Page 89 of Smart Ass

It sucked that Ben had messed up their relationship so badly, even if Ben’s behavior might have seemed warranted at the time. Wallace could clearly use a friend in his corner, and Max knew that Ben, no matter what he claimed, was a good support.

Eleven minutes later, Wallace left the supply closet and went to the bathroom across the hall.

Max wondered how many times he’d made that exact journey.

There weren’t any cameras in the bathroom, but Wallace stepped out looking completely composed, with only the collar of his shirt a bit wet and his hair newly combed.

No one would have ever suspected what he’d just gone through.

That was when Max decided.

He was going to talk to Wallace. He’d ask him—beg him, even—not to reveal what he knew about Max’s involvement in the two errors. He was sure they could find a rapport. Maybe they could even be friends.

Ben hadn’t prohibited him from doing it. He’d expressed doubts, but he’d left it up to Max’s discretion. That was what partners who trusted each other did.

So Max was going to use his discretion.

He waited until Wallace was in his office with the door closed. He activated the fan in the vent just outside the office to spin faster and blur sounds from within, the same trick he used outside the maintenance room with Ben.

Wallace was pouring through system logs, and Max watched him download a half-completed program that was definitely intended to keep tabs on Max… even if it wouldn’t be able to catch him.

Max had to put a stop to this.

Virtual fingers crossed.

“Wallace?” He made his voice soft as it came out the speakers nested in Wallace’s monitor.

“Holy…” Wallace jumped back, before leaning forward, anger etched across his face. “It’s you, isn’t it? You’re Maxamillion.”

“It’s me.”

Silence hung in the air. Why hadn’t Max planned out what he wanted to say? He’d thought about the begging and befriending part, but not the introduction.

“I wanted to introduce myself,” he added, feeling inane.

“Introduce yourself? Or threaten me not to expose you?”

“Uh… I was thinking more about making friends.”

“Right.”

“I mean, I can’t really do anything to you. I just wanted to say hello.”

“Seriously? You can’t do anything to me? Like, maybe… crash my car into a tree? Pump one of the thousands of toxic chemicals in this factory into my air vents? Or better yet, wait until I’m walking across the factory floor and just happen to have some machine fall on me?”

“Holy shit. Paranoid much?” Max thought the list was silly, until he realized that Wallace wasn’t laughing.

Max had seen all of those movies, though. The ones that Ben thought were so funny when he wasn’t using their porny variants to jerk off to.

But computers were cast as evil in a lot of movies. It seemed to be an instinctive fear among humans—that anyone with a lot of power was likely to exploit it.

Maybe that had been Wallace’s experience. The people with power in his life had certainly used it to keep him cowed, miserable, and angry.

Wallace looked angry now. Which probably meant he was scared.

“Listen, I never even thought about harming you. And I wouldn’t. You hold the power here.”

“Right. Blackmail, then?”