Page 21 of Playing for Keeps

“You don’t have to pay,” I told him, keeping my voice steady, steeling myself for the lie that rolled smoothly off my tongue. “The lawyer was so appalled, he’s taking your case for free.”

Ford buried his face in his hands, his sobs barely masked. I trailed my eyes to the right and caught Thatcher as he narrowed his eyes. One miniscule flick of his chin, and the look was gone. He knew. Knew me. The lawyer was more than willing to help out, even willing to move Ford’s case to the top of his list, but not without a hefty fee. One that, as a longtime friend of Ford, I was more than happy to pay.

There was nothing more to say. Angel and Butterman signed off, murmuring their good luck wishes before their screens went black. Thatcher hung around for a minute more, and I could tell he wasn’t done talking to me. But he signed off as well, after a tug on his ear and a raised brow pointed my way.

When it was just Ford and me left, I sat silent as I waited for him to recover. It was a long time coming, but when his sobs finally stopped and he pulled his head out of his hands, there was no embarrassment there. The man had been through hell, not just the last half hour, but for the last eight years. His eyes met mine, red-rimmed and still dripping tears. He wiped his palm down his face and cleared his throat.

“Thank you,” he murmured, “for everything. We owe you one.”

I shook my head, even as I pressed the send button on an email to my lawyer. The one instructing him to initiate a deposit to Ford’s personal account, disguised as a collection back from the ex-wife.

“Don’t mention it. That’s what friends are for.”

“I better go. Gotta work in the morning.”

I nodded and, without another word, Ford signed off. I was left in the game alone, the black screen fading back into the red desert landscape that the five of us created together. The source of income that helped some of the guys get through their lives, collections coming monthly from gamers around the world. The back door, the black screen where we went to chat, was the reason for the game. The way for us to get together, unseen, to discuss the business we kept.

Hitting a button on my keyboard, I logged out of the game and sank back into the real world. My fingers flew across the keys, pulling up screen after screen on my computer. Flight plans. Weather patterns. Car rentals and my driver. The plan that had formed in my head while Ford sat in front of me weeping came to life.

There were only two things left to do.

I grabbed my cell off the desk in front of me and hit the screen a few times as I walked toward my bedroom. The tone rang across my headset as I pulled a bag off the shelf of my closet and tossed it on the floor.

“Vinny.” My father’s gruff voice had me unconsciously standing straighter, even as I pulled clothes off the racks in front of me to throw in my bag. “How’s my boy?”

“Good,” I told him. “Hey, sorry to be short here, but I’m pressed for time. I’m taking the plane.”

Dad chuckled, and I bristled at what was to come. “This about the same girl? You just got home.”

Grabbing a t-shirt out of my dresser, I pulled it over my head, careful not to knock my headset off my ear. “Yeah, same one,” I said, my lie coming easily, as it always did. My phone beeped with a new call coming in. My hands were full of travel-sized bottles that I pulled out of the linen closet in my bathroom. “Dad, I got another call. I’ll let you know when I’m back in town.”

“Alright, son. You take care.”

I pressed the button on my headset, the call with my father dropping, another coming through. “I don’t want to talk about it right now,” I spit out, throwing the last few items in my bag and sliding the zipper shut.

“Vinny.” Thatcher’s voice, though similar to my father, lacked the slight Italian accent. I didn’t bristle this time. Thatcher knew me better than my father. The lies that I slung so easily to my own family didn’t fly as far with him. “Tell me about today. What happened?”

“I’ll tell you later.”

“When?” he asked, impatience in his tone.

“I’m coming over,” I told him as I glanced at the time on my phone. I slung my bag over my shoulder and started for the front door. “I’ll be there in a bit.”

* * *

The story I told of how Thatcher and I met was a lie. The story was that Thatcher stumbled upon a security breach in one of Dad’s companies’ servers, that his dumb luck allowed the breach to be shut down before anything serious was lost. It was a weaving together of the truth, which was much more complicated than that.

The truth went back to when I was fifteen years old. Years before that, I’d been hacking into my father’s companies’ servers myself. I’d beefed up security, as well as any thirteen-year-old, self-taught computer genius could. I’d added trip wires for fun, never expecting anything to come of it. But that night, as I was engrossed in a rereading of The Silmarillion, an alert flashed across my computer screen. Tossed aside were the lives of the High-Elves of Aman, in favor of a game that would change my life forever.

Thatcher was good, but I was better. While he hacked his way through files containing data I had created on a whim, I was tracing his signature across the internet. I bypassed his own well-laid tripwires as I dug into his life. Bank accounts, credit cards, property records. It was all laid bare before me, downloaded to an offsite server for me to peruse at my leisure. By the time he got to the good stuff, I knew the date of his next proctologist appointment, the way he preferred his coffee, and the name of the man who warmed his bed.

But in the world of hacking, it’s tit for tat. And one tiny misstep on my part alerted Thatcher to my presence. He withdrew quickly, slamming up walls between us, kicking me out of his life faster than I had broken in.

Over the next couple weeks, I found traces of him searching out my identity. Unfortunately for him, that identity was fake. He came to believe I was Arthur Malory, a thirty-five-year-old unwed computer science teacher from Libby, Montana, who enjoyed horseback riding and cross-country skiing in his spare time. Thatcher grew tired of digging and withdrew.

And then I attacked. For every hack he made, I was there behind him, hacking him. I foiled his plans for the sheer fun of it. He fought back, trying to break into the bank accounts I’d opened in the Libby Credit Union, collecting the measly two thousand dollars I had deposited there. I shut off his internet. He shut off mine—which actually ended up being the internet service to the Libby Public Library.

I’d never had so much fun in my life.