“The Keys,” Brody said beside her.
“What keys?” she asked.
“The Florida Keys.”
“Oh.” Kate told herself to focus and try to use the conversation productively. She’d track Annabelle down as soon as she could. “How long have you known Quentin?”
“I’ve been in LA for a few weeks,” Brody replied. “But I’ve known of him for quite a bit longer.”
She leaned casually against a rail that overlooked the sweeping lights of the city, keeping Quentin in her peripheral vision while the breeze blew her newly short hair back from her face. “And what do you think of him?”
Brody turned to face her. “In what sense?”
“I’ve seen the news reports, and I wonder how much of it is true.”
He took in her outfit, and she was reminded of her heavy makeup, tight dress and the funky hair. She wasn’t exactly comfortable with the impression she must be making, but she had to see this through.
“He knows how to have a good time,” said Brody.
Kate gave her head a little toss and tried to look like a woman who was very much interested in having a good time. She glanced pointedly around the party, the pretty people, the exotic clothes, the expensive food and liquor. “This is definitely a good time.”
There was an unfathomable expression in his eyes that could have been sarcasm or resignation. “Isn’t it just.”
The odd reaction made her curious. “You must be used to parties in your line of work.”
“I’ve been to parties of all kinds.”
“Wild ones?” she asked, striving to look intrigued and excited at the possibility.
“Some.” He gave her a warm smile.
“Sounds terrific.” She half expected him to toss out an invitation, at least a generic one: maybe I’ll take you sometime, baby...
She’d refuse of course, politely. She wasn’t here looking for dates. She was here for Annabelle and nothing else. But he didn’t ask, and she found herself wondering if the purple highlights weren’t working for her.
Just then Quentin left his conversation partner, and she spotted her opening. She made a quick move toward him, but her heel caught on a concrete seam, and she stumbled, sloshing her champagne.
Brody grasped her elbow, stabilizing her.
“Sorry.” She quickly apologized for her clumsiness, hoping she hadn’t splashed anything on his clothes.
“You all right?” he asked, still holding on to her.
“I tripped.”
“You were in a pretty big hurry.”
“I was—” She hesitated over her words. “I’m hoping to catch Quentin.”
Brody glanced past her. “Someone beat you to him.”
She turned to see two new women laughing with him. She cursed under her breath.
“He was just with your sister.” There was censure in Brody’s tone, and she looked up to see his gaze had hardened.
“It’s not that.” It was clear from his frown that he didn’t believe her. “I’m not here to make a play for Quentin.”
“You nearly injured yourself trying to get over there to chat him up.”
“Not for that.”
“Listen, it’s not really any of my business.”
“You’re right. It’s not. But I’m going to tell you anyway. I’m not romantically interested in Quentin.”
She couldn’t imagine any circumstance where she’d be romantically interested in a man like Quentin Roo.
Brody’s gaze took a leisurely tour of her outfit. “Good news, Kate. Romance is not at all what you’re projecting.”
Despite the fact that she’d done so on purpose, she was offended by his implication that she’d dressed provocatively. “I’m not after Quentin in any way, shape or form.”
“Of course you’re not.”
She didn’t care what this Brody person thought. At least she shouldn’t care about his opinion. But for some stupid reason, she did care.
It was on the tip of her tongue to explain that this was all about her niece. She was playacting here, making sure Annabelle was going to be okay. But she stopped herself just in time. Instead, she looked up at him and gave her highlighted hair another defiant toss. “I’m here for a good time.”
His eyes reminded her of flints. “Aren’t we all.”
* * *
Brody watched the fleet of tiny electronic spaceships blast their way through an asteroid field on the wall-mounted wide screen. The ships changed colors, using different weapons, all jockeying for position while trying to avoid being annihilated by other players.
“See that? Right there,” said Will Finlay, the head programmer from Shetland Tech. “The organics on the planet surface.”
“All I see are a bunch of things exploding.”
“It’s the way they’re exploding,” said Will. “Or rather, the way they’ve changed the way they’re exploding.”
“If you say so.” Brody wasn’t a software engineer, and he wouldn’t pretend to come close to Will’s technical understanding.
“This is the best evidence yet. I’ve checked with a few contacts at MIT, and they agree Shetland Tech has been ripped off.”
“Can we prove it with this?” Brody asked.
Will had managed to get his hands on a prototype of the Beast Blue Designs’ new game, “Blue Strata Combat.”
“Not without the source code,” Will said. “We can prove they’re using advanced algorithms that trigger object evolution within an AI environment, but we can’t prove they stole it from Shetland.”
“But they did,” said Brody.
“They did.”
“If we move now?”
“I’m told that if we make a move based on the evidence we have right now we’ll be tied up in litigation for a few decades. And after that we’ll probably lose.”
Brody sat back in the burgundy leather armchair that was positioned in the living area of his hotel suite at the Diamond Pier Towers. He’d been away from home for over a month now, and he was growing impatient.
Back in Scotland, his brother Blane had too much to worry about already. Suffering from the neuromuscular disease Newis Bar Syndrome, Blane tired more easily than most people. But as eldest son, the Viscount and the future Earl of Calder, the responsibilities for the family seat fell to him. Brody had to at least take the money trouble out of the equation.
“We need to get inside their facility,” Will said. “Proving our case still hinges on accessing their resident servers and finding our proprietary code.”
“We already tried that.”
The attempt had been a dismal failure. The technical security was impenetrable, and the server room was on lockdown twenty-four hours a day. The private detective they’d hired to go undercover as a technician was caught trying to gain unauthorized access and was summarily fired.
“Do you think Quentin might confess something?” Will asked.
“To me?”
“To anybody.”
Brody