Page 52 of The Mood Board

Chapter 19

Liam

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“MR. BRADFORD.”

I opened my eyes to the concrete ceiling. I hadn’t been sleeping. Instead, I had been thinking.

From the time I was small, I had never been one to sit back and let things happen—I had always been the one to go after what I wanted, whether it was a lemonade stand so I could earn money to buy the video game I wanted at nine or creating the algorithm my mother had needed for an early diagnosis that hadn’t existed yet.

It was a fundamental part of who I was—I didn’t sit around and wait for things to happen. I made things happen, sought them out or created them myself. I’d always had a tremendous amount of energy and a mind that was always curious and never stopped running or asking questions. My overactive mind had forced my parents to find an ever-expansive array of activities for me to do as a kid to keep me occupied. Otherwise, they would find me taking apart the stereo system to see how it worked or trying to figure out how to create a toy rocket that would make it out of the atmosphere.

Sitting in prison unable to do anything had left me feeling almost as terrible as the situation that had put me here. I couldn’t do anything, make anything happen, fix anything. The only thing I could do was stare at the walls and the ceiling or read the one book they allowed me to have. I had started to go stir-crazy almost immediately.

But after Bailey had left, after the dark hole forming under me had threatened to swallow me whole, I had fallen to the only thing I could do, the only thing they couldn’t take away from me: my ability to think and analyze. If nothing else, I had that.

Nothing from the moment Bailey received that letter made any sense. Pulling myself out of the pit of despair last night had cleared some of the fog from my mind, and no matter what order I put the events in, none of it came together.

I knew absolutely that I had done nothing wrong. The state’s attorney couldn’t have much on me because I hadn’t done anything illegal. Even if I had accepted the funding without knowing, if someone had used my first funding round to do something unlawful, I hadn’t known about it. The state would have to do one hell of a job to prove knowledge and intent.

And whatever they had was forged or circumstantial, which meant it could be proven false. And because of the industry in which I moved, I knew some of the best analysts, tech guys, and even hackers. There was, in fact, a world in which Tom wasn’t my CTO. He was some dark hacker wreaking havoc on world governments, living out his teenage sci-fi fantasies. His parents still joked that he owed me because without my positive influence and the business I had invited him to join, the government probably would have locked him up in some federal prison for hacking the Pentagon for fun.

There was a way to prove the charges against me were false—I knew it. I just had to find it or talk to someone who could while I was stuck here. I highly doubted they would give me a computer to work with. I hadn’t ever let despair drag me down before, and I wasn’t about to start now. I’d had my moment of weakness, and now I would do something about it.

It was the only way I had to do something, to do anything. More importantly, it was the only way I knew I could get Bailey back. The sooner I could get out of here, the sooner I could find and talk with her because I wouldn’t let her go without a fight. She meant too much to me to simply roll over and let her walk out of my life.

“Mr. Bradford.” The guard’s voice sounded again, and I sat up, looking at him.

“Let’s go.” He jerked his chin in the general direction of the exit as he unlocked the cell door.

“What is this about?” I asked, crossing the cell and holding out my wrists so he could cuff me and take me out.

“Not my job to know” was the gruff reply.

Of course, it wasn’t.

I had expected him to lead me to the interview rooms or toward the visitor’s room, although it was early for visiting hours. The sun was just creeping through the opaque windows behind the bars. But he took me in a different direction this time, to an outer room, where he uncuffed me. Another guard, who had been in the room waiting for us, handed me the T-shirt, joggers, and shoes the police had arrested me in.

I stood there dumbly, staring at the clothes in my hand, the jingle of the cuffs being reattached to the guard’s utility belt ringing in my ears.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“You’re being released” came the reply from the second guard, a gruff-faced woman.

“I’m what?”

“Get dressed, Mr. Bradford,” she said as the other guard left without a word.

I did as the remaining guard ordered, pulling the clothes on stiffly, my mind whirling and unable to comprehend what was going on for the millionth time over this week from hell.

When I had dressed, reeling from the feeling of my own clothes against my skin, ones that still smelled faintly of home and Bailey, the guard led me to a window where a third guard passed me a tray on which sat my watch, the only thing that had been with me when I had been arrested.

Standing beside the window was my lawyer, dressed in his expensive suit, with an odd expression as he reached out a hand for me to shake. The gesture seemed automatic and robotic, but mine was the same.

“Liam,” he said.

“What the hell is going on?” I asked as I strapped my watch back on.