Page 20 of Monsters Wear Crowns
I exhaled slowly, gripping the edge of the counter.
My stranger was Rafe Vaughan.
He was the real danger that sat across from me at the bar, spoke to me with a voice like silk and sin, and kissed me with lips that promised destruction. And if I had any sense at all, I wouldstay far away from him. But as I took another sip of water, a small, traitorous thought curled in the back of my mind.
Would he let me?
***
Laura leaned against the edge of my desk, smirking over the rim of her coffee cup. “So, are you going to tell me why you look like a woman freshlywrecked, or do I have to pry it out of you?”
I scoffed, setting down my tablet with a shake of my head. “You’re annoying.”
“You love me for it. Nowspill.”
I hesitated, twirling a pen between my fingers. A part of me wanted to keep last night locked away, a raw and unspoken secret. But another part–one that Laura always managed to prod at–wanted to share. “I met someone last night.”
Laura’s eyes gleamed with mischief. “Oh? And?”
“And...he was different. Delightfully so.” I kept my voice measured, but even I heard the slight hitch, the undeniable intrigue bleeding into my words.
Laura stood up straighter. “Different how? Good different or bad different?”
I exhaled, pressing her lips together. “Both.”
“Interesting,” Laura mused, tilting her head. “And does‘different’have a name?”
I parted my lips to answer, but before I could, the sharp, shrill beep of an alert shattered the moment. Both of us snapped toward the large screen mounted on the office wall. Red warnings flared across the digital interface, pulsing in urgent flashes.
SECURITY BREACH DETECTED.
I shot up from my seat, every trace of last night burning away as cold focus took its place. “What the hell?” I strode toward the console, fingers already flying over the touchscreen as she accessed the breach logs.
Laura cursed, stepping in beside her. “Someone’s poking around where they shouldn’t be.”
“No shit,” I muttered, scanning the data. A foreign IP address. Multiple failed attempts, then–
I stopped. Narrowed my eyes.
“They bypassedtwoof our firewalls,” I murmured, a chill slithering down my spine. “This isn’t just some amateur hacker looking for trade secrets. They knew exactly where to hit. They’re looking for recent client logs.”
Laura leaned over her shoulder. “Are we locking them out?”
My jaw clenched. “No. We’re tracing them first. If they’re in our system, we might as well see where they’re coming from.”
I worked swiftly, sending a counter-intrusion protocol through the system. Whoever this was, they were good–but Sinclair Solutions was better. Within seconds, the program attempted to latch onto the source of the attack, funneling data back to me.
But then–
ACCESS DENIED.
My pulse spiked. The breach cut itself off. As if whoever was on the other end realized what I was doing–and yanked our line before I could follow it back.
Laura blew out a breath. “Well, that’s unsettling. I wonder if it’s a client enemy.”
I stared at the screen, at the digital ghost of someone who had been inside my network just moments ago. “Whoever theywere, they were looking for something.”
Laura met her gaze. “And now they’re gone.”
