Page 43 of Wine, Whiskey, & Lipstick 2

Close your eyes and go to sleep.Dillyn snuggled a little closer to Ben.Tomorrow is a new day to figure it out.She closed her eyes and did her best to clear her chaotic mind.

Relaxing was a struggle, so she took a few deep breaths and blew them out slowly.Stilling her thoughts was taking a lot of effort as Dillyn continued to wrestle with them. After more than an hour, the noise of her mind started to quiet, and silence finally took over.

Total and complete silence.

Wait. Her eyes popped open.Complete silence?That wasn’t right either.

The realization that her room was quiet brought Dillyn’s unease back full force. The potential problem hit her like a ton of bricks.

Dillyn disentangled herself from Ben’s sleeping body while moving quietly.

Why am I just now realizing this?She felt like a bolt of electricity had hit her becauseyou are losing your shit.

Most folks wouldn’t have noticed, but Dillyn was uniquely attuned to the now-nonexistent sound.

How could I have missed it?

The gentle hum of her computer’s server was always present, but not tonight. The ongoing, unceasing sound that had always been in the background for most of her teenage years and adult life was gone.

I must be trippin.For the briefest of moments, she thought she might have been mistaken. Dillyn stilled and listened harder, hoping she was wrong. When nothing came, Dillyn threw the sheets off her body and shot out of bed, making a mad dash over to her workstation.

Her jerky movements roused Ben awake. It may have seemed like he was in a deep sleep, but he hadn’t been. He had way too much on his mind. His brain may have been a little sleep-fogged, but Ben was alert enough to notice the set of Dillyn’s shoulders and the ram-rod straightness of her back as she sat in front of her monitor.

Something wasn’t right.

The deep timbre of Ben’s voice cut through the silence. “What’s wrong?” He checked his cell on the stand next to the bed to ensure none of the alarms had been tripped.

Dillyn couldn’t form words, not when her mind was moving a mile a minute.

Concerned, Ben worked to get his sleep-addled mind to work properly. “You realize you’re sitting in front of a monitor butt ass naked, right?”

He was speaking, but Dillyn couldn’t really hear him. She was one hundred percent focused on her task. It was impossible,but shehad to be sure.

Dillyn studied her screen. It was black, and the blinking green light in the lower bottom half of her monitor was not only missing. It was red. “Shit!”

Ben got up, picked up his jeans, thrown over a chair, and walked over. He stood towering over her shoulder. His voice was still husky from sleep when he asked again. “What’s going on?”

“My computer is off.”

“It’s always off.”

“No. The screen is always black when I power down, but it’s never off.”

“What does that mean?”

Dillyn closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. She took a deep breath and opened them again. “You see that light right there? The solid red one?”

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“It shouldn’t be red. It should be blinking and green.”

“Okay.” Ben still didn’t fully understand the problem.

Dillyn could read it in his face. Her personal life might be crazy, but she could always count on computers,at least until now. Dillyn tried to explain what she thought was happening. “Green means that my security is functioning as it should.”

It finally dawned on Ben as he finished her thought. “Red means that it’s not.”

“Exactly.” This was the first time in Dillyn’s life that her fail-safe security system had seemingly been compromised. Someone had gotten through her defenses.

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