Firefighter's Virgin

“I know, right? It just kept going off for no reason, and I always had to take calls and verify who I was.”

The alarm was useful and I really did like having it around, but about a month prior, I had been notified over a dozen times that the alarm was triggered when I wasn’t home. The first few times, I hurried home to see what had happened and absolutely nothing was gone. The door was still locked, there was no sign of forced entry; everything was fine, so I figured it was the stupid system and had disconnected the main line.

I lived in a gated community with a private security company that patrolled the streets. We hadn’t had any break-ins in all the years that I’d lived there. Plus, if the alarm was going off so much when nothing was happening, I didn’t really trust that it would actually go off when I needed it.

But Josh had a point. I promised to call the company that afternoon to get them over to check things out and get the system back up and running.

“Dude, I can’t get over how you just let that guy into the house. What if he was here to kill you? You can’t just let strangers come in here. Maybe we need to get you security cameras at the door? I don’t know, but you aren’t safe here.”

“Josh, don’t go getting all conspiracy theorist on me. If he wanted to kill me, he would have done it. I bet it’s the brother of some girl I brought home, and he’s just trying to scare the crap out of me. I probably broke her heart or some crazy shit like that. Let’s not make it into something too wild. I’ll take some more precautions and get the alarm up and running today; we can go from there.”

“Okay, but if you turn up missing, I’m going to feel like an ass for not going to the cops. What if he kills you? What if I’m watching the news and I hear that you’ve been killed? Am I supposed to go to the cops then? Will this guy come find me? Will you haunt me from the grave? Dude, this is scary shit.”

“If I get murdered, I promise not to haunt you,” I laughed. “Or only really cool ghost shit, deal?”

“Man, I don’t know why you aren’t freaking out. You should be the one losing it here,” he said as he frantically paced my living room and ran his fingers through his hair. “I annoyed the guy, but he looked like he was going to kill you when you spoke up to him,” he said.

“Josh, I didn’t get to where I am in life by over-reacting. Of course, I’ll take some precautions, but my gut is saying this guy is just interested in scaring me.”

“He scared me, does that count?”

“Yeah, I think it does. So, what the hell am I going to do with myself now? I’ve got to stay off the investing for a while. I don’t have my date with Del until tomorrow, and I’m worried about using my credit cards. Is this what life is really like for you?” I said as I tried to figure out how to use my time.

“What are you talking about? None of those things are my life, I’m busy all the time,” he laughed.

“Oh, I just thought you’d understand since you’re unemployed and all.”

“Shut it!” Josh joked.

Chapter Thirteen

Delilah

“See, it’s as simple as this,” the consultant explained as he typed a few commands into the code.

“If that fixes this, I’m totally quitting my job and giving it to you,” I laughed.

The consultant had been at the office since eight o’clock, and we were fixing all the errors the two of us had been able to find while working from home. He was actually really helpful, and I found myself feeling guilty for judging him so harshly when he first arrived. It wasn’t the consultant’s fault that my boss was a major jerk.

“It was a team effort. Should we check through some profiles and see if everything looks good?”

He moved out of my seat and let me click through the accounts to look for errors. A huge weight felt like it had been lifted off my shoulders. We hadn’t been hacked at all – it was just the errors in the coding. Of course, that meant it was the errors I had put into the code, but at this point, I didn’t even care: I was just happy everything was working.

“It’s been a long week. For a minute there, I thought we had been hacked. Could you imagine the chaos if someone got a hold of the clients’ records we work with?”

“You have some high-profile people?”

“I shouldn’t tell you this, but yeah, almost all the men are pretty important. If they aren’t a millionaire, they are famous. It would have been a disaster, and I certainly would have lost my job.”

“What a horrible thing. I’m glad we got it straightened out.”

“What was your name again?” I asked as I pulled out a pen and piece of paper. I wanted to be able to write to his supervisor and tell them how great he had been. He really had gone above and beyond while working with me.

“Antonio Pryor,” the man said. “It was my pleasure working with you. I better get back to my other clients now.”

“It really was my pleasure. I appreciate all your help. Two sets of eyes are indeed better than one.”

As he left the cubicle and made his way down the hallway, I felt Mattie’s eyes glaring into me. She had sat quietly working on her side of the cubicle all morning long, looking like she was about to explode on at least two occasions. She wasn’t used to actually doing her job for hours at a time without breaks to chit-chat.