taking advantage of Lil’s momentary absence, Jake shouldered up to Dominic. “So where is this couple you think has the answer to all of our problems?”
Dominic hesitated, a sure sign that he was up to something he didn’t think Jake would approve of. “Victor is entertaining them in the study. They aren’t too keen on being seen in public.”
“But they were willing to come to an event like this?”
Dominic shrugged. “You were enough of a lure.”
“Who the hell…” As soon as the idea came to him, he tensed with growing anger. “Tell me you didn’t bring my parents here.”
“Are your parents named James and Judith Walton?”
“Dominic!” Jake rubbed a hand over his eyes. “You just wasted another week of our time on a dead end. They haven’t worked in the computer field for almost ten years.”
“They seemed to understand what our issue is.”
“That’s because they are geniuses, but a decade of farming in Maine is not good preparation for something like this.”
“It’s amazing to think that they went from two of the most renowned physicists who to practically invented quantum encryption-to absolute obscurity. Didn’t they accuse the government of stealing their software designs for the military?”
“Yes, they did. They claimed that some of their experiments with laser beams were stolen and used to advance the guided missile program. They are also convinced that Ivan Getting stole their initial Global Positioning notes and sold them to the military.”
“You don’t believe them?”
Jake shot a glare at Dominic. “I stopped caring what the truth was a long time ago. My parents have paid a high price for the gift of intelligence. They built a shared reality based on paranoia and an over-inflated sense of self-importance. I’m surprised you got them to leave their compound at all.”
Dominic shrugged. “They said they missed you. How long has it been since you’ve seen them?”
“Are you honestly going to lecture me about family relationships?” He shook his head at the irony overload. “I don’t have a vendetta against my parents; I simply don’t have a close relationship with them. In fact, I find that the less time I spend with them, the happier we all are.”
“They didn’t seem that bad to me.”
“You didn’t grow up with them,” Jake growled.
Dominic smiled. “Are you getting angry about this?”
“No,” Jake gritted his teeth as even he heard the emotion in his denial. He took a calming breath. “Don’t be surprised if they refuse to help. If it doesn’t have to do with something they are working on-or apparently planting lately-they don’t usually spare any time for it.”
“They cared enough to come here, Jake. Give them that much credit.”
A bit too late for them to pretend to be doting parents. When Jim and Judy were together, they didn’t need anyone else – they never had. Why they’d bothered to have Jake at all still baffled him. He had been a responsibility that came after science, after each other, and after their growing distrust of the government. More times than he cared to remember they’d forgotten to pick him up from school, to make meals for him, to check that he had clean clothes. He’d learned early that the only one he could rely on was himself. At the age of eleven, he’d chosen a boarding school and enrolled himself. A small part of him had hoped that they would wake up and beg him not to go, but instead they had lauded his choice of schools and deposited him there with a disgusting amount of relief.
He’d found reasons why he couldn’t go home each summer – internships, study abroad programs. The reason didn’t matter to his parents, nor did his destination. They sent money when he asked for it and, he supposed, that was all that mattered in the end.
Holidays had always been the worst. In the beginning he’d had a choice between going home to parents who didn’t believe in celebrating days that they claimed governments or religions had arbitrarily chosen to give importance to, going home with a friend with a close-knit family who only reminded him painfully of what he didn’t have, or spending the holiday alone.
Meeting Dominic in college had offered a much better alternative…designing a company that would grow and one day dominate the computer market.
He never felt sorry for himself when he was adding another figure to his income bracket.
They say that money can’t make you happy, but it had made his life a whole lot more bearable. Until quite recently he would have said there wasn’t a single thing he would change about his life.
Now there was only one.
He wanted Lil in it. Lil and Colby.
He didn’t want to wake up Monday morning in his house if neither of them were there. He wouldn’t have to, though, because he’d already decided that they would be coming home with him at the end of the weekend. Lil would accept his proposal once she thought it through.
She’d have to wait to wait, though. His parents were the more pressing matter at hand. “I’ll talk to them, Dom, but get ready to aggressively begin the search for help again on Monday.”
Jake braced himself and opened the door to the study, “Judy. Jim. What a pleasant surprise.”
His mother broke her conversation with her husband and Victor Andrade when she heard her son’s voice. At first glance, she looked much the same as she always had; except perhaps that her dark, shoulder length hair sported a bit more gray. Her signature cream knit sweater and tan loose trousers were expensive, yet understated and unadorned with jewelry. Although both of his parents had been born into wealthy families, neither had ever looked the part; preferring to spend their money on their research rather than any of the earthly possessions most people collected. His father’s gray hair was too long for the style he’d attempted to brush it into, indicating that he’d probably forgotten his last trim appointment. He was dressed in the same dark blue dinner jacket and purple, striped tie that he’d likely worn to every formal event in the past twenty years. Not much had changed in the three years since Jake had last seen them.
“Jake,” his mother said in greeting. She didn’t walk over to give him a hug.
He hadn’t expected her to, so really there was no reason for the twinge of disappointment he felt. In about thirty seconds, his parents could do what no one else could; they could make him feel insignificant. He joined the group and shook the hand his father offered.
His father studied his face for a moment then asked, “Are you okay, Jake?”
Jake touched his one of the bruises on his cheek and said, “It looks worse than it is.”
Victor slapped Jake on the back and laughed, “And better than the other guy, si?”
Jake smiled before meeting his mother’s look of disapproval. Even though she said nothing, he could hear her voice in his head. We do not condone physical violence, Jake.
He sighed.
His mother said, “Victor has been filling us in on what has been going on. I’m surprised that your company was using such a weak symmetric key encryption algorithm for your access codes.”
Jake defended their practice. “Yes, many of our protocols use symmetric encryption, but our more sensitive data transfers utilize an asymmetric, hybrid cipher. It’s perfectly acceptable to use the more secure to initiate access and not to relay the bulk of the data.”
“You wouldn’t be in this situation today if you had used quantum keys,” his mother chided.
“Your mother is right, Jake,” his father concurred.
“That wasn’t my decision. I am not a programmer.”
His mother interrupted him, “You should be. You’re wasting your talent. You are far too intelligent to be Dominic Corisi’s lackey.”
Every muscle in his body tensed and his reaction could not be contained. “I am a multi-billionaire. I employ hundreds of thousands of people all across the globe. Countries have entered the technological race because of the advances I’ve helped bring to them. I’m sorry if I don’t want to sit in a lab somewhere, tinkering with protons until I invent the perfect encryption key or, having given up on that, take up farming in some New England redneck town. I’m not you.”
“Show your parents the respect they deserve, Jake,” Victor said in a stern tone.
“That’s exactly what I’m doing,” Jake snarled.
Victor started to say something else, but Judy stopped him with a placating wave of her hand. “No, Victor, he’s right. I didn’t mean to belittle your accomplishments, Jake. Of course we’re proud that you’re rich. We just hoped for so much more from you.”
The verbal pat on the head did not lessen Jake’s temper, but Jake resolved to. He took a deep, calming breath. His parents would never see the value of what of what he did. It shouldn’t bother him. Inviting them this weekend had been a profound waste of time and he was about to prove it. “We have just over three weeks until our server goes online in China. Do you think you and Jim can find the cause of the compromised codes?”
His father answered, “We won’t know for sure until we’re given access to the program, but it sounds like there is something else going on. Some of your patches seemed to work initially and then were corrupted? That hints at either a Trojan virus or some back door access code. If your original hacker was good enough, those codes can be difficult to locate. Not impossible, but the process might be time consuming. There is no way to say if we’ll meet your deadline. It’d be a whole lot easier if we knew what we were dealing with.”
“Just say you can’t do it,” Jake goaded.
Judy Walton walked over to her son and raised a hand to touch her son’s check, but Jake pulled his head away from her touch. She let her hand drop to her side. “We want to help you.”
Jake ran a hand through his normally pristine hair, “But you’ve been out of the field for a long time, I know. Dominic should never have asked you.”
Jim joined his wife, putting an arm lightly around her waist in quiet support. “Do you know what we’re working on, Jake?”
“Farming techniques?” Jake said dismissively.
His father shook his head. “Far from it.” He looked over at Victor as if assessing if he could be trusted with certain information. He said, “We’re bio-engineering the next generation of encryption-organic keys-encoding information at the DNA level. Imagine having chemical access codes stored within your very own cells. Codes that remain intact even as the strands change as a result of breeding. Technology could truly be something you leave your children.”
Victor waved an excited hand in the air and said, “That’s impossible. You can’t add codes to DNA without changing their function.”
Jim countered with a humble shrug. “It’s impossible in animals so far, but we’ve proven it can work with certain plants.”
DNA encryption? His parents were wandering further from reality than he’d thought. “Another world-changing discovery? Aren’t you afraid Victor will steal the idea now that you’ve shared it?”
His mother looked over her shoulder at her husband and then back at her son. The lines of her face deepened with emotion. “Your father and I have come to an awful realization recently-we’re not going to be here forever. We’ve spent some time re-evaluating our priorities.”
Jake sighed impatiently and half-turned away from her. “Judy, don’t take this as harshly as it sounds, but I don’t have time to entertain your mid-life crisis right now.”
His father nodded, but his tone was surprisingly firm. “We probably deserve that comment, son, but give your mother a few more minutes of your time.”
It was really only Victor’s presence that held Jake’s tongue. “Fine. I’m listening.”
His mother looked uncomfortable-almost nervous-as she said, “I know we weren’t the parents you wanted, Jake. You wanted someone to rush to school when you scraped a knee or cook for some bake sale.”
Not about to sugar coat the past, Jake said, “I would have been happy if you had just attended one of my graduations.”
“It’s not an excuse, Jake, but research can be addictive. You get so close to a breakthrough – you don’t want to walk away. Time escapes you and suddenly you realize another day has gone by.”
“Well, then I suppose I should thank you for coming here at all,” Jake said unkindly.
To his surprise, his mother clasped her hands in front of her as if she found his words upsetting. “Your father and I made some mistakes. We didn’t protect ourselves or our discoveries as well as we should have and because of that we lost some of them to others. But do you know what we regret more than any of that?”
Jake shook his head and glanced at his watch.
“We didn’t protect you from our obsession.” Her voice shook and Jake felt an anger burning in his stomach. He didn’t want her words to touch him, to reawaken a yearning he’d put behind him years ago. “We missed your childhood and I know that you’d rather be anywhere but here with us, but don’t shut us out. We love you.”
“Love?” Jake recoiled from the word. “Love is for people who have nothing better to believe in. I don’t need love. I need to know if you can fix the server and then disappear back to that northern farm you think you’ll change the world from.”
A gasp from the doorway echoed through the painful silence that had followed Jake’s harsh words.
“Lil!” he said and took a few steps toward her.
She held up a hand to stop his advance. “No, don’t say anything else. I had almost convinced myself that you actually cared about me and Colby, but now I see that you’re not capable of caring for anyone, are you?”
A man who appeared to be in his mid-twenties, dressed in a brown checkered dinner jacket that didn’t look like it quite fit him-too long at the sleeves a bit loose around the waist. With zero dress sense and even less survival skills, the man chose that moment to walk over to Jake’s parents and say,“Hey, aren’t you the Waltons? This is so cool.”
Jake grabbed one of Lil’s arms as she was turning to leave. “You misunderstood what you heard.”
She gave her arm a yank, but he didn’t let it go. “Oh, I understood perfectly. You really mean all that trash you say.”
“This was not about you.” Regardless of what happened between him and Lil, chances were good that she would never see his parents again, anyway.
Lil shook her head violently. “I disagree. I feel sorry for whatever happened to you that left a black hole where your heart should be, but I can’t be with a man who thinks love is something you outgrow believing in like Santa Claus.”
“Don’t do this, Lil,” he warned.
His tone seemed to enrage her. Instead of pulling away, she went nose to nose with him and spat,“Don’t do what? Don’t expect better from you? Get your hand off of me.”
Jake didn’t. He couldn’t. He had to make her see. “You’re making a big deal out of nothing.”
His words didn’t have the soothing effect he’d hoped for.
“That’s because I just realized that what we have is exactly that…nothing.” She closed her eyes as if the thought hurt her. “I can’t believe I was willing to put my friends in jeopardy for you. I’m such an idiot.”
“What are you talking about?”
Lil opened her eyes, hurt turning to anger. She tore her arm out of Jake’s grasp. “Ask Jeremy. But understand that I’m only helping you now for Abby and Dominic’s sake.”
With that she ran out of the room.
Jake’s loyalty was torn. You can only fix one problem at a time. He turned his attention to the man who was already deep in conversation with his parents. “Will someone explain to me what the hell is going on?”
Jeremy took a bite out of a crab cake and said, “Man, women will make you nuts, won’t they? First I’m asked to hack into your computer like it’s no big deal. Then I’m told I could meet two programming icons as long as I take that secret with me to the grave. Now I’m supposed to save your company by spilling what I know about the backdoor I found to your mainframe…”
“You found a backdoor access point?”
The young man held up a hand. “Only if it means you’re not going to prosecute me for admitting any of this. Not that you could prove it, anyway. I cover my tracks well.” He smiled at Jake’s mother, looking quite pleased with himself.
Jim interjected, “Knowing what we are dealing with is going to make all the difference. We should be able to have the server debugged in plenty of time now.”
The news didn’t bring Jake the sense of relief he thought it would.
What did this mean in terms of Lil?
He looked at Jeremy more closely, “Who are you?”
“I’m a friend of Lil’s. Well, Alethea, really. I’ve had a crush on that woman since high school.” Jeremy’s eyes widened at the audible growl Jake emitted. He quickly clarified, “Alethea, not Lil.”
“You hacked into my computer for them. That was you?”
“Yes.”
“Lil wanted to keep me away from my computer that day.”
Jeremy nodded.
The more he thought about it, the angrier he became. It had all been a lie. The date. The fake outrage that he didn’t love her. Everything. What he couldn’t understand, though, was why Lil had wanted to access his files at all? Was she working for someone? He usually had a good idea of what was happening in most situations, but this one had his head spinning and grasping at theories. “What were you looking for?”
Jeremy wiped his greasy fingers on the hem of his checkered jacket. “I knew you were paying off programmers around the country. I know you gave them hush money, but for a rich man, you are way too cheap with your bribes. Anyway, Alethea thought Abby might be in danger. Lil said she needed proof before she’d say anything to Abby.” Jeremy shrugged. “I probably shouldn’t have accessed your computer, but I have a hard time saying no to Alethea. However, I got in by piggybacking on a backdoor code that I stumbled on. It was surprisingly easy so I went deeper than your email. The hacker community is not all that big. I took a guess that someone had been there before me and I was right.” He smirked. “It was that west coast weasel, Sliver. He’s pathetically predictable when it comes to his attack codes and, luckily, his passwords, too. He had complete access to your mainframe. I changed his password just to piss him off. He thinks he’s big time because he’s caused some crashes that have made the news.” He rolled his eyes. “He’s an idiot.”
All this from a man who looked like he’d dressed himself in a dark closet back in the 1950s. Jake had been around long enough to understand that appearances did not equate to performance. Some of the best code writers on his team looked like they hadn’t seen the light of day in years and to say that their social skills were quirky would have been kind.
Jake said, “You’ve just changed the outcome of the game. Trust me, you’ll be well compensated for whatever information you can give us.”
“I don’t want your money,” Jeremy said.
“What do you want?”
Jeremy rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I’m a smart guy. I may not have your level of wealth, but I’ve made enough selling apps and codes that I’m comfortable. There is one area that I seem to require some assistance in, however.”
“Name it.”
“You need to make me into a man that Alethea would want to date.”
You couldn’t have asked for something easier like world peace or an end to global hunger?
From what Jake had heard about Lil’s friend, this guy was dreaming way out of his league. Alethea would eat him alive. She was a shark and he was a sheep, albeit very intelligent one.
Jake sought help from Victor Andrade. “Are they spiking the drinks with crazy at the party?”
Victor put a supportive hand on Jake’s shoulder and said, “Son, the only one who is crazy is you if you let Lil get away. When you find a woman who is willing to risk everything for family and then for you-you marry that woman. Go tell her that you love her before it’s too late.”
“But I don’t…”
The truth hit him in the stomach like a sledgehammer.
Memories of their time together flooded his mind. Lil studying at her kitchen table. Lil naked beneath him. Lil beaming with pride as she held up her daughter’s artwork.
His stomach twisted painfully.
Lil at the top of the stairs, easily the most beautiful woman in the room, and yet still anxiously scanning the room as if she weren’t sure she belonged. And, finally, Lil’s smile when she saw him waiting for her at the bottom of the steps. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with that smile, that woman.
I do.
I do love her.
Victor tightened his hand on his shoulder. “None of this is worth a damn thing if you have no one to share it with. Go find her, Jake. When you do, don’t let your pride speak for you. Pride knows nothing about love. Tell her you love her. Tell her you need her. Don’t leave until she believes you.”
Jake turned to leave and paused. He looked back at his parents. He wasn’t even sure what he wanted to say to them, but it was difficult not to be moved by the tears he saw well in his mother’s eyes. She said, “Go on, Jake. We’ll be here when you get back.”
He nodded.
Jeremy said, “Hey, what about me?”
Without hesitation, Jake threw his best friend under the bus. “Dominic is much better at that kind of thing than I am. Tell him that I said he owes you a favor-a huge personal favor. Then tell him what you need.”
Just before exiting the door, Jake stopped and added, “You might not want to mention the part about accessing our mainframe. I’ll explain it to him later.”
A dead Jeremy couldn’t help anyone.
Now, where would Lil go?