Hazel glanced down at the message Sophie shot as they stepped into the frigid wind. He is a freaking giant, but he is very pretty. Glancing up at Rel, Hazel sighed with relief that he seemed thoroughly invested in predicting the speed and trajectory of the oncoming Queue cars, and not in trying to read her messages. All she needed was to have him thinking she was interested – not until I figure out if Pete was right.

Grabbing Rel’s hand, Hazel tugged him across the street and into the coffee shop. His hormones raging, he wanted to pull his hand away, but she would misinterpret the gesture, so despite the distraction caused by the feel of her grip, he restrained himself.

When his fingers tightened, Hazel laughed, peering at his bare fingers wrapped around her leather-clad ones. “You forgot your gloves?” she teased as lightheartedly as she could manage, and Rel glanced down at his hands in shock.

“You know I’m not from here,” he sulked lightly, unlacing his fingers from hers as if he were embarrassed. Not remotely the real reason, he sighed as relief flooded through him.

“I know,” she smiled, fortunately not bothered.

“What was that Sophie said about her dad?” Rel prompted, pressing back to business.

“He’s MIA,” Hazel shrugged. “She hasn’t seen him since she woke up, and she’s worried about him.”

“Understandably. And coincidentally, too, since Tomás DeSoto is the reason I asked you to meet me.”

“I thought it was that screen capture I sent you.”

“That was only after the fact. I was up at four this morning because something was bothering me. The way Sophie was held hostage; I used a program that’s on the mainframe for the NCB, and it gave me this weird correlation that I couldn’t understand because it was code. I had just thought you might be able to interpret some of it.”

“You know it’s not really my specialty. Surely you have coders at the NCB who are forensic. I am a dabbler at best.” Was he making up reasons to see her?

“Hazel…” he leveled her a glance… “I am the only one in the NCB who will touch this. I think I’m getting access and being allowed to play around with it because I’m virtually unknown. Someone shut me down almost as soon as I started, but someone else has handed me a few important hints, though those have come with some drawbacks, and I’m not even sure they’re valid anymore. I have no access to the regular manpower of the NCB. I’m having to improvise.”

The truth, or a convenient excuse? She shook her head. “It seems ridiculous that something this significant would be suppressed.”

“Look, I felt the same way at the beginning, but I get it now. If it needs to stay under the radar? What if the person who was doing all these things – who put Sophie in that coma – could monitor the activity?”

Hazel’s insides churned. Someone like Pete. Why had she engaged with Rel in the first place? Because she was worried about disappearing gamers. True, Rel had shown up right before her apartment burned, but she had checked her logs on the feed – she saw no evidence that he had ever watched her play before. Why would he suddenly show up to stalk her?

Whatever personal issue she feared with Rel, the thought that Peter might be involved in disappearing gamers went beyond fear – it terrified her. “There aren’t very many people who would have that kind of access,” she prodded. “Mr. DeSoto, but I don’t think he would put his own daughter in a coma. Or someone in the government.” She threw him a covert glance to gauge his reaction, but when he remained unaffected, she pressed on. “Certainly no regular person could access all of these people. It would take someone with huge reach.”

Without saying anything, Rel leveled her a very significant look. She guessed she had handed him that one, but she wouldn’t acknowledge his attempt to influence her. What would his suspicion mean anyway, since she suspected him, too? Both he and Pete seemed determine to make her mistrust the other, but she could hardly make an objective judgment. She could believe Pete capable of any manipulation, and she didn’t see Rel doing so. She hardly knew Rel, though, so how could she tell?

“What did your program tell you that you wanted me for?” she demanded.

Rel leaned back in his chair and sipped casually at his coffee. “It popped up as a correlation between Sophie and her dad, and it looked like code. I wondered if you recognized any markers, could tell what type of command the code coded for.”

When Rel had sent the information to Hazel’s handheld, Hazel started to scroll through and look for an indication of what the code did. Some of it looked familiar, and then she remembered that she had seen it near the glitch. Staring at the code that had incapacitated Piroulette sent chills up Hazel’s spine as she associated it with Sophie’s situation. It had felt so different to lose Sophie compared to knowing that Letty had passed out. What would Hazel have done if she had known someone would reanimate Sophie on a ransom? Most anything, Hazel realized. The pain of watching the lifeless Sophie, just lying there.

Her eyes teared up unexpectedly, and Rel leaned down to see her face, his earlier urges suppressed by his real concern. “Are you okay?” he wondered.

“I’m…it’s Sophie. It’s this code. It was in the glitch. I mean, I knew someone had done this to Sophie. But to see it? To know the code that I saw grab and dissolve Piroulette, that same code grabbed Sophie and did the same? It’s…overwhelming.”

“She’s okay now, Hazel,” Rel comforted. “She’s okay, and we know how to fix it if it happens again.”

“But that’s got me pretty concerned.”

“Which part?” Rel wondered.

“She’s okay, but that code correlation you found? It’s from the glitch. I have to think it could be the one that ripped open Letty’s avatar and sucked it into the nether. And if this says what I think it says…” She pointed to a line of characters that meant nothing to Rel. “Then that code passed into the code of Tomás DeSoto’s Wire last night at around nine in the evening.”

The words hung in the air for a full minute before Rel prompted. “You’re saying Tomás DeSoto was ripped open and pulled into a virtual vortex?”

Hazel shrugged. “I’m saying that’s what it looks like. Sophie was complaining to me that she couldn’t get ahold of her dad. But why wouldn’t the people who know just tell her where he was?”

“Because Tomás Desoto has control over a lot of information, and if word leaked out that his companies were having an issue? It would kill their stock if anyone found out that Mr. DeSoto himself had experienced a breach.”

Even if it were true, Hazel didn’t know how to help anyone. She squeezed her head with her hands, and tears burned hotter at the corners of her eyes. Rel could see her anxiety but was at a loss how to help. He wanted to scoot his chair to the other side of the table and wrap her in his arms, but he couldn’t risk it at the moment. He had a better hold on himself after a couple of days, but seeing her again had reminded him that he couldn’t relax around her until he knew what was going on with his Neurex. Instead of comforting her, then, he just offered some encouragement.

“Hazel, sip your coffee. You’re going to be okay. We’re going to figure this out.”

From somewhere in her mind, the words seeped through to her psyche. She glanced up at Rel and raised her cup to her lips. “We’ll figure this out,” she echoed unconvincingly. Why did he have to bring her so much comfort? And why had Peter had to put doubts in her mind?

“Let’s talk about the names you gave me. Can I ask? Where did you get those?”

For moment, she couldn’t speak.

“What did you do, Hazel?” he demanded, his tone terse.

“Nothing,” she insisted. “It was nothing.”

“Hazel, if getting these names put you in danger, then I don’t want you to help anymore.”

“No,” she finally found her voice once she thought of an excuse that didn’t make her vulnerable. “Not danger. I just…I’m not used to sneaking around, and I am a little bit ashamed to admit it, to be honest.”

With a subtle smile, Rel met her eyes. “Shame isn’t always a bad thing. Fighting that battle with yourself will keep you honest.”

“You sound like you speak from experience.”

Rel shrugged. “It’s hard to know where to draw the line in my business, but I find the mild sense of guilt gives me boundaries. I don’t always obey them, but I listen to them. I just plan to do everything in my power to keep my soul in this job, and if that requires a lot of second-guessing of my motives, then that is what I will do.”

For a moment, neither of them spoke, and Hazel just peered into Rel’s downcast, pensive face. If he were for real, there was such a vast difference between Peter and him. Was she anxious to believe Rel because she was as attracted to the possibility that a man like him existed as she was to the man himself? She reined in her thoughts and brought them back to the subject at hand. “But this was no big deal, Rel. I’m a coward – I don’t ever do anything dangerous outside the virtual world, which isn’t actually dangerous.”

“A coward?” he challenged, finally raising his eyes. “That is some pretty significant evidence, and the names to match up with the gamertags. You didn’t stumble on the information – you dug for it.”

“Just a few taps on a keyboard,” she countered. “How could that be dangerous?”

“What keyboard? Where would you find access to this?”

Hazel didn’t answer, and a surge of some protective hormone edged all of the tension up in his body.

“Hazel, did you get this from Peter’s computer?” When she still didn’t answer, Rel slid his chair away from the table and glared out the window. What was she thinking?

Confused, Hazel lowered her gaze to the granite tabletop. “I’m a very careful person, Rel. It’s literally all I know how to be. I don’t know why you’re so worried.”

“Worried?” he fumed, but he knew he couldn’t press her in his current state. “Okay, Hazel. I don’t have any right to ask you to explain, so maybe if I hear what you’ve found, there won’t be any need for you to take any more chances. From the names you gave me, the mainframe delineated two categories of names linked to two different paradigms. You and I already talked about the servers. But there was another category. Most of the second group – outside of Sophie – lived near satellite receivers and distribution centers.”

Rel still hadn’t looked at her; it was as if he had just flipped a switch and turned cold. One moment he was considerate, the next he was simmering with irritation, and the next he had turned ice cold. That anger that seethed from below his usual calm – what did it mean? Did he think he held some claim on her? Was he as bad as Peter? Was every man the same? Well, she would not engage with a bully, so if he wanted cold, she would reply in kind. Mirroring his posture, she leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, rotating to stare at the display of pastries in the display opposite the windows. “Satellites in general?” she queried. “Or the five satellites?”

“The five. So, someone wanted control over ground servers and the five major satellite receivers.”

Hazel shivered, distracted at the ramifications of the data. “I think the ground servers were used to mask the signal of the coma code. Keep it untraceable from the Bridge side unless one knew to look for ground servers and backtrace through those. The satellites, though. What could someone do with access to all the satellites?”

“I mean, obviously control the Bridge on some level, but I have two theories that keep coming to mind. Either someone wanted to hijack the signal, use the satellites to send some global message or virus out to the world…” He paused.

“Or?”

“Or sabotage the satellites themselves. Put something in place to knock out the satellite signals. And the fact that they haven’t been knocked out yet means that they want to do it at a specific time for a specific purpose.”

Blowing out a tense breath, Hazel finally turned back to Rel – she couldn’t play cool as well as he, apparently. “I really think I need to take this to Peter. He’s the only person I know who has the access to monitor all of this. My mind just keeps thinking this is some malicious virus that is knocking out people who play my game. I know that seems like a conspiracy, and I know my game is not that important, but how else do you explain so many people from the same group falling?” Rel’s head whipped back to her as soon as she said the words “take this to Peter…” What kind of tempest raged in those intense orbs that currently shone more green emerald than brown? When he finally spoke, his words pressed past gritted teeth.

“Hazel, you can’t tell anyone, especially Peter.”

Who the hell was Rel Martins to try to make her keep secrets from a long-time friend? “Peter is the most qualified person to stop this.”

“Or Peter is the most uniquely situated to mess with the satellites, and if you tell him, he will know we are on to him. Maybe the names are on his computer because –”

“No!” she cut him off. “You think Peter would destroy his own creation? He is working right now to protect the Bridge from people who want it to fail. In fact, he’s currently working with a renegade group that combs the Bridge for anti-Wire types and suppresses their sabotage attempts. Remember my confusion about SOA? It hadn’t made sense that they were at a building with a Wire-only Trip cache. But it makes much more sense if it was ‘SOA Haywire,’ Haywire has been working with Peter to protect the Bridge.”

“And you know this because Peter told you?”

“And because it makes sense?”

“Or because it’s a ploy? If he is trying to act unilaterally to do something to the Bridge, he has to create a cover story.”

“You still haven’t answered why he would do that.”

Rel ran his hand through his hair, his frustration apparent. “If Peter Donovan isn’t satisfied with the way the Bridge turned out, or if he doesn’t like sharing the power with so many players…” Fear coursed through him, and as a completely foreign sensation, he had little knowledge how to handle it. Whatever chemicals pulsed through his veins escalated his desperation for her to believe him. Breathing deeply, he clenched his teeth shut so he wouldn’t speak. If he kept up his intensity, she would lose all trust in his good intent.

“Everything you’re saying is just base conjecture,” Hazel asserted. “Just because he has opportunity doesn’t make him guilty.”

“Okay…” Rel thrummed a low tone to control his expression. “…but SOA Haywire – they are the likeliest suspects to have sent the queue car after you. If Peter is working with them, is that not cause for concern?”

“That is your weakest argument yet – Peter wouldn’t want me to die. I have no doubt about that.” In fact, Peter had become highly possessive since that night, as if he wanted to protect her from some threat only he could see.

“Hazel!” Rel wanted to grab her by the shoulders and make her look at him, but he forced his tone to soften before he continued. “All I’m asking is that you proceed with caution. If something happened to you because you were helping me –” He cut himself off. What was he going to do? Admit that he cared about Hazel? That he wanted to sweep her away from all the insanity and keep her safe? You have no right, he reminded himself. Still, he would give her some food for thought. “Can you deny that Peter is practical first and sentimental way down the line. Would he choose to protect you if it cost him professionally?”

“You don’t know Peter – he wouldn’t target someone with a Queue car, especially not to me to me.” Though her blood simmered at Rel’s implications, she knew it was because he had been more right than he could know. Peter would protect his money and his power, and he expected Hazel to stick around because he needed her and she always had. Still, that didn’t prove he had some grand scheme against the Bridge. In fact, his need to impress other people would rein him in even if he had lost patience with the system. “If he had issues with the way the Bridge was being used, wouldn’t the responsible thing to do be for him to take his concerns to the powers-that-be and explain?”

Frustrated, Rel closed his eyes to block out his vision of her. “That is a very naïve interpretation of motives, Hazel. For one, the entire process of trying to convince a government to slow down progress? Not as easy as one man – even Peter Donovan – going before a committee and informing them.” He opened his eyes and met her gaze. “There is so much politics involved in that process. One man will vote for it because he needs extra funding for barn feed for his district and his vote will buy that. Another will vote against it because the sponsor called his tie ugly at the Christmas party the year before. Even Peter Donovan would be up against a behemoth to make that change. Does he have the patience to play that game?”

Before he had even finished the sentence, Hazel was shaking her head. “Peter wouldn’t go through that. He would go around the system.”

“And that is only one consideration. There’s also the common themes of power and greed.”

“Not Peter. We lived on nothing after the Crash.”

Rel leaned in, barely restraining his hand from gripping hers. “But you see how he lives now. Is there anything he denies himself? Does he still live like you did after the Crash?”

“No.” She thought of the breakfast that morning, how he had laid into the food service worker. He had never had patience to deal with what he considered incompetence. Now that he had the means to pay for the best? He had less patience. No compassion. He wasn’t ostentatious or extravagant in his lifestyle, but he bought the best. And he expected the best. “He definitely likes his money. But how does disrupting the Wire help him keep his money?”

Rel shook his head. “I haven’t figured that one out yet. Maybe you can figure that one out.”

Hazel felt her breath speeding, and she pressed her lips together to hide the evidence of her growing anxiety. “This isn’t right, Rel. It was already getting so stressful with all of Peter’s –” She thought better of mentioning the pressure from Peter lately, but Rel seemed to sense her awkwardness. When she noted the tightening of his jaw, she forced herself to plow through. “…and now that you’ve put all these suspicions in my mind? When I go back there, I’m going to be a basket case. He’s going to know I’m nervous around him, and I don’t even know if I need to be.”

At least she was showing enough sense to be nervous now, he realized. Then her other words registered. “Wait, it’s not my intent to put thoughts in your mind. God knows I could be wrong.” His voice had lowered to a mumble, reluctance tangling the words as they pressed past his lips. “I’m just trying to tell you what I see. I’m not saying you should cut yourself off from your friend based on my hunch.” Rel was a mess. How was he supposed to know if he made any sense at all? How was he supposed to know if he was even being rational?

“I’m not…” She could sense his struggle, and it raised a hint of compassion from beneath her growing indignation. “It’s not just you…there has been so much stress in dealing with him recently. The last week has been…” She trailed off. Peter’s pressure to take their relationship to new physical levels wasn’t something she was willing to explain to Rel. Especially since he had pulled himself back from her after the fire. Is that because he set it?

“Hazel…” As if he had heard her thoughts and wanted to contradict them, Rel spoke to her in the kind tone he had used on their first couple of meetings. It almost brought tears to her eyes. “I’ve been so caught up in this investigation. I didn’t think about how it’s all affecting you, and the other things you have been dealing with. Sophie, your apartment. You don’t have anywhere to go. You know you have other options than staying with Peter?”

Her chest tightened. How could Rel know she was under so much strain? At times, he seemed to understand her, to care about everything going on in her life, but an instant later, he would close off and pull away – and tonight, he had bordered on hostile. Staring up into the green starbursts in his eyes, she knew she couldn’t risk it. Hazel was as much a coward about Rel as she was about Peter. About life.

If she just didn’t do anything new, if she just played Trip, competed at the Partie…And lived with Pete until she found a new place? What if he didn’t want her to leave. Would she leave anyway, or would she just stay to keep the peace? “I’m fine,” she forced out, her go-to response to anyone who delved too deep. “Peter is fine. There’s nothing for you to worry about.”

“I don’t think you believe that…”

“Yeah, well you don’t know me very well, Rel Martins!” She was done letting him dismiss her. “You don’t know what I believe, and you have no right to try to affect my choices.” She might take it from Peter, but she would not take it from anyone else. The two men in her life had created almost enough stress in her mind that she wanted to move out of NAmdam and go live with her mom.

“That’s not what I’m trying to do, Hazel!” Rel finally lost his battle with himself and gripped her hands, holding her still so he could meet her gaze. “There’s something you need to understand…I know my actions have been pretty difficult to read lately…” Rel hesitated The buzz was escalating. “I can’t do things the way I normally would right now, and I can’t exactly promise that I’m being objective.”

He ran his hand through his yellow hair, and his perplexity tugged Hazel out of her anxiety as she peered at him with utter bewilderment.

“I have to admit that it would make me personally really happy if you had a reason to get away from Peter.”

“Personally?” For a minute, Hazel just chewed her lip while he stared down at the table. What was he saying? Was Peter right?

“I mean, you are so wrapped up in Peter Donovan that I feel like I’m battling Goliath. Personally…” He finally looked up at her, and his expression made her hold her breath. “The complexity of your relationship with Peter is very frustrating and disheartening, so you have to understand that I would personally prefer if you did not go back to Peter. That’s as clear as I feel I can be in the circumstances. But it would be wrong of me – unkind to you – to let my struggles affect you in any way when you’re trying to make important, life-changing decisions. As long as you can stay safe, I can’t ask you not to go back there. Professionally?” Rel broke the eye contact. “Professionally, you have been very helpful. I think that what you have to offer could help a lot of people, and what you have offered has already given me more than I could have expected to get based on a ‘hunch.’ If you need to stop helping me after this, I get it. This isn’t your job. You are a very smart, very responsible person, and you deserve to do what you want – in both regards. I can’t have any influence on your decision right now.”

When Rel said the last words, his expression melted into a kind of melancholy resignation, and Hazel clamped down on the tenderness that tried to swell in her chest. Rel Martins would not win her over with flattery. Maybe she had wished and hoped on some level he was everything he seemed, as conflicted as she was about Peter, but her very ambivalence meant that she couldn’t trust herself. She forced as much coolness into her tone as she could manufacture.

“I appreciate your concern,” she leveled, “and I understand. Still, even though I have been really struck by your kindness through this whole thing, that doesn’t justify my trusting you over what I have known for years. You seem to care…about people…and I will choose to interpret your words in that light.”

“I’m sorry, Hazel,” he gasped, her words taking the breath out of him. He couldn’t raise his eyes to hers lest she read the intense forces that raged there at the moment. “I didn’t mean to overstep my bounds.”

“I’ve gotta go,” Hazel insisted, her voice a little breathy. She rose to her feet, and pushed her chair back.

Rel rose with her, every muscle rigid with tension. The thought of her walking out the door, walking back into Peter Donovan’s house, was threatening to send him over the edge. “Wait, Hazel…” How had he never known that all the chemicals in his body could amp up his fear, almost to a panic? “You can’t go back there..” Don’t reach for her, he commanded himself.

Hazel just stared at him, suspicion and confusion peeking out of her expression. “Are you going to stop me?”

“What?” he begged, his confusion apparent. “No, that’s not what I mean. Just…I don’t need any more intel. Vee and I can figure this out. I don’t expect you to come with me. Just go to Sophie’s. I’ll go process this with Vee and see if we can make anything of what you’ve given me so far. I’ll contact you – through Sophie, if you want – if we need anything else. I just…you can’t go back there.”

“So, I’m supposed to throw away six years of my life on a hunch from a virtual stranger?”

“I mean, my hunches are usually right,” Rel pressed. He lost his battle with himself, reaching for her hand so he could make her look at him. “Besides, do you really think of me as a stranger?” When he gazed into her sage green eyes, it was there – the same look Marquis Lewellen had leveled at him. As if he were a little crazy and a lot to be pitied. Maybe he was crazy. He couldn’t sit within twenty feet of her and have any idea what was right. He couldn’t even know if his instinct was telling him the truth, and when she looked at him with that hint of fear... The buzz became a loud and insistent thrum, and he released her hands, stepping back toward the door. “I can’t do this, Hazel.”

When Hazel tried to read his expression, he riveted his eyes to the floor, examining it like a caged animal seeking escape. “I have to go. Now. I can’t do this. I can’t be here.”

“Rel…” He seemed almost to be in pain. Was she completely misreading him? “Wait, Rel. What is going on?” Stepping into his path, she reached for his hand and gripped it tightly. “What is wrong?”

“Back off, Hazel!” he hissed, jerking his hand back. Shocked, Hazel did just that. She was a coward, after all – and something about Rel threatened danger at the moment. “Let me go. I can’t stop you from going to Peter’s, and if I stay here, I will try.”

“What is wrong with you?” she demanded again, moving out of his path to the exit.

He peered at her with something like regret, and then mumbled mostly to himself. “I’ll find you if you need me…I’ll let you go, but I’ll find you if you need me.”

With his last words, he spun on his heel and rushed out into the soft flurries that seemed to promise a light blanket of snow. Who the hell was Rel Martins, and how had she so misread him?

As she rushed out into the cold behind him, she split in two. Did she even care if he left after the way he had treated her? He had seemed ready to explode, as if he wanted to grab her and shake her for daring to trust Peter. She should be glad that someone so volatile had sprinted out of her life. Somehow, though, she knew that she wasn't as glad as she should have been that Rel had left her. No, her sense resemble much more of regret than relief.

If Peter really were guilty, maybe Rel Martins had a reason for so much urgency, and maybe she was a fool for dismissing him. The frigid air did not freeze her to the spot – her ambivalence did. She wanted to chase after Rel, but she knew she wouldn't. She would go to see Peter. Before she let herself worry about Rel, she would find out if he was right about Peter. I’ll find you if you need me. If she was wrong about Peter, she prayed that Rel meant what he said.