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He raked his fingers through his hair.“Years of pent-up frustration.”
“You all but said you sold your soul for your job.You implied it’s draining the life out of you.Are you that miserable at work?”
“I’m a little stressed, but I’m dealing.”
I clenched my jaw.“Don’t bullshit me.Out of all of the people in the world I need honesty from…”
Brandon’s sigh filtered through his fingers, and when he pulled his hand from his face, his exhaustion was stark.“I’m not bullshitting you.”The fight had vanished from his voice.
“But the late nights.The strung-out days.Talk to me.What’s going on?”If we were going to talk this through now, we were going to do it right.I’d call work if I had to.His and mine.“Do you need the day off?What?”
“A day off isn’t going to make a difference.But I do want to talk,” Brandon said.“Tonight?”
“Swear to me we’ll have an actual conversation, and sort this out.”
Brandon kissed me.“Cross my heart.Just you and me tonight, dinner, conversation, and a little bit of soul exposing.What little I have left.”His smile was tight.
I didn’t like his phrasing, but I’d take the rest.“Okay.It’s a date.”
I gotto the office after lunch, and Brandon was in meetings so I didn’t get to sayhello, but his night was mine so that was okay.
Instead, I joined Luna in her office.We were done updating employee machines and Cole had gone back to his work, but she and I were still figuring out who tried to steal our assets, and making plans about how to keep it from happening again.
We’d stripped everything we could from the files that had been posted online, and were no closer to finding new information than a week ago.
Today I was going through any information we could find about the company who had posted the campaign.The site that had the data refused to share it with us without a court order, which I appreciated but was also frustrated by since it was AcesPlayed stolen property.
I scrolled through pages of search results that pointed to other businesses with similar names, social media pages that had nothing to do with this, and screen caps from the campaign itself.Words went into my brain but didn’t stick, and I moved on.
Something clicked in my mind as I paged away from a site.What was that?
I backtracked to the page, and scanned it again.Nothing stood out, but I’d seensomething.
There it was—a familiar company name, but why?“You ever hear of Vopax?”
Luna shook her head.“It’s kind of a dumb name, though.It sounds like someone pulled it from a keyword generator.”
That was true of a lot of businesses.I wouldn’t dare say it aloud to anyone here, but AcesPlayed wasn’t the most brilliant name either.Though, at least it made me think of games.Not naked MMOs, but games.
I tracked back through anything I’d done in the last few days that might be connected to this.Fucked a bit.Gamed a bit.There was this morning’s argument with Brandon and Adam.
I frowned, and pulled up the article Adam showed us this morning.There it was, buried in the list of things Richard Hedd was associated with.This was one of half a dozen companies that he was suspected of having ties to and using to defraud people.
Now I had a pretty good idea how our game assets got online.If Adam was on our network and loaned a device or password to Richard at any time…
“So, I know how the leak happened.”Telling Luna would be easy.
Breaking the news to Brandon, after the fight this morning with Adam… I wasn’t looking forward to the fallout from that.
Nineteen
Reese
When Danny called,I couldn’t help my smile.It hadn’t taken any time at all for me to fall back intowe’re together again.
“Miss me already?”I answered with a teasing tone.It had only been a few hours since I left their place.
“Always when you’re not here.”Danny’s voice was warm.
