Flirting With Disaster (Camelot 3)

Perfect shot.

“I talked to K-kelly,” Sean said.

“Yeah, I saw her coming out of your office.”

“I’ll do a videoconference tomorrow with her and the other VPs. Ease their minds.”

Mike said nothing. Which wasn’t like him at all.

Had it not been for Mike, Sean might never have left Camelot. Even the company had come about because of Mikey, the consequence of a challenge he’d thrown out late one beer-fueled night when he and Sean were college hobby hackers batting wouldn’t-it-be-cool scenarios back and forth. Mike wanted to figure out how to open a port on a Syntek server undetected, and Sean proposed to design a rootkit that would turn the server into a slave without giving off any signals a system administrator could pick up on.

The perfect hack.

They worked on it for months, gradually turning over more and more of their free time to the project, day and night. Skipping classes and meals. But whereas Mike got so caught up in the details he didn’t stop to think about the implications of what they were doing, Sean thought about the implications all the time.

There were Syntek servers all over the country. In every branch of government, in educational testing banks, hooked in to the New York Stock Exchange. And suddenly, one night, after weeks of effort, Sean and Mike gained the ability to control them all invisibly.

For Mike, it had been a pure hack, done for its own sake. He wanted to erase the evidence and never use the tools they’d designed again.

Sean spent most of the contents of his savings account on a business suit, designed a PowerPoint presentation, and bullied his way into a meeting with the CEO of a company that relied on Syntek servers to protect tens of thousands of credit card numbers and other personal data.

Your data is vulnerable, and we’re the only company that can protect it.

He neglected to mention that he and Mike were also the people threatening the data. Not his finest ethical moment, but it wasn’t as though he and Mike were special snowflakes. If they could break into a Syntek server, somebody else could, too.

They got the contract.

In that moment, Sean became someone different. Not the stammering ragamuffin freak who’d left home at seventeen, but a man with a destiny. A ruthless, talented, calculating businessman who sold security to corporations whose bottom line he’d threatened with his own curiosity.

He and Mike built their fluke into a real business, becoming experts in an industry they’d only dabbled in before. And at some point in the first year or two of Anderson Owens, their friendship shifted. Sean became the leader, and Mike b

egan to follow him.

Sean bricked a three-pointer. “That’s R.” He handed over the ball. Mike made an easy layup.

“Have you heard any of Judah Pratt’s more recent albums?” Sean asked.

“You’re still thinking about that guy?”

“Ssome.” Sean went in for the layup and missed. “S.”

Mike caught the rebound and held it under his arm. “I refuse to feed your obsession.”

“I’m n-not obsessed with him. It’s work.”

Mike snorted. “You work here. Whatever you’re doing out there in Ohio, it’s not work. It’s play.”

“Fine. It’s p-play.”

It had been four days since he and Katie arrived home from Louisville. Four days and one night since she’d returned to their shared suite and asked him to drive her home. He hadn’t seen her since. “And I’m not obsessed,” he mumbled.

“You’ve been gone eight months, on leave for seven. You haven’t quit, but you won’t come home. You’re asking me questions about some celebrity. Ergo, you’re obsessed.” Mike punctuated his statement with a perfect shot from the three-point line.

“Ffforget it,” Sean said, wondering when Mike had become the kind of guy who said ergo. He retrieved the ball. Took the shot. Missed.

“That’s game.”

Sean walked back to the building and leaned over the water fountain for a drink. When he turned around, Mike was watching him.