AllFreeNovel
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It’s Sunday now, a day before we’re meant to start working on the tech, bringing designs to life. All of my ideas are clearly outlined in a folder on my computer, with very extensive explanations and instructions for each. All we need is the last piece of the puzzle, the leader of the coding and design team. There’s a lot of technical work, and it requires someone who knows just as much as I do to make it work. If we don’t find this person, the entire operation will go far too slowly.
After dinner, I lay in bed, defeated by the challenge as I search through the same website of potentials. My eyes burn, my head hurts, and I have a knot in my throat from the anxiety creeping in. In roughly ten hours, we’ll have a team with one missing link. Just as I’m about to give up, and just accept the fact that I’ll have an incomplete team, I get a text from one of our guys. It’s a link to a secured document run through a friend we have in the government.
The picture of the woman is so startling that it distracts me from anything else for a moment.Scout Summers. She’s stunning, with huge doe eyes, thick chocolate curls and soft umber skin, full lips turned up in a smile for the photo, though it doesn’t quite reach her eyes. She’s flawless, the most beautiful woman I can remember seeing, and as I tear my eyes away from her photo and keep reading, I realize it’s not just her mind that’s stunning.
Intellectually, this woman is a genius. She graduated early from undergrad and her master’s program, and from her credentials, it looks like she’s everything we could want and more. She could hack anything with this type of education, build a device from the ground up without needing to check the guides, and take charge of the way it’s done as well as I can. She would be the perfect extension of me, able to help the team and pull more than her own weight.
I’m out of bed in a second, flying down the hall to the wing of the house where Vince and his family are staying while their home is being renovated. The door is cracked open, so I burst inside, just in time to see Nari, my niece, pop out from behind a couch in her pink pajama-dress. I leap back because she frightened me, but she doesn’t seem to realize it.
“What are you doing?” Her small voice asks, big brown eyes blinking up at me.
“What areyoudoing?”
“Looking.” She says with a little shrug like it’s the best comeback she has. I purse my lips and look around at the empty sitting area.
“Where’s your daddy?”
“He’s with mommy.”
“Where’s your mommy?”
“Sleeping.”
I slowly blink at her, glance at the open door to her room, where a projection of flowers is flowing down the walls.
“Shouldn’t you be sleeping?”
She thinks for a minute, then looks back at me. “No.” She grins defiantly, clutching a stuffed animal.
“Hm. I think mommy and daddy would think differently.”
“No.” She grins and I shake my head.
“Come on, Nari.” I hold out my hand, and she takes it after a moment’s reluctance, as if she knows I’m right. Together, we walk back to her room and I lift her into her bed, tucking her in under her flower-covered duvet.
“You’re going to sleep now, right?” I ask as she smiles at me like I’m her favorite relative. I know I’m not. If there was a sibling she’d choose to spend every day with, it would probably be Espie. They’re pretty inseparable these days.
“Maybe.” She sing-songs.
“No, Nari. The correct answer is,Yes Uncle Tito, I will go to sleep and dream about—”
“Well, look who’s up again.” Vince’s voice comes from the doorway. “What did mama and I tell you about bedtime, Nari?”
She rolls over, faking sleep, and Vince lets out a sigh, crossing the room and crouching down next to me beside the bed.
“Goodnight, Nari. Let’s please stay in bed tonight.” He raises his brows implicitly, and she nods gently as he raises to kiss her on the forehead. She wraps her little arms around his neck, and he whispers something in her ear, making her giggle. I can’t help but smile. It must be nice what he has. But I’m okay not having it. I’m not missing out on much if my siblings keep having kids. Anyway, being a cool uncle is much easier than being a parent anyhow.
Being a parent would require finding a partner–at least for what I’d want out of life–and that means dating. Which I’m fairly shit at. Not that I don’t know how to talk to women, or haven’t had a handful of pleasurable encounters with them–but there just always seems to be something else I could be doing with my time. I keep hoping the perfect girl might just fall into my lap, like what happened for Vince, but that seems to not be my luck so far.
Vince pats my shoulder as he stands, and I follow him out the door. We walk to the sitting area and he lights a fire, warming the slightly chilly room. I sit down, and he joins me as the flames crawl up and around the pile of wood in the stony fireplace.
“What’s up?” He asks casually.
“I found her.”
“Her?”
“The person we’re looking for.” I pull out my phone and show him the screen. He squints at it for a moment before taking it from my hands and scrolling through the identification document.
