Page 7 of Pressure

He told her about Austin being harassed by the media and Garrett and Isabelle being stalked by his brother, including the video of them on the red carpet being sent to them by an anonymous source.

“OK but that doesn’t sound like hacking or cyber security to me. Why am I here?”

Lance sighed. “Honestly, the board forced my hand. And they weren’t wrong to do so.”

She quirked up an eyebrow. “Why?”

“With Garrett and Isabelle, it had to be electronic. I’ve gone over everything and the leak had to be electronic. I just can’t find it. Garrett is incredibly quiet about his life here at Solitaire and he doesn’t have a personal online presence. Neither does his girl, Isabelle.”

“Isabelle…”

“Stop,” Lance said harshly. Marissa didn’t always get along with other women and found petty reasons not to like them.

“What?” she asked as her fingers flew across the keys. “It just sounds like a very princessy name.”

“Isabelle is great. I’m not saying you’ll love her or that you’ll be besties, but you don’t have to be a bitch to someone you haven’t met yet.”

“Don’t use your Dom voice with me. It doesn’t work unless I’m in sub mode. I think we both know I’ll never be that with you again.”

He sighed. “Let’s not start fighting already.”

She gave a curt nod and changed the subject. “How does check-in work for a party or for say renting the cabins or the suites?”

“It’s a pretty typical reservation system similar to what hotels and campgrounds use. It’s just stored on a more secure server.”

“And what kinds of electronic devices do you let your guests bring in with them?”

Lance leaned back and watched her work. “If they’re renting a cabin or suite, we don’t care what they bring to their rooms. In the bar and dungeon areas we only allow cell phones.”

Marissa scowled. “Why would you do that? Seems like you’re asking for people to be outed.”

Lance nodded. “We talked a lot about it. Ultimately, we decided that we want to treat people like adults. A lot of our members are people who need to be easily reachable. That’s especially true for those of us on the board. And we didn’t want to grant special privileges to the board like that, so we just have a blanket no photography policy. If people break it, they get kicked out. It’s never been an issue.”

“Maybe not with pictures, but it would be very easy for someone with less than stellar motives to use a smartphone or tablet near your servers to get access to data.”

Lance smiled. “You’re right. But we have the server room pretty fucking well protected. Most of the board doesn’t even know where it is.”

“OK but that doesn’t mean someone hell bent on doing harm didn’t find it. If you sit in here or out at the desk or anywhere else in the building with your feet kicked up working on your laptop—I’m assuming you still do that—you’re probably more vulnerable than you think.”

His smile turned to a scowl. “Look, you don’t have to get personal. If we’re going to work together, you need to treat me like your boss, because that’s what I am.”

She held up her hands. “I’m just trying to point out the obvious here, Lance. It’s highly likely you’ve got vulnerabilities that you can’t see. And according to my contract, Elijah Barrett is my boss.”

He hated that she was right—on both counts. Though it was probably for the best that Elijah was the one with his name on her contract.

“Let’s just wrap up for today. I need to get to work on some other projects and we have a board meeting later.”

“I’d like to sit in on that.”

“Nope. Not happening.”

She stood and walked out of the room. Lance rolled his eyes and jumped up to follow her.

She knocked on Eli’s door. “Can I sit in on your board meeting?” she asked when he opened it.

“Of course. I think having you meet the board is an excellent idea.”

She turned and gave Lance a wicked smile. “Guess it is happening.”

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