Not sure why I feel the need to say that or why I blatantly lied about where she works. I know nothing I can say will ever assure Anatoly enough to call off my mission.
“She’s feeling secure in her life,” I say. Another lie, but I’m adept at making them up when needed. “She’s not looking over her shoulder. Kind of just keeps her head down, goes to work, and comes home.”
“What about her kid?” Anatoly asks, and I jolt. “I remember she had a kid, right?”
I have to be careful I don’t reveal the entirety of the information I’d found researching Bebe. Anatoly tells me what I need to know, and he expects me to do what he asks without further question.
I play stupid. “I haven’t seen a kid yet. She hasn’t mentioned one. I’ll find out, though.”
“You do that,” he replies, and there’s no mistaking his sinister tone. I expect if he wants Aaron dead for some reason, he’ll ask me to take care of it, too.
For now, though, he merely says, “Keep me updated.”
Anatoly disconnects the call, and I lean back into my couch cushions with a sigh. This is definitely getting more complicated than I had originally considered.CHAPTER 5BebeThe Research and Development division at Jameson Force Security is sort of what I’d envisioned for my career back when I was an undergraduate at MIT and before I got lured to the dark forces of black-hat hacking. To work in a lab with the smartest minds, developing the most miraculous of inventions, and watching them be used for the forces of good.
Yes, I am in my dream career right now. Just as I often don’t believe I’m fortunate enough to have my son back, I often wonder how I got to be so lucky to land this.
Currently, I’m working on an artificial intelligence module that can help guide and predict outcomes based on patterns we put in. We’re tweaking the speech synthesis, so our AI—who we’ve weirdly named Bob—can recognize unlabeled words and phrases, as well as categorize them. Bob, therefore, can listen in on our meetings as we plan and develop missions, make hypotheses, and render opinions on outcomes.
Of course, it’s still in the early days and we’d never trust Bob in making any decisions, but we’ve been testing his theories against our own. So far, he’s a pretty smart dude.
The motion-sensored sliding glass door swishes open, and Dozer walks through. When I said I envisioned working with the brightest, Dozer fits that description. He has an IQ of 170, and Kynan stole him from NASA. Dozer is one of those types who knows something about everything. Lately, I’ve been referring to him as Tony Stark, but, frankly, he’s far better looking than the guy behind the Iron Man mask.
I’d think a former NASA scientist would be sporting pocket protectors and thick-rimmed glasses, but Dozer looks like a cross between a flashy sports celebrity and fashion runway model. He’s got sharp cheekbones, exotically tilted eyes, a perfectly proportioned nose and lips, and the body of a Greek god.
The smart hottie has something in his hand that makes him infinitely more attractive. He walks over to my desk—which is more of an elevated worktable—and hands me a Starbucks venti salted-caramel mocha.
I release an exaggerated moan as I take the cup. “You are a god.”
“Yes, this I know,” he says, flashing me a brilliant grin that sparkles in contrast to his midnight skin.
There was a time when Dozer and I shared a kiss.
It was a drunk kiss one night after the whole team had gone out. We’d had way too much to drink, and he was new to the team and lonely, I think.
I was lonely as hell, too, not having had any male companionship in years.
Unfortunately, drunk kissing is the worst kind because the reasons behind it aren’t clear. Was it true attraction?
For me, it was attraction. I mean… the man is as close to an Adonis as possible.
Or was the alcohol the real troublemaker, removing inhibitions that might have a damn good reason for being there? I mean, workplace romances are never a good thing.
Ultimately, it was bad timing.
Turns out, I was lonely, but I wasn’t ready to let the solitude go. I wasn’t ready to open myself up. Dozer said a similar thing to me the next morning at work when we awkwardly laughed about it. He had merely said he’d been through a tough breakup and just wasn’t ready for anything.
Since then, our friendship has continued to grow and flourish. He’s the closest thing I have to a best friend in my life.
“Have you started exporting yesterday’s tags?” Dozer asks as he moves over to his computer. He also has a standing worktable adjacent to mine with the same three flat screens I have so we can monitor multiple sources of information.