He Married His Hometown Neighbor, Then Begged for a Second Chance novel · Chapter 2 of 40
Chapter 2: Harbor Crest
In Ethan's penthouse Evan gets his own room and the rules, then closes a hole in the firewall at three in the morning as Thorn; Ethan catches his wrist at the kitchen island, and Maya's text on Ethan's phone says to keep Evan away from the server room.
Ethan's penthouse took up the whole top floor of a tower on Harbor Crest.
The lift opened straight into it.
There was a wall of glass, and beyond the glass the lights of Bayport ran down to the water.
Evan stood in the doorway with his one duffel bag and his grandmother's tin of shortbread.
"Shoes can stay on," Ethan said, and dropped his keys in a bowl.
He walked ahead without looking back.
"Kitchen. Living room. My study, which is closed. Gym. Your room."
Evan's room was at the end of a long hall.
It had a bed made with sharp corners, a desk, an empty closet and a window onto the harbor.
Nothing in it looked lived in, and nothing in it looked unkind.
"Thank you," Evan said.
"The housekeeper comes on Tuesdays and Fridays. Don't tip her, I handle it."
"Okay."
"Monday you start at the tower as Director of Technology." Ethan checked his watch. "The board wants the spouse visible. You'll sit with Maya's team and learn what they do."
"I know what they do."
"You fix printers in Millbrook."
"I fix more than printers."
Ethan paused in the doorway.
For half a second his grey eyes rested on Evan's face, then dropped to the steel ring on his hand.
"Don't touch the servers," he said. "Don't touch anything with a lock on it. If you have an idea, give it to Maya."
"Is that an order?"
"It's good advice."
He left for the office at seven, still in his wedding suit.
Evan stood in the kitchen and opened the fridge.
There was a bottle of water and a carton of oat milk and a jar of coffee beans.
He ate two of his grandmother's shortbread biscuits standing at the island, and then he put the tin in the cupboard where Ethan would find it.
He lay on the made bed in the dark with his shoes off.
He did not sleep.
At two in the morning he got up, took the battered laptop out of the duffel bag, and carried it back to the kitchen.
The island was cold marble under his elbows.
The city glittered outside.
He opened the second phone beside the laptop and read the alert again.
Nine weeks.
Someone had been walking through Ross Group's network for nine weeks, and moving carefully, and the firewall had never made a sound.
Evan could see the way in.
It was beautiful and small, a seam in the code that checked who you were and then forgot to check what you carried.
He knew the exact kind of mistake it was, because he had once made it himself, years ago, on a school computer.
He started to type.
He did not repair the seam all at once.
If he closed it, the intruder would notice, and run, and take everything they had read with them.
So he left the seam open and built a quiet room behind it.
Anything that came through now would be copied, tagged and followed home.
The screen scrolled in slow green lines.
He chewed the cap of a pen.
"You're up."
Evan didn't flinch.
He hit one key, and the window he was in became a game of solitaire.
Ethan stood in the kitchen doorway in a grey T-shirt and dark sweatpants.
He had not slept either.
His hair was flat on one side, and without the suit he looked younger and a little lost.
"Can't sleep," Evan said. "New bed."
"It's the same bed it was."
"New to me."
Ethan crossed the floor in his bare feet.
He stopped at the island and looked at the screen.
Solitaire.
"At three in the morning?"
"It's two. I'm updating a game."
"You said you fix printers."
"I play games too."
Ethan's hand shot out and closed around Evan's wrist.
Not hard. He just held it.
His palm was warm and dry and the grip was exact, thumb on the inside of the wrist where the pulse is.
Evan's pulse jumped under it.
He felt that Ethan could feel it, and he looked down at the hand and not up at the face.
"You've got ink on your fingers," Ethan said.
"I write on my hand when I'm thinking."
"Still?"
"Still."
"You did it in school."
"You noticed that?"
Ethan did not answer.
His thumb moved a half inch over the bone, and then it stopped.
Neither of them moved for a moment.
"We said no questions," Evan said quietly.
"I wasn't asking." Ethan's voice had gone lower. "I was looking."
"At what?"
"I don't know yet."
He let go.
The place where his hand had been stayed warm.
Evan pulled his arm back to his side and held it there.
"Go to bed," Ethan said. "I need you at the tower at eight. You can't be tired. It looks bad."
"On who?"
"On me."
That was the answer Evan had expected.
It still hurt.
He closed the laptop slowly.
"Good night, Mr. Ross."
"Don't call me that."
"What should I call you?"
Ethan opened his mouth.
On the marble beside the laptop, his phone lit up with a message.
He had left it on the island when he'd come in, face up.
The preview ran across the glass in clear white letters.
Maya: Is he settled? Keep him away from the server room. Please. I'll explain tomorrow.
Ethan turned the phone over before he'd finished reading it himself.
He didn't answer the question.
"Good night, Evan," he said.
He went back down the hall, and a door closed.
Evan stood in the middle of the cold kitchen with the laptop under his arm.
Maya had pinned a flower on him that afternoon and told him how glad she was.
She had also, some hours later, told Ethan to keep him out of the one room that mattered.
He told himself there were ten harmless reasons.
He couldn't think of one.
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