Page 6 of Pressure

“Of all the gin joins…” he trailed off when her eyes went cold.

“Don’t quote that to me. You’re lucky I’m even sitting here talking to you at all.”

He sat in the chair next to hers and spun it to face her. “I know. I’m sorry. Will you stay?”

“Aside from the obscenely large paycheck, why should I?”

He shrugged. “Do you need any other reason?”

“Maybe not. But I do need to know that we can work together peacefully.”

Lance blew out a lengthy breath. “I guess we’ll have to find out, won’t we?”

Marissa jumped up, startling him. “No. That’s not good enough. I need assurances that you’re not going to sell me out again. That you’re not going to undermine me and attempt to sabotage me when we get into an argument over differences of opinion.”

He looked at her with wide eyes. What on earth was she talking about?

“Why would I do that, Marissa? I know you got screwed over, but once I learned the facts, I tried to fix it. You have to know that.”

“Do I? You called the cops on me, Lance. In our fucking house.”

He stood and walked to the door where he’d dropped his bag when he first arrived and pulled out a laptop.

He set it on the table and began typing when the screen was up and running.

“Look,” he said, flipping the screen around.

“What is this?” she asked as she bent to study the screen.

“It’s a list of all the people I fired after I realized I’d been duped into believing you were guilty. I also bought the company that started all of this and broke it into tiny pieces and sold it off bit by bit. It doesn’t exist anymore.”

Her eyes were still cold as she read the screen, but a little smile played at her lips. “They were a shitty company anyway.”

He chuckled. “It’s true.”

She huffed. “Fine. I don’t forgive you. But I’ll stay. It really would be stupid to turn down this much money.”

Lance cheered on the inside for the small win. This was probably going to be hell. He knew Marissa didn’t forgive easily; she never had. Earning her trust would take time but he was glad to be given the chance.

“Did you bring your gear?” he asked.

“It’s in the car.”

“Wow. You really have changed. The Marissa I knew practically kept her gear handcuffed to herself.”

Marissa laughed. “I didn’t want to be presumptuous about getting the job, so I locked it in the trunk.”

“Go get it, Riss. I’ll walk you through what I know.”

Five minutes later, she was back with her backpack. She pulled out a sleek laptop and two tablets and began setting everything up.

As Lance talked her through the system, she was quickly catching on to how he’d built it.

“Why do you think you have a problem?” She asked after she pulled the raw code up on her machine.

“We’ve had at least two people get outed and I’m experiencing some kind of data breaches that seem like personal attacks at Moss Tech. I can’t prove the two are connected, but it sure feels like they are.”

“So how were the people outed?”

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