Hardwired (The Hardwired Series 1)(8)

This morning his eyes were bloodshot and tired, and I silently wondered if a new video game had come out. That usually had an effect on his already erratic sleep schedule.

“Here, I brought breakfast.” I tossed him an energy drink, and he grumbled a response before heading back into the cave—a messy suite he shared with a handful of other hermits. I followed him in and sat down on the couch.

“What’s up?” He cracked open the can and settled in at his desk covered in empty cans and pop tart wrappers. I resisted the urge to start cleaning.

“I’m going to Vegas to speak at the TechLabs conference, so I wanted to touch base with you before I left tonight. We might get a spike in traffic from the exposure. I just want to make sure we’re prepared for that.”

“How big of a spike?”

“I have no idea, but there are forty-five thousand people attending the conference. Alli is coming, so she’ll be doing PR too.”

“Okay, I’ll monitor the stats and have some load bearing servers set up for overflow.” He scribbled something into his notebook and booted up his machine.

“Do we have those already, or do we need to buy more?” I asked, hoping that we could avoid downtime with minimal funds.

“We can always use more. Is it in the budget?”

“Uh, not really. This trip is going to be a stretch.”

“How long until this money with Angelcom comes through?”

“If it does at all, I have no idea. I’m hoping to get a better sense of that when I meet with Max in a couple weeks. I think it usually takes a few months, but I have a feeling he might be able to get it pushed through more quickly if he’s really interested.”

“Okay, we’ll figure it out, I guess. I have a few old machines around here I can put together in a pinch. Let’s just hope the college network doesn’t go down.”

“Work your magic.”

I only understood about twenty percent of what Sid actually said, but I had no doubt he was a genius in his own right, so I trusted he would figure it out. He couldn’t wake up before noon, ever, but the man could build a computer out of ram chips and motherboards in a few hours. Plus, Clozpin had become his baby too, and like me, he worked on little else these days. I was thankful for his dedication, even if it meant working around his quirks.

“How’s the job hunt?” I asked, hoping he was as uninspired as I was to enter the real world.

“Uneventful. I haven’t been devoting much time to it.”

Silently relieved, I left it at that and got up to start cleaning.

“Erica, you don’t have to do that. I’ll clean today, I promise.”

“Don’t worry about it. Make sure we don’t go offline in the next forty-eight hours, and we’ll call it even.”

“Deal.”





* * *

As soon as we entered the Wynn, I knew Alli was right. It was barely past ten o’clock on a Friday night, and the casino was crawling with sexy women wearing the tiniest dresses I had ever seen. I looked like a nun by comparison, so Alli dolled me up back at the room before we headed out to explore the hotel. I settled on a tight black panel dress with nude pumps, and I let my hair go a little wild and curly.

“Girls here probably go to church in this dress, Alli.”

“No kidding. Hike it up a bit.” She coaxed some cleavage out of her tiny neon dress.

Mine easily busted out of the scoop neck of my dress. Stress hadn’t made my tits any smaller apparently. “No, thanks. I’d like to leave a few things to the imagination. You should too.”

“Whatever. It’s not like we know anyone here.” She shrugged.

I couldn’t disagree. This might be a chance to let loose a bit, but that could be dangerous too. Thanks to Blake, my skin was already crawling with an almost painful craving to be touched, everywhere. My vibrator wasn’t staving off the need he’d inspired and I was dangerously close to taking home the first Blake look-alike I could get my hands on.

Every time I recalled the pitch meeting, my thoughts drifted to different ways the morning could have played out, all ending with me flat on my back on the conference table screaming his name. Jesus Christ. I forced him from my thoughts. He was on my shit list, not my to-do list.

Alli distracted me, primping and fussing over my accessories. No one loved fashion more than Alli. At first I couldn’t understand how she could spend so much energy on her appearance, but eventually I came to realize that fashion had a lot more to do with feeling good on the inside than impressing anyone else on the outside, though it certainly helped.

It was past midnight when we stepped onto the casino floor as a throughway to our destination, a bar on the other side. The place was mobbed, and Alli grabbed my hand to navigate us through the crowd of loud and boisterous people.

“Erica!”

I slowed, certain I’d heard my name over the noise. I couldn’t be the only Erica here, but when I heard it again, I turned toward the sound and recognized a familiar face. Blake was standing at a nearby roulette table staring directly at me.

“Oh, shit. Let’s get out of here.” I looked away and took the lead with Alli trailing behind me.

“Wait, who is that?” Alli stopped me, causing a small traffic jam behind us.

“That is Blake Landon.”