Page 70 of Hacking the Holidays
Rose was sipping her coffee, eyes on her screen, the picture of innocent concentration. But her fingers hadstopped typing. Her posture was too still, too controlled, like someone ready to pounce.
She was waiting to see what I’d do next.
Rose’s gaze flicked in my direction.
Our eyes met for half a second—and in that moment, I saw everything. Recognition. Acknowledgment. Challenge. Then she looked back down at her screen as if nothing had happened.
She knew.
Rose absolutely knew it was me.
Chapter Seventeen
ZARA
What Sam and I were engaged in went far beyond everyday hacking. This was a duel between masters, a high-stakes digital chess match where every keystroke carried weight, every breach attempt was a calculated gambit, and every successful defense became a silent declaration of dominance.
And the delicious irony? We were both sitting there in the quiet conference room, sipping coffee, and pretending absolutely nothing was happening between us.
It was the most exhilarating morning I’d had in years.
Just seconds ago, Sam launched another intrusion attempt from across the table—his tenth in the last two hours. I swatted it down again before he’d even gotten past my firewall.
I had to hand it to him; he was persistent.
Most people would have given up after the second orthird shutdown. Not Sam. He kept probing, kept testing, kept looking for that one weakness he could exploit.
Too bad for him, I didn’t have any.
To be fair, Sam had breached my defenses once, for all of five seconds. And that was only because I’d been distracted by Chloe’s text about Agent Thorne being on the warpath.
My heart had actually stopped when I’d seen the intrusion alert. For one crystalline moment of pure panic, I’d thought:He’s going to see everything. My real name. The FBI files. The surveillance logs.
Then training kicked in, and I booted him out so fast he probably got digital whiplash. But those five seconds had felt like five hours, and I’d been checking my system, paranoid ever since, making sure he had left no breadcrumbs behind.
My screen flashed with another alert.
UNAUTHORIZED ACCESS ATTEMPT.
There he was again.
My fingers danced across the keyboard, executing a script that would trace his entry point, isolate it, and slam it shut before he could pull anything useful from my system. The entire process took fifteen to twenty seconds max.
ACCESS TERMINATED.
INTRUSION BLOCKED.
Sam’s shoulders tensed slightly, just enough for me to notice. But this was the first time I’d actually heard him let out an audible breath of frustration.
You’re going to have to try harder, Sam.
I bit back a smile and took a sip of my coffee, then winced when I realized it was cold because it had been there, untouched, for too long. I had been having so much fun that I had completely forgotten about it.
But there was something deeply satisfying about knowing I could defend myself against intruders, that all those years of training and paranoia and careful preparation hadn’t been for nothing.
I was impressed that Sam had orchestrated this entire facade with the precision of a seasoned operative. The convenient “network issues and upgrading computers” excuse opened the door for the request for me to bring my laptop. Then there was the task designed to keep my attention occupied while he tried to go fishing through my files.
It was actually kind of brilliant.
