Page 59 of Pressure

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Lance woke to the incessant sound of his ringing cellphone. It was the ringtone set only for his assistant, so he knew he had to wake up and answer it. As he did, Marissa's words returned. Had she really agreed to be his submissive this weekend? Or was it all a dream? He looked at the sleeping beauty next to him and prayed it hadn't been his imagination.

When he had tugged on a pair of pants, he stepped into the hallway so he wouldn't wake her. There, he answered the phone that was still ringing.

"Good morning, Kimberly. What's the emergency?"

"Sorry to wake you, Mr. Moss but we have a problem with the app you wrote for Mr. Kenneth."

Shit. That was a high-profile client. "I'm listening. What's happening?" He was already jogging downstairs.

"It seems to be umm..." she trailed off and Lance didn't need her to finish the sentence. His face went furious as he looked at his screen. Someone had loaded bondage porn into his app, and it was being sent to all of the app users at a high-speed rate.

"Fuck. Shut it down," he bit out. "Get the development team on it and shut it down. Get the client in my office in five hours and get my pilot on the phone. I need to leave here in an hour tops."

"Yes, Sir. Will it just be you flying, or will Miss Sullivan be accompanying you?"

"Let's assume she's coming with me and I'll text you if that changes." He didn't wait for a response as he quickly began packing up their tech. When it was all in their bags, he ran back up the stairs and into his suite.

"Riss, baby. Wake up. I need to talk to you."

"What is it?" she mumbled, her eyes blinking rapidly.

"It's a client in Chicago. One of our apps suffered a major hack and I have to get back and deal with this. I want you to come with me. You can work out of my office for a few days, maybe grab some fresh clothes before we come back here for the weekend."

Her eyes were fully open now and she sat up, staring at him. "What happened, Lance?"

"Someone hacked an app I developed for a client and is sending all of its users bondage porn. Like massive amounts of it."

"Fuck," she whispered. "This could be bad for you. What do I do?"

"Start digging into the hack. You're light years ahead of my development team on this one if it's Sebastian. And if it's not, you can rule that out quickly."

She was pulling on a sweater and jeans as he spoke. "I already packed our bags and the pilot should be ready to leave in less than an hour."

"Hey," she whispered. "It's gonna be OK. I'm with you. We'll fix this."

Lance wasn't so sure. This was the fourth breach of a client's trust in less than a month. His reputation was going to suffer.

An hour later, they were on the plane. Lance had managed almost a full eight hours of sleep before the phone woke him, but Marissa had stayed up until six, so he sent her to the bedroom to sleep until they landed.

In the back of his mind was her agreement to be his for the weekend, but he knew now wasn't the time to focus on that.

Instead, he spent the flight on a conference call with his development team as they shut the app down.

Near the end of the flight, before ending the call, he said. "I'm bringing in someone I trust who may already have a lead to trace this hack."

"Who is it?" he asked, naturally skeptical.

"Her name is Marissa Sullivan and she has my utmost trust on this. She'll be running the show to track down this intrusion."

His employee cleared his throat.

"Is that..."

"My ex fiancée? Yes. But she's also one of the best and I expect you to treat her with the same respect you would me. Are we clear?"

His developer nodded and Lance ended the call.

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