Deliciously Damaged (Reckless Bastards MC 3)

His words sunk in, and my anger shot back to the surface again. Before I could rail against him, he pushed up his sleeve and checked his watch.

“I have to go. I’ll check in with your progress later,” he said. He swept past me and went to the door of his office.

I squared my shoulders, and strutted past him and through the door as he opened it.

I marched past Kimberly’s desk, not bothering to look back at her—or Cooper.

Chapter Four

I spent the afternoon in my office, alternating between crunching numbers on my personal budget, and fantasizing about Cooper. I was trying to figure out how many months of salary I would need to save up in order to live off of for a year, while I figured out what the hell to do with the rest of my life. However, it was proving to be trickier than I’d imagined, with images of Cooper flashing in and out of my mind in such lifelike daydreams that my panties were getting wet just playing it all out in my mind.

By the time four o’clock rolled around, I figured I wasn’t going to be able to focus on numbers right that moment. I’d been late getting to work and didn’t want to be the first to leave, so I decided to start hacking and get the information Cooper was counting on.

I rationalized that maybe once he had the information he needed, he would leave me alone and give me some cushy filing job that required no involvement with him. Then, maybe I wouldn’t have to budget at all, and could keep my obscene monthly salary coming in indefinitely.

The nagging voice in my head told me that would never happen, but I pushed it aside, much preferring to live in my fantasy land. At least for a little while longer.

I started typing and spent the first fifteen minutes cloaking everything, so that on the off chance someone at the competition’s headquarters realized they’d been hacked, they couldn’t trace it back to Brighton Enterprises. I wasn’t going to be tampering with anything, just researching, so I doubted anyone would ever notice, but it was best to play it safe.

Once I’d double, and then triple-checked that my digital fingerprints were nowhere to be found, I started looking for ways to get into their database.

It was easy to zero in my focus and forget all about Cooper. As I worked, the adrenaline of the hunt kicked in, and I was dead to the world around me.

“That’s weird…” I whispered, leaning closer to stare at the screen and make sure I was seeing things correctly. It looked like there was some kind of digital siphon, sending information from the Brighton Enterprises database and sending it to another address.

My heart raced as I clicked around, trying to figure out what was going on. I’d been hacking for several years, on and off, but I’d never seen anything like this. I kept an eye on the information going out, numbers running along the screen, changing into other numbers rapidly. I tried to open the database, to see if I could find the origin, but then it changed and two tables were affected. Either the hacker on the other end of things was in the database at the same time, or what I’d just done had made it spread.

It was a virus.

“Oh, my God.” I pulled up another window on my second monitor and started searching frantically. I had some cyber friends who were deep in the hacking underbelly. I logged into a forum, using my alias, and without giving specifics, typed out what was happening.

A reply came back that sent a chill over my entire body.

It’s a wormhole.

“Oh, shit!” I scrambled to type a reply back, begging for help. Once my SOS was posted, I grabbed the phone and dialed Cooper’s cell phone. I didn’t want to go through his assistant, and this was too important to wait another second.

“Hello?”

“Cooper, it’s Allie. I need you to get down to my office, now!”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“There’s been an attack,” I said. A reply to my forum post popped up and cradled the tiny phone against my shoulder, craning my neck so I could use both hands. “Just come down here!”

The phone slipped and hit the desk. I could hear Cooper’s voice coming from the speaker, but couldn’t make out anything he was saying. I clicked off the call and hoped he would take me seriously enough to get down here. Not that he could help with the techy stuff…but this was his company…his network…and although I didn’t know that much about wormholes, I knew that if this hack continued, he could lose everything.

I was typing frantically, setting trackers and taking screen shots, to capture everything that was happening while waiting for further advice to come in from my friends on the forum.

“Allie, what the fuck?” Cooper appeared in my doorway. He looked breathless and scared out of his mind. “An attack?” He looked around as if expecting to see chunks of the walls missing.

“A viral attack,” I said, turning my attention back to the computer screen in front of me. “A wormhole, to be more specific. If we can’t get it stopped, the entire system could go down.”

“What?” He rushed around and stared over my shoulder. His cologne engulfed me and it took all my concentration to not turn and look at him. His face was inches from mine and I could hear his breath as it returned to an even pace. “What is all this?”

“I just found it,” I said. I was a little embarrassed that it had taken me so long. From what I could tell, the data mining had been going on for some time. It was hard not to be mad at myself for not catching it sooner. If I hadn’t spent so much time procrastinating and working on that stupid spreadsheet, things might be different now.

Not that I was going to tell Cooper that part…