Rafe crossed his arms over his chest and pinned me with a look that was uncannily like the one Jupiter had tried on me too. “Say again?”
“I need Cody to hack N.A.S.A.”
“N.A.S.A.?”
“Yes,” I nodded, wondering why it always needed repeating so many times. It wasn’t like it could be mistaken for anything else. “N.A.S.A.”
Rafe picked up a pile of papers from his in-tray and began sorting through them.
“No, Pennington, he can’t hack N.A.S.A., and you need to stop fucking about. You’re supposed to be pulling the team together. You’ve got Reeves, now you need to work on everyone else.”
“That’s what I am trying to do!” I shut G.Q. and threw it back on the desk in frustration.
“By hacking N.A.S.A.?”
“Yes! Exactly!”
He gave me another one of his cross-witness stares and perched his ass on the desk next to Cody’s but said nothing.
I rolled my eyes. “Jupiter said he’d only come to The Lions if I found a girl for him, and he told me to start at N.A.S.A., which I assumed meant she worked there. So I need to get her to quit N.A.S.A. and come work for me at The Lions.”
“How do you get yourself into these situations?”
“I dunno.” I huffed at the ridiculousness of the question. “It’s not like I said ‘hey Jupe, give me an impossible stipulation to add to your contract’. It’s not like I’m trying to make my life more difficult than it already is. I doactuallyhave a lot on my plate right now, Raferty!”
I turned to Cody who was doing well to hide his amusement, given he was used to Rafe’s curmudgeonly ways when it came toany request I had. Granted, this one was a little more out there than usual.
“I don’t need tohack ithack it. No secrets-to-the-universe-life-on-Mars type shit, just look at the employee list, and you know…” I waved my fingers in the air, mimicking his warp speed typing skills, “do your thing?”
Cody glanced up at Rafe. “Won’t take long, boss. Child’s play.”
“Her name is Marnie Matthews,” I offered up quickly, hoping to add more weight to my argument.
Rafe shook his head with a sigh. “Fine.”
One big stride and I was hugging him hard. “Thank you! You know I love you, Raferty.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Rafe peeled me off him and moved round his desk to sit in the chair. “So, apart from hacking N.A.S.A., how’s it going?”
Cody was already clacking away on his keyboard. I sat in the chair usually occupied by Rafe’s head of investigation, Diego, a behemoth of a man. This chair ought to be housed in the Guinness World Records’ Museum; I was six foot three and my legs would have been dangling over the edge if I hadn’t placed them up on his desk. It was the only way to sit.
“Good, so far. Lowe and I went on a tour of the stadium this morning, met some Lions superfans.”
“The Lions have superfans?” Rafe shot me a sardonic side-eye.
“They do actually. Buck, his name was. He was very helpful.” I pulled my cap up and scratched my head. “The Lions have a lot of love, very loyal but disheartened fans. And I’m going to make it right.”
“Sounds like a great idea. If anyone knows what it’s like to be a fan, it’s you,” he said as he finger-gunned me.
“Yeah,” I grinned.
“And how was it being around Lowe? I take it you were unaccompanied.”
“I didn’t have an emotional breakdown, if that’s what you mean,” I laughed.
Telling him about what had happened with Lowe was on the tip of my tongue, but something stopped me. This was Lowe.Lowe.A perfect, unattainable woman I’d wanted my entire life, and I wasn’t ready to share it with anyone yet. It wasn’t something to gossip or speculate over.
I’d never kept anything from the boys before.
