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Until I remembered—that was the whole god damn point.
It was brilliant, really. This whole time I wanted to use her as a screen to distract the world from the ugly rumors that were circulating, about my relationship with Giana, and my alleged affair with Lady Fluke, and yet I’d been holding back from making it public. I think a part of me was afraid it would put too much pressure on whatever we had growing between us, and might cause it to crack, and break, like a brittle vase.
In one move, she established the story I was too afraid to seed myself while finding out exactly what our next move needed to be. When she said that name Kirk, I knew where I could find Desmond, or at least someone that would know.
“Where are we going, anyway?” she asked, looking at me, chewing on her lip nervously.
I smiled at her. That was my little punishment: I refused to say where we were flying to. “We’re going to meet with Kirk,” I said. “That’s all you need to know, honey.”
She rolled her eyes. “Come on. You haven’t even told me who Kirk is. You showed up in the office, sent me home to pack, then picked me up an hour later. Does Jack know about this trip?”
“Jack knows everything,” I said, somewhat proud of myself for hustling her out so fast and knocking her off balance. “Kirk’s not important, not really.”
“Well that’s straight up not true,” she said, leaning toward me. “Come on. No more games. You annoyed me, I annoyed you. We’re even.”
I touched my chin thoughtfully. “Alright, I’ll accept your apology.” She gave me a look, but I kept going. “Kirk is an old friend of Desmond’s. He was around back when me and Desmond first started together. They knew each other from home, I guess they grew up together. Kirk was a sort of handyman, not really good with computers, but when something physical broke, or we needed some quick fix, he did what he could to help out. When Des left the computer, Kirk left with him, and I haven’t seen the guy in a long time.”
I remembered late nights in my garage, writing the code that would eventually become the heart of my computer with Desmond’s constant input while Kirk put together the physical mainframes. Back then, building computers was a little more complicated than it is now. We had a lot of issues with getting enough power and managing all that heat in those days, but Kirk was clever and industrious. He was a lanky guy, wore his dirty-blond hair long, and thought Rage Against the Machine was the best band ever.
“Are you on speaking terms with him?” she asked
“I don’t know,” I admitted. “I don’t think we left things on bad terms, not between us anyway. I always treated him with respect and paid him better than anywhere else, so I assume he only walked out of loyalty. I doubt that worked out well for him though.”
“Here’s what I don’t get,” she said, looking up at the ceiling of the plane. “If Desmond’s rich and stuff now, and this all happened a long time ago, what does he even care? And why would he bother bringing Kirk into the mix? He admitted everything in a damn letter. Why would he do that?”
I shook my head and didn’t answer. I didn’t know what Desmond’s game was or why he was playig it. I thought he wanted to destroy my SPAC—but the letter threw me. It made no sense to say he wanted to wreck me and put it in writing. I could use it to prove that he was behind all my negative press, even if some of it wasn’t from him at all.
There had to be a reason, and I kept coming back to the same one: Desmond was an egomaniac, and he couldn’t help himself. The man couldn’t do something against me and not take credit. That went against everything he stood for.
“We’ll find out when we get to San Francisco,” I said, and stretched my legs out, smiling to myself. I could practically feel her staring at me, but I shut my eyes and tried to get some rest before we landed. It was a long flight, and I had a feeling it would be an even longer day out west.
* * *
The car dropped us off on the corner of a relatively quiet street at the top of a long hill. The roads in San Francisco were broken up by trolley tracks, and everyone seemed to know how to navigate them except our driver. A biker struggled up the hill nearby, sweating into his dark helmet. The sun was sinking low, glinting off cars parked along the curbs, and sparkling along the brightly colored houses, teetering down the slope.
