Free Love Scars - 5: Covered by Lark Lane Page A

“Out!”
    “Ow! Jeez, Nora.” I deserved it. As far as Nora Deven was concerned, I was a liar and a thief. The situation was impossible. She was too furious to hear me, and Frank stood guard like a righteous busybody.
    “I’ll leave this. You can return it Steve Heron.” I set the scanner on the kitchen counter. “I’m so sorry, Nora. I never meant to—”
    “Lie to me?” She looked up at me and her eyes shimmered with tears. “Just go, J.D.”
    I was dying inside. She was so close, an arm’s length away from me in those cute piranha pajamas. I could easily reach out and touch her chin, take her into my arms and kiss away the misunderstanding, but her heart was locked away from me. And her mind.
    I wanted to ignore her words, grab her and never let her go, not until she let me back in. But I would only do more damage. I had to respect her wishes, not dwell on my own. I forced myself to obey. I turned away from her, and in a daze made it out to the Range Rover.
    I headed for BlueMagick. The cell phone was still connected to the vehicle’s system. “Call Brad,” I said, inwardly screaming far worse curses at myself than Nora could ever think of. J.D., you fuck. Of course I should have told her the truth from the beginning.
    So mockingly obvious in hindsight.
    Before Brad could pick up, I ended the call and turned off the phone. He’d ask about Nora, if I’d found her. What was there to say? Yes, I found her. I found her fragile and utterly vulnerable, and I blundered through that vulnerability to the core of her being and proceeded to fuck the whole thing up.
    I couldn’t talk with that running through my brain.
    It was Saturday morning, not yet eight o’clock, but several dozen vehicles filled the BlueMagick parking garage. A lot of our programmers and engineers were animals for work. They lived and breathed their projects. Most came in on weekends. Some had likely worked through the night. The cafeteria was already out of the maple scones I like.
    I generally thrive on the fact our creative teams work around the clock, but as I thanked the barista for my latte something clicked inside. It struck me then: even “the truth” about me was a lie.
    All the lifestyle crap I’d built into BlueMagick was fake. The bowling alley, the theater, the game rooms. Even the daycare center. It was a fake culture. A fake life. These weekend warriors were fools, chasing the elusive next big tech breakthrough while real life passed them by.
    And I was their enabler, their Fool in Chief. So many of them wanted to be like me. To be me. And what was I? An imposter. A coward. A man who hid from the world. Nora made me want to live in the world again, to feel. And I’d lost her.
    I stopped outside my office and stared at the floor-to-ceiling double doors. Impressive. So imposing. The doors to the inner sanctum of a Very Important Man. What did Frank call me? Wonder boy CEO of BlueMagick .
    A load of fucking bullshit. I hadn’t been a boy in a long time, and the only wonder was I hadn’t lost everything to neglect. Who was I kidding? Brad ran the company while I played at being king of all I surveyed. I gazed down on people from my wall of tinted windows and fucked an employee I wouldn’t let call me by name. I was pathetic. Nora was lucky to be well away.
    I passed my office and kept walking. I took the elevator down to the garage and drove to my place, packed a bag, and texted Tom Jennings, BlueMagick’s corporate jet pilot, to meet me at the airport. Two hours later, I called Brad from the air.
    “Dude, what’s going on?” he said. “I’ve been trying to call you back.”
    “I turned the cell off earlier. Sorry. I wasn’t thinking straight.”
    “Why? Did you find Nora? Do you have the Proto 1?”
    “The scanner’s still with her. I screwed with the numbers to throw MolyMo off.” I had no idea if Nora would return the scanner. Either way, it couldn’t hurt us now. “We’ll need to analyze the real data,”