Page 69 of Hacking the Holidays
My blood went cold.
I glanced over at her.
Rose was typing away on her laptop, seemingly absorbed in the task I had assigned her, but there was the faintest curve to her lips. Not quite a smile. More like the satisfied expression of someone who’d just played a very good card.
Did she know it was me trying to access her files, or did she think she had a random intruder from somewhere in the world?
Most people didn’t even know when someone was poking around their system. Rose had shut me down in seconds. She was good. Really good.
I took a breath and changed tactics.
I tried every backdoor I knew—outdated drivers, unpatched services, anything. Nothing. Everything was locked down tight. Tighter than it should be for a casual user’s laptop. This wasn’t standard security. This was professional-grade protection.
Who travels with this level of security?
My screen flickered with a message:
INTRUSION DETECTED.
COUNTER-MEASURES DEPLOYED.
Then, to my horror, my laptop froze.
Not even a spinning wheel of death—it was completely frozen! My cursor wouldn’t move. My keyboard didn’t respond. For thirty agonizing seconds, I had zero control over my machine.
The room felt too small suddenly, the air too thick. My hands were shaking as I tried to figure out what was going on. I pressed them flat against the table, forcing them still.My desperation was showing, and I hated it. This had never happened before. Ever.
Then, just as suddenly, everything came back to life on my laptop, and another notification flashed across my screen.
INCOMING FILE TRANSFER.
I could not believe this was happening again.
What was Rose sending me this time?
A new text file appeared on my desktop:
Stop_It_Now.txt
I clicked on it and read the message:
You don’t know who you’re messing with.
The words hit me like a slap to the face.
I’d spent years thinking I was untouchable, the one who always had the upper hand when someone tried to outsmart me. Five minutes with Rose, and she’d obliterated this gladiator. Russell Crowe would’ve been ashamed of me.
Suddenly, I wasn’t the hunter anymore.
I was the prey.
My jaw clenched so hard it hurt.
And worse—much worse—underneath the frustration and humiliation, there was something else. Respect. Maybe even attraction. What kind of masochist gets turned on by someone who just digitally destroyed him?
Apparently, me, that’s who.
I looked up slowly to read her body language.
