Page 96 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
“Like I said, brother—that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”
We gaze at each other in silence for a moment, while my tangled thoughts drift.
“You like to play games, don’t you?”
“Only games I can win.”
Finally Connor says, “Maybe he’s one of her exes. Still got a flame burnin’, thinks he’s being a gentleman by looking out for her. Or maybe she doesn’t even know him or have any idea this kind of protection is in place; she’s just the lucky recipient of an obsessed fan’s particular skill set.” His voice grows serious. “Or maybe—and I’m just sayin’ maybe—Victoria Price has all kinds of secrets she’s hiding, and keeps some very interesting people on payroll to make sure those secrets don’t ever come out.”
Or maybe she’s actually Polaroid herself.
Aloud I ask, “How can we find out?”
Connor smiles his getting-down-to-business cutthroat smile. I knew he’d already have a plan.
Unfortunately, it’s one I immediately dislike.
“We need to get inside her house.”
“Connor. I’m not authorizing you to break into her house.”
He makes an irritated noise. “Man, get your dick outta your brain for a second. This broad you’re bangin’ is somehow connected to a serious fuckin’ cyber criminal who’s on all the most wanted lists—”
“Most wanted? You said he didn’t steal anything!”
His look sours. “You think the government cares that Polaroid didn’t sell national security secrets to our enemies, that he just wandered into our military computer systems and took a look around because he was amusing himself? This guy is considered highly dangerous. And if the authorities found out that Miss Bitches Do Better had any connection whatsoever to him, she’d already be in an interrogation room.”
His look turns penetrating. “And so would you.”
He’s right. Jesus Christ, he’s right.
Am I cavorting with an international criminal? Is the woman I can’t get out of my
head the mastermind behind a series of ingenious cyber attacks? Could I be arrested for complicity?
More importantly: do I care?
Connor settles back into his chair and laces his fingers over his chest. His voice comes out deceptively calm, but I sense what’s brimming beneath:
War.
“So here are my thoughts on the matter. I conduct a search of her premises, real quiet and real thorough. I get hands-on access to any and all documents, safes, computers. Hardware’s easier to crack than code, especially considering the software her hacker friend’s got lined up as a defense. I can get a block-level clone of her entire hard drive in under ten minutes if I’m at her desktop. I can also seed her computer with keylogging software so we’ll be able to see everything she’s typing, but she won’t know. You’ll have all the answers you want, I’ll maybe find out who this douchebag Polaroid is, and all it’ll take is making sure Victoria is out of the house for a few hours.”
He watches me for several moments as I try to wrap my head around the hugeness of the betrayal I’d be guilty of. When I remain silent, he slides my phone across the desk toward me and says drily, “Or you can sit there with your limp dick in your hand as she makes a fool out of you.”
I say, “We don’t know she’s tracking me with my phone. Or targeting me in any way, for that matter. This is all total conjecture at this point.”
Connor’s answer is immediate. “We don’t know that she’s not. Or, if she’s not—who is.”
The way Connor looks at me makes my skin crawl. “I know you have some deeply ingrained trust issues, Connor, but please tell me you’re not suggesting I’m the target of espionage at the hands of a genius, criminal computer hacker.”
Please tell me we’re not thinking the exact same thing.
“To be honest with you, Parker, I don’t know what to think. All I know is that your lady friend looks squeaky clean on paper, but has someone on her side who once intercepted the source code of the International Space Station, which caused NASA to shut down their computers for two weeks. If that doesn’t concern you, I want what you’ve been smoking.”
Inhaling deeply, I rise. “I need to think about this.”
Connor says with chilling softness, “Roger that. But you should know, brother, whatever you decide, I’ve got a score to settle with this motherfucker Polaroid. You don’t want to look further into Victoria Price, that’s your call. But her friend has cost me millions in contracts, and just fried all thirty-three drives on this Origin system I spent a year perfecting because I got a little too close.”
