The Pepper in the Gumbo (Men of Cane River #1)(64)

“I am.” He sighed. “It’s just… complicated. I guess I want to say I agree more with Alice than you might think I do. She understands that real life is more important than any game. People can take it all too seriously. I’ve heard about players dying because they won’t stop the game to get a drink of water or sleep. I hear about parents abusing their kids because they want more uninterrupted game time…. I get desperate tweets from people offering me all sorts of things they shouldn’t, just to get what their character needs.” He held up a hand. “Wait a minute.”

Charlie looked around at the busy boardwalk. “What?”

“Even if the building doesn’t open on time, we can still have the release day party for the new game in two weeks.”

“Okay,” she obviously didn’t know how it was all connected. “You don’t think Alice can really stop the store from opening, do you?”

“No, not really.” He shook his head. “But I was thinking. What if we make a scavenger hunt? There would be only one item, Alice’s rings. And the prize would be some sort of advanced pass for the new game.”

“Like the passport? I bought that last time.”

“No, like the rare-spawn that show up only every hundred times through the area. I’ve seen guys go through the same sequence a thousand times to see if they can catch the gear he wanted, but it never showed up.” Paul knew why. He designed the thing.

Charlie gaped at him, eyes wide. “Wait! Back this train up and pick up some passengers you left behind, like Mr. What the Heck and Mrs. Why?” She leaned forward. “Not that I’m trying to talk you out of it.”

He knew how much time and effort went into catching those one in a hundred bonus gifts. The person who knew all had them all was treated like the president in the groups. Everyone wanted to friend them and go on raids together. They became as famous as any actor on TV, or more in the gaming world. “I’m sure we could create it so this person would catch them every time, no repeating the raids just to get what they wanted, hoping it would show up right when they passed by.”

Charlie grabbed his arm. “Does that apply right now? I mean, if I find the rings right now would I get that?”

For a moment, he wanted to remind Charlie that Alice was her friend and employer and that she should want to find the rings just to make her happy. But he also realized in that moment why his idea was a good one. There were thousands of people just like Charlie, who would be motivated by that prize. “Yeah, it sure does.”

He looked at his watch. “We only have about an hour. Keep looking.”

Charlie stopped talking and tied her hair back. She hunkered down and started walking slowly forward, her expression one of complete focus.

Moving to the other side of the sidewalk, Paul searched for the tiniest glint of gold. He didn’t want to think of Alice watching him sleep, or the way his heart stopped when she laughed. When she’d realized her rings were missing, he had never seen anyone so devastated. And when she told him why she’d been at city hall, her expression was filled with sadness, fear, and regret. He was starting to understand why people wrote complicated poetry about love. He was so frustrated and angry, but at the same time he wanted to gather her close and tell her it was all going to be okay.

He couldn’t be a business man right now, or BWK, or a game designer. He shut it all out and focused, praying for St. Anthony’s intercession as the patron saint of lost items. “And for us, too. Me and Alice,” he whispered. Whatever they had, it was surely lost now. You can’t ask out the girl who is suing you. No matter how much chemistry they had, or how they connected over email, it would never work. It would take a miracle to bring them together.

***

Alice stood at the bathroom mirror, motionless. Outwardly, she looked just the same. Dark eyes, curly hair, maybe a little paler than usual, but nothing out of the ordinary. Only she knew that part of her was missing, lost somewhere on her mission to stop Paul Olivier and his company.

She bent her head and willed herself not to cry. There were people who didn’t have food or shelter. She didn’t need to weep over a pair of rings. But they were all she had, even though she knew that they were just gold, just a shiny metal. That cold metal was once worn with love, warmed by her living parents, back in a time when they were happy and all together. The rings were more than sentimental, they were symbolic. Standing for everything she once had, and now everything she’d lost, the loss of those two rings had gutted her in a way that the lawsuit couldn’t.

She looked up, into her own eyes. Today, she was going to be fire, like BWK had said. But it wasn’t to wage a campaign against Paul’s store. It was to simply get through the day.

***

“Hey, what’s up with you?” Andy dropped into the overstuffed chair across from Paul. The living room was bright with late summer sunshine and the windows were open to the river breeze.

“Nothing.” Paul straightened up. He’d been hunched over, staring at his shoes. Caught in mope mode.

“Listen, Alice isn’t going to win. That injunction is plain stupid. The building is nearly finished. Just the minor cosmetics and it will be ready for opening day.”

“I know.” Paul hadn’t talked to her since yesterday, when he swung back by the store to tell her that he and Charlie hadn’t been able to find her necklace. The look on her face haunted him.