Which is why I make a habit of sending Safeway discounts through the mail, addressed to Mr. and Mrs. Evan Anderson or Current Resident. They haven’t figured out that the “coupons” are actually pre-paid gift cards. If I play my cards right, they never will.
Speaking of cards… The hand I’ve been dealt makes me certain I’m not marriage material. Kate isn’t either. She’s erratic and headstrong and rude. She threw a glass of champagne in my face in front of a roomful of strangers. She hacks into legitimate businesses without regard for the cost to her victims.
But she took her punishment like a fucking goddess. I’ve never seen a more natural sub, a woman more in tune with what her body craves… And that was when I threw together a scene using random things at hand. If I brought her home to the playroom in my basement… How many times could I make Kate come in one night?
Mr. A looks like he’s waiting for an answer to a question.
“Sorry,” I lie. “I was thinking about work.”
He gives me a sympathetic smile. “Howarethings at Hamilton?”
“I could tell you…” I say, but I don’t bother finishing the old joke:But then I’d have to kill you.
The Andersons think I’m a Grade I Data Analyst at the gigantic defense contractor, Hamilton Corporation. As far as they know, if I keep my head down and my nose clean, I’ll be eligible for a promotion in another year and a half. Grade II will come with a pay raise of five thousand a year—not bad for a guy who was convicted of felony fraud when he was only sixteen years old…
I deflect attention from my non-existent Hamilton job by asking Mr. A, “How’s the Robotics Club doing? Any chance of getting to State?”
And he’s off and running.
Mr. A is the club sponsor for Jefferson Middle School’s Robotics Club, a logical extension from the computer coding classes he teaches. He and Mrs. A met at Jefferson more than three decades ago.
I can’t count the number of hours I spent sitting on a bench across from Mrs. A’s desk, waiting for old Principal Rothstein to punish me. Following Shannon’s lead, I took bets on sack races for Field Day in fifth grade. I ran a numbers game in sixth grade. I launched chain letters—full-blown Ponzi pyramid schemes—in seventh grade.
And in eighth grade, I sold “fitness shots”—Gatorade mixed with Red Bull—out of my gym locker. Stupidly, I refused to do business with Robby Mitchell because he lied about Amanda Johnson giving him a blowjob under the bleachers. Robby turned me in to Rothstein.
By that time, the only penalty left was expulsion. But Mrs. A intervened. She got me enrolled in Mentors International. And she made sure Mr. A was assigned to be my mentor.
It worked—at least for a couple of years.
Mr. A taught me how to code using an ancient machine in his basement. From the first program I wrote—a passwordgenerator—I loved the simplicity of coding. Computers were logical. Orderly. Predictable.
Everything my life with Shannon wasn’t.
I’ll owe the Andersons until the day I die—even though it would break their hearts if they knew how close I skate to the line for some of my Lone Wolf clients… How many times I’ve broken the law since I walked out of juvenile detention… Everything I’ve done to earn my billions…
Mrs. A finally interrupts her husband’s status update on infrared sensors and obstacle avoidance algorithms to pass me the platter of fried chicken. “Have another drumstick, Cole. You look like you’ve lost weight. Are you getting enough sleep?”
“Eight hours a night,” I lie. “Like clockwork.”
“Well, something’s giving you those shadows under your eyes. Does she have a name?”
“Linda!” Mr. A says. “You can’t ask him that!”
“I can ask him anything I want,” Mrs. A says tartly. She seems to realize I haven’t given her an answer. Leaning over her plate, she winks like a co-conspirator. “Is she pretty, Cole?”
“Let it rest, old woman!”
“What color is her hair? Her eyes? Where did the two of you meet?”
“Snickerdoodle, woman!” All these years, and I’ve never heard Mr. A actually swear. “Leave the boy alone.”
Her hair is the color of sunset. Her eyes are the green of sea-glass. We met when I tore apart the online scam she’d been planning for months, and twenty-four hours later I tied her up in a luxury Boston suite and made her come so hard she passed out. Her father wants to force her to marry me, so I’ll set up computer systems for his Irish mob clan.
“There isn’t anyone, Mrs. A,” I say without blinking. “But I promise you’ll be the first to know when there is.”
What’s one more lie, between family?
10
