“Wait, you’re saying it’s being outsourced?” he says, from behind the door. “When the hell did this happen?”
“I’m not sure. I just found out myself,” says another, much deeper voice.
“Why weren’t we notified?”
“Maybe it was some kind of oversight.”
A bead of sweat trickles down the side of my face as I exit out of the program and give the screen a quick wipe with my elbow. Then I lunge for the magnet and pluck it off the panel. I have just enough time to stick it in my pocket and step away from the computer before Patrick enters the room.
The only thing I forget to do is take off these damn gloves.
At first Patrick doesn’t even notice me, his attention directed toward the middle-aged man with glasses who is following close behind him. He’s tall and handsome, wearing an expensive suit like Patrick’s, with black hair and a dark ebony complexion. I recognize him immediately. Bryce Williams. He was on my dad’s original Elusion design team.
With my hands behind my back, I pull the gloves off finger by finger, hoping that I’ll have time to dispose of them before they realize I’m here.
“I want to know exactly when we switched over,” Patrick says to him. “Find me whatever documentation you can . . .” He pauses and sniffs the air. “Wait, does it smell like cinnamon buns in here?”
Bryce spots me over Patrick’s shoulder and gives him a sharp nudge in the arm—just as I snap off the last glove and curl both gloves into a little ball.
“Regan?” Patrick’s voice lilts. Obviously he’s surprised to see me.
“Hey,” I say, tucking the gloves in the back pocket of my cargo skirt.
“What are you doing here?”
“I brought you breakfast. Estelle let me in.” I worry that this might get her in trouble, but it’s either her or me, and any other excuse might raise suspicion.
Patrick squints his eyes. He looks absolutely bewildered right now. Can’t say that I blame him.
“Don’t you have school?” he asks, loosening his red tie a little.
I give him an indifferent shrug. “I’ll get there eventually.”
“How’ve you been, Regan?” Bryce pipes up, extending a hand in my direction.
“Good, thanks,” I say during our polite handshake. “It’s nice to see you.”
“Bryce, let’s catch up later, okay?” Patrick says, patting him on the shoulder.
“Yeah, sure.” Bryce walks toward the door, but just before he exits, he stops and turns around to smile at me. “We really miss your father around here, Regan.”
I smile back, even though I’m not sure if he’s being sincere. “Thanks.”
Once the door slides closed behind him, Patrick strolls over toward the conference table, where the goodies I brought him are probably starting to get cold. Oh well. He opens the bag and breaks into a grin when he inhales. “Mo’s Bakery?”
A twinge of sentimentality tugs at my heart, and all of a sudden, I feel my eyes glistening. When Patrick and I were in elementary school, my father used to spoil us with treats from Mo’s every Friday. After our hands became sticky with frosting or glaze, Patrick would chase me around my house, trying to tickle me. We were so innocent then. Everything between us was easy.
“I thought you could use a pick-me-up,” I say, my words sounding a bit garbled. “Besides, I owe you a thank-you for the other night.”
“No thanks necessary.” Patrick pulls out a black leather bucket chair from the conference table and nods at it. “Can we talk for a second?”
I nervously shift my weight from one leg to the other. If I engage in some kind of deep, emotional conversation with Patrick right now, I might lose my cool, or do something worse, like throw the QuTap down the Orexis trash chute in a fit of unyielding guilt. He has this uncanny way of making me forgive him for every little indiscretion of his.
Which is why I need to get out of here.
“Sorry, Pat. I should probably head to school.”
Patrick unbuttons his jacket and places his hands on his hips. “You weren’t in such a rush a minute ago.”
“I just remembered—I have a chem quiz,” I lie.
But when he smirks, I know that he’s on to me.
“So you’re still mad at me, huh?”
“Mad? Why would I be mad?”
When he flops down into the chair, he seems more like his true eighteen-year-old self than a corporate figurehead. “Because I was kind of a jerk before I left your house.”
“No you weren’t,” I lie again. “I mean, you were just concerned about me, right?”
“Yeah, right,” he says, leaning over so his elbows rest on his knees. “That’s what I wanted to discuss.”
When I detect the disbelief that’s coating his voice, I decide to make a bold move. “Have you gotten other complaints about Elusion?”
Given what I know about Josh’s call to Patrick yesterday, if he denies that there are more flaws in the system, I’ll know he has no problem with lying right to my face.
“There’s a good chance the bad download is affecting your other software too. I really want you to get a new tab. You can pick it out and I’ll pay for it,” he says.
Wow. He’s ignoring the question altogether and continuing to use this downloading error excuse, which Josh said wasn’t possible. He’s lying to me.
I shake my head, my blood pressure rising. “Forget it. I can get one myself.”
He sighs. “I’m just trying to help, Ree. Why is that making you so angry?”
The longer I stand here talking to him, the chances of me slipping up and getting caught with the QuTap continue to skyrocket.
So I deny the obvious.
“I’m not angry,” I say. “I just have to go.”
As I put my hands in my coat pocket and bolt for the door, Patrick springs up from his chair and blocks my path. Now that he’s only inches away from me, I can see how red and irritated his eyes are, like he’s been up for days. And his cheeks are a bit sunken, too, like he hasn’t been eating. My mind jumps to a conclusion—one that paints Patrick as an addict to the invention he so desperately loves. Anything to explain why he’s not the trusting person I thought him to be.
“You know I’d do anything for you, right?” he says, running a jittery hand down my arm. “You’re the most important person in the world to me, and I’ll never let anything bad happen to you, I swear.”
I nod and do my best to give him a reassuring smile as I slowly pull away.
Even though I can’t help but doubt his every word, this is still something I really want to believe.
TEN
“WORK, GODDAMN IT!” JOSH SHOUTS AT his quantum laptop, pounding on the touch screen with two open palms.
I’m watching him as I pace inside one of the insulated glass capsules the city built along the boardwalk of the Inner Sector waterfront a few years ago. After school and my second stint in detention, Josh and I decided to take a ride so we could have a secluded spot to analyze the information on the QuTap, and this was the first place that came to mind. Despite the “comfort” of these antitoxic fume capsules, hardly anyone comes down here to check out the view of the Detroit River—it’s so polluted it could be mistaken for a sewage system.