JUSTIN

I sat there looking at the text message Ben sent, which I had ignored to finish installing the program to bring Julian’s system up. When the program finished, I answered Julian’s tenth call.    

“Who is Daphne Chanders?” Julian asked, angry since I hadn’t answered him for hours.

“I’ve been busy with getting your systems back online. Have one of the others look into her.” I told him.

“I want you to do it. Apparently she’s sending them on a chase after first making it easy for them.” Julian tells me, before cursing up a storm when the system failed again. “Why isn’t this fixed?” He asked.

“Sorry, I just wanted to make sure there weren’t any other problems. Okay, all fixed.” I told him, happy that this program could take it all down anytime I wanted it to.

“Now find out where I can find that woman.” Julian ordered, hanging up.

I put the phones in my desk, only taking the burner phone that I bought, and texted Brian the number before leaving the house. I planned to find out about Daphne, not for Julian, but for myself. The last time Daphne and I talked she kicked me out of her life. She was my first and only friend, not that I made it easy for her. I tried my usual with her and ignored her the first semester of college, but for some reason she kept at me. I didn’t get it, why bother with the recluse when she was overflowing with friends? She seemed to understand that I wasn’t comfortable around too many people and didn’t invite friends when she hung out with me. We seemed to do fine until one night Daphne told me she couldn’t deal with my shit anymore. I didn’t ask her what changed between us, just went back to the life I had before, without anyone close. The last time I saw her she made a point of sitting with the group of students instead of her usual seat next to me. 

I sent Daphne a message through her online name, not the fucking one she goes by in real life. What the hell was she thinking? For a second I thought about having her help me take off until I found out what Ben needed for Julian, but couldn’t do it. Even with never having a real relationship I got it. Leaving Brian even when I thought it was to protect him, would only make him feel like I didn’t trust him to protect me. I waited at the library for Daphne to show up, wondering what to do about my former friend. 

“I’ll give it to your boss, he’s persistent, but lazy.” Daphne says in my ear as she sits down next to me in the library.

“Why did you let them catch you?” I ask, instead of why was she here helping.

“Because you wouldn’t have invited me to help otherwise. They didn’t catch me, I let them.” Daphne blew off.

“He knows your name, why would you do that?” I ask.

“Because I knew you would at least show up to ask me what I was doing. I would have made it harder, but I wanted to see you.” She tells me.

“The last time we saw each other you told me to go to hell.” I tell her.

“I was angry, but in the end it was my fault and not yours. I wanted things you didn’t.” She tells me.

“Like what?” I ask.

“I wanted the guy who I had a crush on to feel the same way. Only you didn’t, so I acted like a spoiled child and wanted you to hurt the way I did.” She tells me.

“It did hurt, so you got what you wanted.” I tell her, ready to leave.

“No, what I got was to see that losing you as my friend was actually worse.” She tells me.

“Yet it’s been years and now you want to what, be friends again?” I ask her, hating that I would forgive her after being left alone again.

“I have always been your friend. Even when I was acting like a complete asshole to you. It was just too hard to be around you knowing I couldn’t have what I wanted. Like I said, I acted like a spoiled child and I shoved you out the door, treating you like everyone else did. Something you didn’t deserve from me. But at the time I only cared about how I felt. When I heard what you were up to, I decided to help. So I made it easy for you to find me and to give you the choice of whether you wanted to bother with me or not.” She tells me.

“I don’t even know what I’m dealing with.” I tell her.

“What do you know?” She asks.

“Julian takes the information I give him and uses it to make people do what he wants them to do. I never bothered to look past my job to see what he was doing to people.” I tell her.

“What made you do it now?” She asks.

“I didn’t like the way Julian reacted to me having my own life. Which feels like a selfish reason. Everything was fine until I started spending time with Brian.” I tell her.

“You mean you didn’t bother with people, and now that you are, that’s a problem for your boss?” She asks me.

“And now my boss is acting like a jealous boyfriend, when before he never showed any interest in me.” I tell her.

“That you know of. You’ve never been good at reading people.” She tells me.

“I do notice when someone is interested.” I tell her.

“So what? You ignored that I was?” She asks.

“I didn’t think you would be, since you knew I was gay.” I point out.

“Good point. But how did we get from you dating a guy to you declaring war on your boss?” She asks.

“The guy my boss hired to pretty much spy on me started hanging out with Brian’s friends, in order to get something Julian could use to get Brian out of my life.” I tell her.

“You know this how?” She asks.

“Ben isn’t really on Julian’s side, he’s trying to put Julian behind bars. But the fact that Julian wanted Ben to find something pissed me off.” I tell her.

“It's not the only reason.” She tells me. Amazing me that she could still tell other things bothered me. 

“I feel guilty as hell about my part in Julian’s game. Everyone tells me the people I caught weren’t innocent. But all this time I didn’t bother to find out what Julian was doing.” I tell her. 

“Why would you? Your job was security, not justice. Look at the bigger picture. The people Julian did anything to had bigger secrets than just hacking Julian.” She tells me. 

“One was a kid who just wanted to meet me. He's only guilty of being born to an asshole. Somehow Julian used that to try and get Brian out of my life.” I tell her. 

“What is attacking Julian’s system about?” She asks. 

“It gave me a way to change the security in Julian’s systems without him questioning what was being done.” I tell her. 

“What did you do?” She asks excitedly. 

“Made it so Julian has as much privacy in his office as he gave me in my private life.” I tell her. 

BRIAN 

It really brought home how little privacy Justin has when he disappeared. Emmett made it easier on me, since he was keeping an eye on Justin, even though I hadn’t told him to. He texted me when he helped Justin take off. Apparently he provided a distraction while Justin went out the back. All Justin would say was he needed to find out what someone was doing. And Emmett, always willing to help anyone, agreed to help him. I planned to go find out what Justin was up to after the meetings at George’s house with Ted. I’d been busy with clients who were willing to walk with me, since they put it in the contracts that they could cancel if I wasn’t in charge of their accounts. It wasn’t all of the ones I brought to Ryder, but enough to make the man sweat buckets. It would also leave Gardner buying a company worth half as much. And for the kid Justin was worried about, I planned to make it worth even less by the time I was done. 

Emmett called Ted and said for all of us to meet him at Woody’s later, but didn’t mention anything about Justin. I called Justin’s phone only to have Ben answer it, wanting to know where Justin was.

“He went to find out something, that’s all Emmett or I know.” I tell him.

“I talked to an old friend who lives here and if he’s right Justin might be meeting a lot of people who would love to get him on their teams. Only Julian said Justin didn’t know what he had. Justin knows people want him to work for them, so I don’t think that’s what Julian’s worried about. And I can tell you, Julian is worried.” Ben tells me.

“Have you told Justin anything?” I ask.

“I haven’t seen him to tell him. I went to my friend to take care of the other thing, like YOU told me to.” He said sarcastically.

“I’ll find him and call you to meet with us.” I tell him, hanging up to call the other number Justin gave me.

“Brian, I thought you were busy.” Justin said, answering as soon as it rang.

“I just got finished, only to find out everyone is looking for you.” I tell him.

“I needed to find out what someone was doing. Now I need to find a place to put her.” Justin tells me, as someone seems to disagree. “I wasn’t saying you can’t help, but since you pretty much gave them a road map to find you, you get to hide.” Justin said, while I was laughing at the ease with which he seemed to talk to whoever this was.

“How about I pick you guys up and we figure it out?” I ask him.

“I want you to know I thought about running.” Justin said quietly.

“Why didn’t you?” I asked, curious.

“Because of you. I didn’t want to do something that made you doubt how important you are to me.” Justin whispered.