“It’s about three hundred and fifty miles away. Two hours, roughly.”
Peyton looked down at Hannah. She didn’t know if the young woman had two hours, but she felt like her plan was their only hope.
Chapter 65
Desmond sat against the back wall of the helicopter, side by side with Peyton. They glanced at each other for a moment, then stared forward, riding in silence. Out the window, the last rays of sunlight were receding behind the mountains in the distance.
The helicopter rotor’s rhythmic drone was almost hypnotic, and before long, Desmond felt Peyton’s head fall on his shoulder. The woman was worn out. He tried not to move; he wanted her to get some rest.
For him, sleep was elusive. Questions ran through his mind. What he had learned on the Kentaro Maru had shocked him. If what Conner had said was true, he was partially responsible for starting the outbreak. He wondered if somewhere buried in his memories was the key to stopping it. Or if it was buried in the Labyrinth Reality app he had found in Berlin. Or both. He closed his eyes and concentrated, trying to remember his past.
The morning after the Halloween party, Desmond stopped by xTV’s accounting department. His investigative work had revealed that Peyton was a sophomore at Stanford, and that Andrea, an xTV intern who had graduated from Stanford in June, was a friend of hers.
Desmond found Andrea in her cubicle, staring at her computer screen, twirling a strand of sandy brown hair around her index finger.
“Hey, you know Peyton Shaw, right?”
“Uh-huh.” She seemed to be tabulating figures on the screen. Finally, she turned. “What’s up?”
He shrugged, trying to seem nonchalant. “Nothing. Just thinking it would be cool if you invited her to the company party on Thursday.”
Andrea smiled. “Really? You do? You think it would be ‘cool’?”
Desmond sighed. “Andie—”
Her tone was taunting now. “Somebody’s got a crush.”
“Oh, please. What grade are you in?”
“I could ask you the same thing, lover boy.”
“Will you do it?”
“For a price.”
Desmond stood there, dreading her next words.
She handed him some papers. “These are the time sheets for hourly employees and contractors. I have to type these in every week and verify them. I want a web form where they enter their hours and it automatically downloads to our payroll system.”
Desmond opened his mouth to respond, but Andrea had more.
“And, I want error checking and validation. No non-numeric characters, verification on values outside expected ranges, the whole nine. And it better work in Netscape and IE.”
“Is that all? Automate your entire internship?”
“It’s a wicked world, Des. Even love has a price.” She eyed him dramatically. “And it don’t come cheap.”
“You’re a lunatic.”
“Email me the link for testing.”
He finished the web form before lunch.
The xTV party was a celebration of a new round of funding, a new release of their software, and half a dozen milestones they had hit. They were barreling closer to their vision of taking over television forever.
Desmond found Peyton at a round table with Andrea. Two half-empty champagne glasses sat before them.
“Ladies,” he said as he reached them. “Can I get you a refill?”
Andrea looked at him with a sadistic smile only a torturer would wear. “You waiting tables now, Desmond?”
“What can I say? Stock options don’t buy groceries.”
Peyton laughed.
Andrea rolled her eyes and grabbed her champagne glass. “I’m just gonna go smash this champagne glass and eat the sharpest pieces. You kids try not to kill anyone with those puppy love eyes.”
Desmond sat down as she stalked off to the bar.
“She’s very subtle,” he said.
“Very.”
“I think she may have a lot of pent-up aggression.”
“Bad breakup last semester. And she sort of hates her internship.” Peyton smiled. “Heard you helped her with that.”
“Ah, well, all in the line of duty.”
“Part of your case?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Any new leads?”
“Working on something now.”
“Promising?”
He studied her. “Too early to tell.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
She took another sip of the champagne.
“You like working at xTV?” she said.
“Yeah. I do.”
“Why?”
“I like solving problems. Going home every day knowing I made some progress on something. Waking up every morning with a new set of problems to solve.”
“What’d you do before?”
“Worked on an oil rig.”
She smiled, about to laugh, then squinted at him. “You’re serious, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“Interesting.”
He figured he might as well be up-front with her; no sense going down this road if it was a dead end. Better to get the deal-breakers out on the table.
“I didn’t go to college. Just moved out here from Oklahoma.”
He knew she was a biology major and wanted to become a doctor. Her pedigree was a little more sophisticated than an orphaned oil well driller who had recently killed a man.
“Why?”
The question caught him by surprise. “Why what?”
“What brought you out here?”
Since he’d been in the Valley, no one had actually asked him that. “The work.” He thought a moment. “The people. I wanted to meet people like me.”
“You want to meet some more of them?”
“Yeah. I do.”
The coy smile returned to her lips. “Hold out your hand.”
He extended his hand. She opened her handbag and drew out a pen, then scribbled an address on his palm.
“What’s this?”
“Another clue for your case. There’s a house party in Menlo Park Saturday night. With lots of people like you. I think you’d like it.”
“Will you be there?”
“Yeah.”
“Then so will I.”