But there were also the times when it happened in his personal life, like it had after the crash when he’d become a zombie attempting to fuse his body to his couch. That was clearly what was happeningnow.
What other explanation was there for him thinking about Drew and…wanting?
His heart thrumming in his chest just at the fuckingmemory, Bas forced himself to scroll down Margaret’s email and view the attachments - emails that Bas hadn’t bothered to read when they’d been sent a few weeks ago. A man wanted an opportunity to chat with Sebastian, to remind him of the great work he’d done for his dear friend Levi Seaver, to get Bas’s assistance with a project that would be mutuallybeneficial.
Bas rolled his eyes. The trouble with his last name was that it brought so manydear friendsout of the woodwork when times gottough.
He wished, for about the millionth time in the last few weeks, that he could talk to Drew about this. Drew - the Drew who was his friend, and not this weird phantasm in his head, taunting him with kisses - would understand perfectly and know just how to handle it. But he’d pushed the real Drew away, and the longer the silence between them lasted, the less he knew how to get out of it, or how to explain itaway.
Yeah, sorry for the dead radio silence, bud. I just couldn’t stop thinking about kissing you, and I was worried that if I saw you, we’d end up doing more than just kissing. I think about your neck a lot, you know? And your collarbone, which has somehow become sexy. And since I have always been one-hundred percent straight, that would be crazy. So… Game of Thronesmarathon?
Cursing himself for the idiot he was, he sent Margaret an email asking her to refer the Paterkin-person to HR. What Bas needed was to focus on a problem that hecouldactuallysolve.
Then, ignoring the rumble in his stomach, he shifted his attention to the second-largest monitor, waking the sleeping machine with a click. A photograph of his nemesis appeared in livingcolor.
Alexei Stornovich, son of Ilya Stornovich and current head of the Russian crime syndicate known as SILA, which happened to be the Russian word for power.Fuckingpretentious.
Ilya had been the one to bring Bas’s father into the SILA fold in the very beginning, but it had been Alexei - ruthless, power-hungry, and by most accounts, literally crazy - who had called Levi Seaver’s bluff when Levi wanted to get out of theirarrangement.
Alex was stacked - maybe in his mid-forties, broad and muscle-bound as any bar bouncer, and with the same fuck-off scowl. He was a handsome guy, if you liked them tall, older, and wearing a smile that was borderline-insane, which wouldnothave been Bas’s type even if he was into guys. That was more up Cain Shaw’s aisle, considering he was currently shacked up with Damon Fitzpatrick. Or maybe… maybe Alexei wasDrew’stype?
Which begged the question, did Drew have a type? Was he attracted to the soft looking guys who needed protection? Or the brawny guys who could bend him in half and hold himdown?
His brain helpfully superimposed a picture of Drew next to the picture of Alex, his tall, lean frame dwarfed by Alex’sbulk…
Gross.
Bas scowled as he shook his head to clear it. He had no clue what type of guy Drew went for, but he was reasonably sure it wasn’t Alex. Was it weird that in all the years they’d been friends, he wasn’t sure what Drew’s typewas?
And Jesus Christ, since when did he sit around thinking about which guys werefuckable?
He forced his mind back to studying Alex’s picture, and then pulled up the list of crimes he’d been charged with, scrolling and scrolling until he reached the bottom. Decades of charges - weapons offenses and murders, thefts and conspiracies - none of which had ever stuck. And these didn’t include the thousands of other crimes he’d never been charged with in the first place, like instigating the murder of Sebastian’s parents and his fiancée,Amy.
His hands clenched into fists and he forced them to relax. He knew that Drew and Cam, Cort, Damon, and Cain, thought he was being an idiot for pursuing his own investigation into the Stornovich clan.Let the authorities handle it,they said.Stay out of it. This isn’t for you to solve, Sebastian.But how the hell could he leave this to the authorities, when Alex Stornovich had skated on every charge he’d ever been nailedwith?
This was Bas’s job, uniquely his. The crash was ultimately his fault, and so it would be his job to make sure Alex was put behind bars – or fucking killed outright. Maybe then the ghosts that haunted him would allow him a little bit ofpeace.
He cracked his neck from side to side and called up a new screen - one that was never attached to the Seaver Technologies mainframe, nor registered under his name in any way - and began his realwork.
For weeks, he’d been building a botnet - a web of computers around the world that he’d managed to, er,conscript into service, so to speak, by installing an unobtrusive little piece of software that allowed him to control them all remotely. Yes, theoreticallythe owners of said computers weren’t technically aware that the gaming cheat program they’d downloaded had also contained this hidden string of code, but Bas figured it was karmic payback for them attempting to cheat in the first place. And, he consoled himself, unlike most hackers, he had no desire to keystroke-log the users’ credit card numbers and passwords. His plan was far more white-hat… and unfortunately, just a little less easilycontrolled.
Most people were only peripherally aware that their computers - and the servers that housed their sensitive, personal information - were constantly under attack. Oh, there was a massive outcry in the media anytime someone managed to make a huge breach, of course, but most of the time, software companies were able to make patches within hours after a new virus was launched into the world, and the average user was none the wiser that some unsung programmer had saved their ass once again. But during the time between the release of the virus and the creation of the patch… that Zero Day time… there was a flurry of activity happening online, with computers from all over the world trying to exploit weaknesses and occasionallysucceeding.
And the easiest way for Bas to hide his search into SILA’s servers was to wait until computers all over the world were also launching attacks, losing himself in thecrowd.
Tracking fake invoices that Cain and Damon had stolen from Senator Shaw’s office, Sebastian had located at least one of Alexei’s servers, and yesterday he’d hit the jackpot, using his botnet to attack Alexei’s servers for that vulnerability. He’d managed to access the fucking root directory… and he’d found a whole lot of nothing. Legitimate businesses - or so they seemed - through which Alexei no-doubt funneled his blood money… but not a single shred of evidence Bas could use to tie them to anycrime.
And not a single hint of where Bas could look for anotherserver.
Coming up against a brick wall this way was maddening, if only because it so rarely happened. It wasn’t cockiness to say that Bas was the best of the best. He’d learned everything he knew at Levi Seaver’s knee, afterall.
He rubbed his stomach, like he could ease the pain of grief that lodged itselfthere.
Some days, it felt like his father was still in the room with him - like he should be able to lift his head and see his father, busily and silently working on his own projects on the other side of the lab the way they’d done countless times. The instinctive understanding of complex code, the ability to navigate beautiful logical labyrinths, were traits that he and his dad had shared for as long as Bas could remember, and it hit him every single day that he hadn’t just lost hisdadwhen that fucking plane crashed, he’d lost the one person who understood the way his mindworked.
But then, Bas couldn’t understand how his dad had been stupid enough,recklessenough, to get involved with the Stornoviches in the first place, so maybe they weren’t as similar as Bas hadthought.
He ran a hand over his head, trying to steady his thoughts.God. He had to laugh at himself. Emotions were a bitch. He’d a thousand times rather bury himself in code, in problems that had logicalsolutions.
