Page 35 of Escape Girl

Bella shook her head. “Nothing!” She glanced at me, eyes wide. “I promise, Emily, I didn’t confront him! I didn’t call him. I didn’t email him.” She narrowed her eyes at Tess. “I did nothing.”

Another smirk. “Just because you didn’t do anything confrontational doesn’t mean you did nothing.” Tess pulled out her phone and jabbed at it. She showed the screen to the rest of us at the table, but the website displayed meant nothing to me.

Bella, however, blanched. “Oh. I didn’t post anything though!” She locked eyes with me again. “It’s a commonly used site for coders where you can post questions and get help from others. Lots of developers reach out to this community when they need help with a problem.” She shook her head. “I didn’t post anything about Taggert though. I wanted to, but I was afraid if I did, it would somehow violate the cease and desist.”

“Oh, I know you didn’t post anything,” Tess said gleefully. “But you did search the site quite thoroughly, right? Entered in Taggert’s name, along with other key words liketheft,steal,unethical,liar…that kind of thing?”

Pinkening, Bella nodded slowly. “Well. Yeah. I wanted to see if anyone else had ever posted about Taggert being shady. I was desperate.” Her shoulders slumped. “I didn’t find anyone though.”

Tess’s bright golden eyes flashed. “But someone found you.”

The bartender deposited four tumblers on the table. “The September bourbon special. It’s a little citrusy and a little bitter. Enjoy!”

“Cheers!” Tess insisted, and the four of us automatically clinked our glasses together, although I didn’t have a clue what we were toasting. I raised the glass to my lips and swallowed. Oh man. I revised my earlier annoyance with Tess. She could order for me anytime. Oh wow, that was delicious. Bourbon, lemon, Campari, and other miscellaneous delights. I don’t know what my face did in response, but Tess winked at me. “I know, right?”

Bella didn’t even taste hers. “What did you mean, someone found me?”

Tess sideswiped her question. “Your hunch was that Taggert had stolen before, right? That if he’d taken your code so brazenly, he might have done something similarly shitty in the past?”

A thrum of excitement pulsed at the base of my spine. Sometimes you just know that whatever you’re going to hear next is going to change the case in front of you.

Bella straightened. “Yes,” she whispered.

“You were right,” Tess said breezily. “Taggert is an asshole, a life-ruining thief.”

I cleared my throat, pen poised. “Did he steal something from you?”

Tess’s golden eyes cut across the table to me like a sunshiny laser. “No, not me.”

I stifled my frustration. “Then from who? What was stolen?”

Tess and Jo exchanged glances. Then Tess bounced right out of the booth, marched across the bar, and tapped the shoulder of a guy working on a laptop at a highboy near the pool table. She gave him a nod, and he stood, grabbing a basket of food off the table. Halfway back to our table, they bumped shoulders and grinned at one another. My heart gave a little clang. I loved those kinds of touches. Those simple, tiny gestures that said, “I’m here. I’m yours.” Bobby used to gently stroke my right shoulder blade whenever we stood in a line.

“This is Max,” Tess announced as they approached our table.

“Hey, guys,” he said easily, pushing his black-framed glasses up his nose. He threw a basket of French fries on the table, grabbed a nearby stool, and perched at the edge of our booth. “Emily, Bella. Great to meet you.”

Tess grabbed a fry and used it to point at Bella. “Max is the one who found you from your Taggert searches.”

He nodded. “I’ve written a program that I run against several developer sites looking for Taggert’s name with a combination of other key words. It checks for postings—and for search history. Since you have to log on to use the site, I was able to find your user account and then you that way too.” He wrinkled his nose, a little shamefaced. “Sorry to internet stalk you,” he said to Bella.

I looked up from my notes. “That’s a lot of trouble to go to,” I said slowly. “What did Taggert steal from you?”

Max’s lips thinned, but he didn’t look angry, exactly. Tess, on the other hand, practically had sparks coming out of her eyes. “Oh sorry,” she bit out. “I didn’t introduce him properly.” She waved at Max with both hands in a wild flourish. “Emily, Bella, please meet Max Hampshire—theactualcreator of GuardTower.”

I maintained my lawyer-trained non-expression, but Bella’s mouth dropped open so far she looked like a cartoon. “Are youserious?” Her big blue eyes searched Max’s face. “Taggert stole GuardTower from you? You actually wrote it?”

Max flushed. “Yeah. About three years ago. I worked for SideDoor for a long time, had an up-and-down relationship with Taggert. I created GuardTower completely on my own time and equipment. But I blabbed about my new baby in front of the wrong folks, and then one night Taggert showed up at my place with a pizza and beer. We were still colleagues, still friendly—I thought. But while I was out of the room at some point, he moved the code to SideDoor’s servers. By the time I realized what had been done, I couldn’t prove it had been mine in the first place. They’d whitewashed the code. If I’d done anything with it, they would have said I stole it. He had all the power; no one would have believed me.”

Bella stared at Max in awe, blinking slowly, her lips slightly parted. When Tess raised an eyebrow at her, she shook herself a little. But she couldn’t keep from babbling either. “Um, wow. GuardTower is the most incredible product. The thing I wrote is an add-on to it. I loved working on it so much.” She stopped herself. “But wait. Wait. Why would Taggert steal it? He didn’t make money from it.”

I cleared my throat. “I bet he intended to. But thenMaxreleased it as open source.” After hearing Bella’s tale of Taggert’s behavior, it had never squared for me that such a jerk would willingly give away such a huge a money-making opportunity.

Jo, Tess, and Max all looked at me. “Impressive,” Tess drawled.

Max nodded. “Yeah. I was pissed. So I wrote a press release pretending to be Taggert, and I released the code into the world free before Taggert could make a dime.”

“Wow,” Bella echoed dreamily, stars practically appearing in her eyes as she stared at Max. Tess placed her hands on her hips but seemed more amused than annoyed.

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