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I unmuted the phone, and talked over Tyler, giving him a list of things to check. “Got it?”
“Yes.”
“Good. We’re about ten minutes out. Catch me up on everything else when I get there.” I disconnected. “Game is completely offline until we get this fixed. On its first Saturday live, during RinCon.”
Link nodded grimly. What else was he supposed to say exceptobvious news is obvious?
“If you need my notes, I have them,” Fallyn offered.
“Thanks. I’ll let you know.”
We dropped her off at the convention center, and were at the office just a few minutes later. Inside, no one else had arrived yet, so it was only Link, me, and the two on-call guys.
I pointed at Jesse. “Email to everyone on the team. Copy Dustin so he knows I’m stealing his con security. Every developer needs to be in the office.”
As he turned to his computer, I grabbed a marker from the white board tray and began to write. In just a few minutes, I had a list of to-dos, assignments, and additional next steps. I brought King into my office, set him up in a corner, and waited for everyone else to arrive.
When most of the group was at their desks, I moved to the middle of the room. “You know how this works. Tasks are on the board. When you finish something, cross it off, and move on to the next thing. If you need help, I’m here. Ask me. Ask someone. We’re working as a team on this.”
“Have we checked for database corruption?” Chris’s question caught me off-guard. So had the fact that he was one of the first developers to show up after we put out the call.
I stared at him. Why did this feel off? “No. Get on that.”
“Sure. Can’t believe you didn’t think of it though,” he muttered.
“Save the asshole arrogance for when we’re not in a crunch.” I was torn between picking that fight and getting the work done. Fortunately for Chris, my level ofI don’t give a fuckabout his personal opinions was as intense as my desire to get the game back online.
I took King out, introduced him to the team—which seemed great for morale considering I’d dragged them into the office ona Saturday morning—then I put him in a makeshift pen and got back to work like everyone else.
As I pored through the code, it was easy to spot some of the issues, because they were things we’d already fixed. Did we really miss this much? That wasn’t right. My team had years of experience. Landon was the newest, skill-wise, but he’d already proven himself to be as good as anyone else here.
So what was going on?
I kept my head down and my fingers flying over the keys, tweaking and testing and tweaking some more. I didn’t realize how much time had passed until King’s whining, accompanied by a horrible smell, caught my attention. Shit, it had been almost four hours.
Shit was right—in his pen. That explained the smell. At least I’d laid down pads. I couldn’t give him the attention he needed right now. Even the few minutes I took to clean up the mess, lay down new pads, and take him outside, felt like an eternity while the rest of my crew was working so hard.
He needed to go home, but I didn’t want him there alone. I couldn’t call Ria because she was spending the day at a church holiday function. My friends were working.
I hated to do it, because she had plans too, but Fallyn was the only person I could think of. Though, oddly enough I did trust her with the request, and I wasn’t willing to think about the implications of that.
While King was sniffing trees in front of the office and generally freaking out, in a good way, about being someplace new, I called Fallyn.
She answered on the fifth ring, and the background noise almost drowned out herhello. “Hang on,” she shouted. “Moving to someplace quiet.” The several-decibel chatter continued, then faded. “Sorry about that. Hi.” Her voice was bright, and tugged at my cock like an invisible hand.
“Hey. I need to ask a favor.”
“What’s up? You’re not going to ask for a blow job in the broom closet are you? Because I’m not up for that. I mean, I might be, but I’m not.”
I let out a short laugh. “What? No.” Maybe. But no. Was I really…? With Fallyn? I understood why Link was confused earlier. “I hate to ask this, but…”Sigh. “I don’t know how long I’m going to be here, and I need someone to take King home who can either stay with him, or check on him and take him out of his crate every few hours. You can use my car. I’ll pay for parking.”
“Are you sure you trust me with your baby?”
Was this about the conversation last night? “The dog or the car?”
“Both.”
I was sure. “Believe it or not, yes. It doesn’t need to be now. He just went out, so next hour or so?”
