Tease Me (The Macintyre Brothers 2)

"It's great when you find something that holds your interest, that has an interesting voice. That makes the manuscripts that aren't quite up to snuff worth paging through."

"I'm glad you feel that way," I said. "It makes me feel better that we're getting good books."

"It's been my dream for several years, so nothing could make me happier than doing this for a living. Maybe I'd like to have a slush reader and me as the editor, but I know if I want to get there, I have to start here. I'm good."

We went to the elevator together and went down to our floors. When my floor came up, I bent down and gave her a warm kiss. "See you after work? I have a meeting over lunch with one of the IT guys."

"Sure," she said and waved at me as the doors closed.

I spent the morning in meetings, as I said, but then after a quick lunch at my desk, I met during the lunch hour with Jerome, one of the IT guys who did work for The Chronicle.

"What's up?" I asked as we sat at the boardroom table and were joined by conference call with another IT guy who was at the other building.

"We wanted to let you know about some hacking attempts on our server. We had a couple of phishing attempts recently, and we're afraid that one attempt was successful and one of the admins in personnel was hacked and the hacker gained access to our files."

"Damn," I said, not happy to hear that. "Who was it?"

"One of the newer staff who was tricked into changing her password and who had her account hacked. The hacker gained access to our email server, unfortunately. We caught it that day, due to regular monitoring, but our server was compromised before we could get it secured. Everyone is being asked to create new passwords."

"Any idea who did this?"

Jerome shrugged. "Who can say? Our best guys are on it, but these hackers are pretty savvy. They know how to cover their tracks. We may never know. What we need to do is maybe train new employees better, so they don't get fooled by these phishing attempts."

"I'll talk to HR about an extra module on IT security."

We ended the meeting and I spent the next hour talking to my staff in HR about the data breach and what steps we could put in place to prevent it from happening again. Better training, in other words.

My only concern was who hacked us and why, but unfortunately, that was something we might never know.

For the next couple of days, I spent most of my time in the office, catching up on work and my nights with Ella. She never asked me again about my trip to Alabama and I never volunteered.

I hadn't heard anything from the rehab facility, so I assumed that things were going as expected. The intake worker I spoke with on the phone said that the first few days were the hardest as the addict went through withdrawal, although they did try to minimize the discomfort and for someone addicted to heroin or opiates, the facility used other medications such as methadone or buprenorphine.

Finally, I got a text from the manager of the facility that Penny had passed through the first phase of detox and would be staying at the facility for the full six weeks of treatment.

I sent him an email thanking him for the update and that he should keep in touch, so I knew how Penny was doing. I wouldn't feel better until I knew she'd been successful.

I felt it was the least I could do.

17

Ella

The next few days, I held off asking Josh about his trip to Millbrook, although I really wanted to know more about it. He'd tell me when he felt able, and I had to trust him to do so when the time was right. I realized it must have been something really personal for him to feel such deep guilt about it.

On Friday, in the morning just after I finished meeting with Sharon to review our week and talk about upcoming deadlines, I got a text from a number I didn't recognize. There was no name associated with the text, just a number.

.....If you want to know more about the man you're currently sleeping with, you should follow this link.

ELLA: Who is this? If you don't identify yourself, I'll assume you're a troll or a hacker and I'll call IT.

.....You won't want to do that. Believe me, you'll want to know this about the man you're with. You don't really know anything about him and what he's done in the past. Ask him about his little trip to California. He was with her there. He's been fucking her for years. If you thought he stopped when he met you, you're wrong.

ELLA: I already know about his trip so sorry, you're not going to get me to click on your link.

.....You know about Penny? His little fucktoy?

That surprised me. Penny? I'd never heard Josh mention that name. He'd told me before about Christie and another girlfriend he had in college called Jennifer, but he'd never mentioned Penelope.