BLIND: A Mastermind Novel Read online

  After her disturbing browse through pornographic props, she opted not to buy, and took a break from all thoughts sex and dating related. Saturday passed with long moments of cuddling Thor while watching a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon and nursing her aching head. Sunday, utterly fed up with her pity parade, she cleaned—not that anyone was coming over.

  When she came across her laptop, she deleted her search history and found her journal entry. Embarrassment over her private little rant left her mortified. It was pure drunken nonsense, a pathetic proclamation of desperation. She deleted it immediately. Good God, what had she been thinking? What if a bus hit and killed her, and friends had to gather her possessions, and stumbled across that drivel? She shivered at the thought.

  After showering, she tucked herself into bed by eight-thirty and spent the next few hours staring into dark silence. Maybe she should go on a vacation, someplace exotic and far away. The idea of traveling alone frightened her and if she went anywhere close to the equator she’d turn into a lobster.

  On the other hand, she might gain something uniquely empowering by doing something so brave and completely for herself. Her little fishbowl was getting cramped, and she was bored with her surroundings. Sure, she could travel alone.

  Mental note…see doctor about sedative for air travel.

  But nothing too potent. Don’t want to be so drugged you get robbed oversleeping on the tarmac.

  Maybe she should visit Europe. She had roughly six months to learn a foreign language. Spanish terms kicked around her head, but she was rusty and out of practice. Mmmm…maybe she’d find a nice cabana boy to distract her for a while.

  No! This is about you! You don’t need a man to enjoy life.

  Just as she fell asleep she decided that was what she’d do. She’d choose a country, study the culture, and learn a language. Maybe if she did that, she’d find someone to actually talk to. Not necessarily a man, but maybe a single girlfriend who filled shoes similar to hers. No matter what she decided, she was set on one thing. From now on, she would make herself more available and start taking advantage of life’s little spontaneous opportunities. She might not find exactly what she wanted, but she needed a change.

  Monday morning, she awoke feeling refreshed and focused. Her new attitude was quite carpe diem and all that good Latin stuff that filled a person with optimistic possibility. As Thor fluffed his long white tail around her ankles, she poured a glass of orange juice and settled in at the table with the paper like she did every morning before work.

  Her cat let out a masculine meow as she slipped him a piece of buttery toast and she turned the page. “Here you go, you big cry baby.” He nibbled the morsel from her fingers and purred happily.

  After wiping her hands on the napkin, she sipped her juice and—

  Juice sprayed everywhere. Holy crap! Was that her letter?

  “Noooooo. No, no, no, no, no, no, no!”

  Blindly blotting up the juice, her wide eyes scanned the article. They’d titled it Where Are All The Real Men?

  “Oh, my God!” Her finger rushed to the bottom of the page. Shoot, it was a long letter. Turning the page she found the ending. Oh, thank goodness! She hadn’t signed it Scarlet. A sound of disgust left her throat. Wow. She must have been really tanked. L.R. Riding Hood? As in Lettie Red Riding Hood? She hadn’t heard that name since high school.

  Talk about pulling the next Jerry McGuire. What the hell had she been thinking? She hadn’t been thinking. She’d been drinking! That was it. The camel’s back was officially broken—the last straw had struck—whatever—She was never drinking again. Ever.

  Her head flopped on the table as she groaned. Thor jumped on the chair next to her and nudged her hand. Moaning, she petted his ear. “From now on, I only talk to my students and you. I’m such an idiot.”

  Chapter Two

  “Some people thinkdesign means how it looks. But of course if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.”

  ~Steve Jobs

  Co-founder of Apple Inc.

  Asher Roan sat on the leather couch across from his partners Jet, Elliot, and Hunter as they reviewed the preliminaries for the next upgrade to GeekPeek. GeekPeek was the social media network they created after graduating high school, the revenue now keeping all of them quite comfortable. Their business was a natural outcome of their similar interests, which took off once MySpace fell off the map. They also fabricated interactive gaming systems like the state of the art Nexus64.

  Some days more than others, it struck Asher as surreal, just how far they’d come. True, they were the same people they’d always been, but on days like this when they reviewed the quarterly reports and took note of their ratcheting value, Ash simply sat back and breathed it all in.

  Being an introvert came with a disdain for people in general, but in his building, within his company, he was nowhere near as shy as he’d once been. In high school it was abundantly clear where he ranked in the pecking order. Now, he was at the top of the heap.

  At six foot and an acceptable weight, no longer the short kid with pimples and a retainer, it was easy to relish how far he’d come. But the memory of that boy still lived inside of him somewhere.

  “Don’t forget we have our meeting with the OddSquad this week,” Hunter said, snagging Ash’s attention.

  The OddSquad was a youth group they created via the local school districts, a place where socially challenged kids with an aptitude for technology could gather amongst peers with similar interests and let their freak flags fly. It really was a cool group and he had no doubt some would go on to make millions.

  “Eugene, the kid from Central, has some really great ideas for a new app. He’s supposed to be staging this week and I’d like to see his presentation,” Ash said, tossing the solved Rubik’s Cube aside. “Mark me down to attend.”

  Hunter nodded and typed in a note. Asher rhetorically smiled as he took in their group. Not many could claim to still be close to their high school friends twelve years after graduation. They’d gone from an excruciating childhood filled with bullies of all shapes, sizes, and genders, to running one of the most respected companies in the world.

  Jet, the company’s publicity rep and face, danced in front of the ninety-two inch flat screen while a computerized twin tried to escape a fleet of renegades chasing him through Armageddon on the television. “Will PR be attending?”

  It was Jet’s duty to show whenever photographers were expected, which put the rest of them at ease.

  Elliot checked the schedule. “Not this time. Asher should be enough of a presence. If the kids come up with something impressive, we’ll hone it and schedule a release with the press.”

  As the meeting continued, Elliot called out numbers and pulled up schematics for the new feed layout. Hunter was playing with the hologram simulator as Jet continued with his game. All in all, they were the picture of contentment. So why was there a bite of disquiet?

  He was losing interest.

  GeekPeek started out as a place for kids to discuss codes for gaming and bullshit with friends, things the four of them enjoyed. But over time, it turned into a brainchild no one had expected.

  Now a Fortune 500 company and one of the world’s fastest growing social sites, GeekPeek was a household name. None of them were really prepared for the influx of money that had hit their bank accounts after graduating, but over the years they figured out ways to invest and kept inventing new things without a hit to their capital. Slowly, all those worries about being different faded.

  When one was born a geek, it was in their DNA. Ash had always been a dreamer, which required only mild interaction with others. When they were kids, he designed hundreds of prototypes to test in his parents’ garage.

  Sure, there had been a few fires, one remarkable explosion, and a couple trips to the ER, but when it came time to pay back his mom for the damage of too many detonated prototypes, they simply bought her a new house. That was when it occurred to the four of them they should move ou
t of the garage and into an actual office building with labs and other settings conducive to their careers.

  They were fresh out of high school and sitting on millions of unexpected dollars. They’d settled on an old run down hosiery mill and turned it into a funhouse factory coined the Think Tank. It was every nerd’s wet dream. Of course, the stuffy professionals wouldn’t see it that way.

  Most of the business world didn’t have fire poles where stairs should be. The rest of the world found grays and blues advantageous in an office environment, while their building resembled something more along the lines of the Crayola Factory or Pee Wee’s Playhouse. Their corridors were lined with priceless memorabilia from George Lucas’s original manuscripts, to Hermione Granger’s wand.

  “I think that’s everything,” Elliot said, tossing his tablet on the table. The screen saver came to life. It was Princess Leia wearing the infamous gold bikini.

  Ash grinned, knowing where they had to be in twenty minutes. “Should we suit up? Are we going Ghostbusters today?”

  Jet shut off the television and the sound of war silenced. “I call Venkman!”

  Ash stood. “Egon!”

  Elliot grimaced. “You were Egon last time. I’m always Ray.”

  Hunter shut down the hologram. “Whatever, man. No one ever asks me who I wanna be. It’s just assumed the black guy’s gonna be Winston. He was the weakest Ghostbuster. Even Rick Moranis had more lines than Winston.”

  “Quit your bitching. Let’s go. Devon’s waiting.”

  Devon was their accountant. He signed off on all their endeavors, not that his opinion mattered. But he kept track of all financial undertakings and kept things tidy for the IRS. It was a tradition of theirs to attend all meetings with Devon in attire that would surely embarrass the professional—call it his penance for all the times Devon took pride in embarrassing them when they were kids.

  They went to the vault where the costumes were kept, and zipped into their authentic CWU 27/P Ghostbuster jumpsuits. They enjoyed dressing up as heroes, finding it easier than being themselves—at least that’s how Asher translated it.

  “I’m driving,” Hunter announced.

  It was always fun messing with their accountant. Devon had graduated with them, but hadn’t been their friend until his mid-twenties, after struggling through six years of college resulting in one bachelor’s degree.

  When they were kids, Devon Rice was a total dick. He was a star football player and took every opportunity to humiliate them. Now, whenever they visited his practice, they repaid the favor and embarrassed the hell out of him.

  They piled into the 1959 Cadillac ambulance and let the sirens rip. Five minutes later they were double-parking in front of Devon’s office.

  Their old nemesis, now friend, came outside and shook his head. “Seriously? Just once it would be nice if you guys respected that I have other clients, and that I’m trying to project a level of professionalism around here.”

  Ash grinned. It was nice to be in the power seat every once in a while. Hefting his proton pack on his back, he aimed his ray gun at Devon. “What do you think, guys?”

  Elliot stepped forward and scanned Devon’s personal space with his PKE pack, the small device chirping wildly. “I’m picking up a lot of psycho kinetic energy on this one. I think we should zap him.”

  Devon scowled and shoved Elliot away. “Knock it off. Can we please go inside?”

  Ash laughed and lowered his weapon. As much as Devon pretended to still hate them, they’d helped him get his firm off the ground, trusting him with their largest accounts. He needed them. And, over his humbling adult years, had actually learned to like them.

  They settled in at the conference table and Elliot regaled Devon with a brief summary of their more recent plans for GeekPeek. By lunch they’d signed off on what needed signing and sat around bullshitting for a while.

  “Hey, Ash?”

  He glanced up from the Rubik’s cube he was again solving, using another configuration. They really needed to invent a more challenging waste of time. “Yeah?”

  “What was that chick’s name in high school you used to follow around like a lost puppy?”

  Scarlet Farrow. “I don’t know who you’re talking about.”

  “Sure, you do. Red wavy hair, freckles, sort of quiet until you got to know her, cheerleader, cute. We used to call her something like Little Red Riding Hood.”

  Lettie Red Riding Hood—Lettie being short for Scarlet. Ash played dumb. “I don’t remember anyone like that.”

  Hunter gave him a sidelong glance letting him know he was full of shit. Asher had been obsessed with Scarlet Farrow. She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever set eyes on, with her soft Dana Scully red hair, freckles like Kate Austin from LOST, and those crazy chameleonic eyes like Lena Headey that switched from aqua blue to emerald green.

  Devon shrugged. “I could have sworn you had a thing for her.”

  “What brings her to mind?” Elliot asked, not giving away the fact they knew exactly who she was and what she was to Ash.

  Many garage talks had revolved around Ash’s pathetic fondness for the cheerleader who annihilated his heart and made the end of his senior year hell. High school always sucked for him. It took someone special to make it even worse.

  The accountant leaned forward and snatched a folded newspaper off the coffee tray. “I think this is her.”

  Ash swallowed. Dear God, was it the obituaries? Ice filled his veins as he stared wide-eyed at the paper. Unable to draw in a full breath, he wheezed, “What is it?”

  “Some opinion section for women to bitch about men.”

  Hunter snatched the paper out of Devon’s hand and scanned it. A dimple formed in the dark shadow of his cheek. “Interesting. Ash, you may wanna read this. It does sound like her. It’s even signed L.R. Riding Hood. She became a teacher, right?”

  Elliot chimed in so Asher wouldn’t have to answer. “Yeah. She works at the middle school. Took Mrs. Delanie’s place, I think.”

  What was the article about? Trying not to appear overly anxious in front of Devon, he shot Hunter a look. His friend caught on immediately. “Mind if I keep this?” Hunter asked Devon.

  “Be my guest.”

  Meeting finished, Ash was anxious to get back in the ambulance. As they piled into the Ecto-1, Jet was reading the article in the front seat. A slow, fascinated whistle slipped from his lips, petitioning for notice. “I don’t remember this chick. She was a cheerleader? I wonder if I hooked up with her.”

  Enough. Ash leaned over the front seat and snatched the paper from him. “Give me that.”

  Hunter snickered. “If that’s her, Ash, she’s single.”

  No way. No way was a girl like Scarlet Farrow still single. He quickly read the article. It all added up, the description of her appearance, although his depiction would have been a lot more flattering, mentioning how her hips could make Jessica Rabbit jealous and her lashes were so long they sometimes looked as if they held little fiery stars on the tips. Those eyes…

  When they pulled back in to the garage at the Think Tank, Asher was rereading the article for the fifth time. Was it her?

  The guys stripped off their suits and hung their packs in the vault next to the Justice League costumes. Ash didn’t bother. He went right to his private office and shut the door.

  Flashing on his computer, he searched her name. Knowing it was unethical and not caring, he punched her name into GeekPeek’s database—something he’d resisted the urge to do a million times before, out of self-preservation.

  “Bingo.” There she was. His heart gave a slight stutter at the sight of her profile picture, still the same beautiful girl, only now she was a woman. She lived in the same area where they’d grown up and Elliot was right, she taught sixth grade at their old middle school.

  He scanned through her statuses, noting the usual, but found it odd she didn’t seem the social butterfly he’d assumed she’d be. Taking a deep breath, he clicked on her
photo albums and exhaled jaggedly.

  She was more striking than she’d been in high school. Those eyes, those sharp green-blue eyes, so many fantasies had been entertained regarding those eyes—and her breasts of course. He swallowed and scrolled down.

  Her information claimed she was single. There were no pictures boasting of engagement rings or babies. How was that possible?

  There was a knock at his door and he minimized the screen. “Come in.”

  Jet stepped inside and plopped in the Dr. Claw chair across from his desk. “You looking her up?”

  His instinct was to lie, but this was Jet. He was a friend. “Yeah.”

  “Think it’s her?”

  “Could be. I’m blown away she’s single.”

  Jet tilted his head, his full black hair falling to the side. “Took me a while to place her, but now I remember. She’s the one who stood you up for homecoming, right?”

  Stood him up, ripped out his heart, humiliated him, and destroyed every hope of ever knowing her. “I guess you could say that.”

  Scarlet Farrow was always a little bit quiet, but light years out of his league. She’d been on the cheer squad, hung with all the popular kids, was invited to places his kind were never welcome.

  Asher had started crushing on her in sixth grade when she returned from summer break with a fresh spattering of cocoa freckles and a crisp bronze tan to her usually lily white skin. That was also the year she developed boobs. He used to sit behind her and get hard from the soft scent of her hair, then spend the rest of the day praying he wasn’t called to the board in front of the whole damn class.

  As the years went on her loveliness bloomed. She never wore a lot of makeup and her body always appeared so soft under her Chic jeans and those worn-in sweaters.

  She had her own sort of style. A lot of girls from his generation went with the grunge look, but not Scarlet. She always looked like she’d just returned from a sailing trip around the Cape, hair a wild tousled mess of copper waves and cheeks always a tinge rosy. Her natural beauty warranted a kind of Kennedy esteem, making her somehow untouchable, like American royalty.