Page 23 of Pressure

Marissa's head flew up and her fingers stopped typing mid-word. Across the table from her, Lance smirked, though it was subtle.

"I'm so sorry. I'm such an ass. I had no idea he was dead," she stuttered.

Garrett waved his hand. "We had a strained relationship to put it mildly. He tried to blow up my Isabelle. My driver shot him in the head. It's something I'm coming to grips with."

Marissa nodded, still feeling like a complete ass. "I know a good therapist if you need one," she said, attempting to salvage the conversation.

Garrett smiled. "I appreciate it. So anyway, to answer your question, my brother is the one who came after me and harassed us, but we have our suspicions that someone else was pulling the strings."

Marissa stared at Lance. "I feel like this is information I should have had."

Garrett stood. "If you two are about to fight, I'm out."

Lance held up a hand. "Wait, please. I have some details for you."

Turning to Marissa, he said, "I wasn't trying to keep anything from you. Not exactly. I wanted you looking at the code and our systems with completely unbiased eyes."

She huffed. He was right. It was better for her to have a first pass at inspecting his work knowing none of their suspicions.

"Fine. What details do you have for Garrett then?"

Lance motioned for Garrett to sit back down.

"Do you know how Isabelle found this place?"

Garrett scratched at the back of his neck and looked at the ceiling.

"If I remember right, some of her local lifestyle friends told her about it. That's what made her application appealing. We thought she could be a good source of local outreach without being too in your face about it."

Lance nodded. "Here's the problem. I don't know how she found our site or got referred. Once the application gets sent to someone and they click the link, that's what gets them into our secure network. It's not something you can just search for. I need to figure out who sent her the link and how they got it. If it was a current member, that's great. That's how referrals typically happen, but if it were a random thing... this could have been going on a lot longer. And just so we're clear, I'm not trying to say Isabelle is involved in anything. Just that her application or someone else's who just 'randomly' stumbled on our site, may have been carrying a RAT or malware or something."

"Fuck," Garrett swore. "So, we've had a problem for a lot longer than we thought."

Lance nodded, looking pained. Marissa fought the urge to propel her chair around the table and wrap an arm around him. Despite their differences and the way things ended, she did know he was an ethical hacker and programmer and never wanted innocent people harmed by the things he did. The problem for the two of them had always been in their definitions of the innocent.

"It's been what, almost a year since she applied?" Garrett asked.

Marissa was already in the club's application database, so she typed in Isabelle Alvarado.

"Looks like ten months according to the date on her application."

"A lot has happened since then. I'll talk to her and see what she remembers about how she got to the website. You're right, it could be something. That's when Eli and Patrick's diamond lab was burned down by Patrick's father and his goons."

Marissa whistled and shook her head. "You people lead very colorful lives."

"You have no idea," Lance said dryly.

"Anyway, we're going forward with the parties this weekend but on Sunday we need to make a decision on whether or not to shut down through next weekend. This is getting out of hand."

The door opened again, and Holly Barrett stepped in.

"Good afternoon, folks. I'm here to talk PR and media control. Is Isabelle around?"

Garrett grimaced. "She's upstairs taking a nap."

Holly waved her hand. "Don't worry. We can always go over it later, after the party or in the morning but it can't wait much longer than that if we're going to stay ahead of this."

Garrett agreed and stood. "Let's go talk in your husband's office. We'll leave these two to do their computer magic."

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