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Had the hacker given up? Did Zane beat him? Or, did Cipher just walk away with some damn valuable intel?
“Motherfucker!” Zane calmed his breathing and bolted up off the hammock, getting tangled up in the netting and nearly falling on his face. He shoved it away and jogged straight over to Pharaoh’s bungalow, marched past Saint who sat on the back step smoking and shoved the sliding glass door open.
Braxton sat at the kitchen island, cleaning his gun.
“We have a serious goddamn problem,” Zane announced, swinging his laptop out from under his arm and setting it on the granite counter with a thunk. “I think I just got hacked.”
“You?” Braxton arched a dark brow, voice full of disbelief. “How is that even possible?”
“I have no idea, but some asshole named Cipher just—”
“Cipher?”
“Shit!” They all made the connection at once. Zane felt like a dunce and almost smacked his forehead. It was a name they knew. A name Lester Tillman had mentioned to Mr. Smith.
“How the hell did he get into your network?” Saint asked, stepping inside. “Your firewall is impenetrable.”
“I guess not,” Zane said, and it pained him to admit there might be someone better than him out there. Actually, he knew a certain person of the female persuasion who was a better hacker, but he’d rather die than admit it.
River Larsen.
Her name flashed through his mind. Even though it had been five long years since he’d last slept in a bed beside her, he could still remember what she smelled like. Would never forget the way her teasing scent always lingered on the sheets. Clinging and tempting him. Driving him mad on those hot, desert nights.
Honey.She smelled like the headiest of honey and his traitorous body immediately began to respond. Which pissed him off to no end. As far as he was concerned, his history with River was exactly that.
History.
She’d made her true feelings clear after he’d gone out on a limb and suggested they start seeing each other. For real. Not just playing house and pretending to be married so they could infiltrate a terrorist ring.
River had politely turned him down. Said they would never work. Even though they’d spent a year faking everything. Hell, half the time Zane wasn’t sure what had been real and what had been acting. He’d felt like a complete fool and said a quick goodbye after wishing her the best.
River Larsen was the one who got away.
Zane might have forced himself to accept how things ended, but he’d never been able to forget her. Or forgive her. Not completely, anyway. All that thick black hair and those deep, green eyes. Smooth tanned skin, endlessly long legs and those tempting, slender curves of hers still haunted him on lonely nights.
“We need to prevent this Cipher from attacking the network again.” Brax rolled his shoulders back and crossed his arms.
Zane lifted his glasses, squeezed his eyes shut and pinched the bridge of his nose. “Yeah, I know.”
And that meant one thing—he needed help from the last person in the world he wanted to call. The one woman he never thought he would have contact with again.
River fucking Larsen.
???
River Larsen stared at the screen as she sipped black coffee from an oversized mug.Bleck.It was cold. She sighed. Something still wasn’t quite right with her code. She’d been staring at ones and zeros for hours and a headache began to pound.
Pinching the bridge of her nose, she rolled her chair back. She needed fresh, hot, black caffeine goodness. It would help her refocus and settle in for a long night of work.
As she poured freshly ground beans into the filter, she couldn’t help notice how her hands shook. Caffeine jitters. She’d been drinking it steadily all day. Maybe she should lay off the coffee and start drinking smoothies or something healthy. She ate for shit, lived on caffeine and frozen pizzas, always forgot to take her vitamins and wasn’t getting any younger. Sad to say, but her daily exercise consisted of walking from the office to the kitchen to make more coffee.
As a self-employed security analyst, she spent most of her day in an ergonomic chair, staring at her computer screen. Companies hired her to identify and correct flaws in their security systems. Her job was to monitor, prevent and stop attacks by creating and implementing firewalls and software systems to protect an organization’s data and networks.
In short, corporations paid River to find the weak spots, hack into their systems and then turn around and fix them so no one else could do the same thing. She enjoyed the challenge of her job. And nothing beat sitting at home all day, listening to her favorite hair bands, while her fingers danced across the keyboard. Right now, Jon Bon Jovi was singing about some woman who gave love a bad name.
Sometimes, though, after the caffeine stopped working, like now, she couldn’t shake the jitters or loneliness that swept over her. River rarely left her house anymore. And thinking too deeply about her life choices brought on threats of depression.
It’s not that she was ungrateful or had a bad life. She had plenty of money, owned her own home and loved her family, even though she rarely saw them. But was it enough? She often thought that after she died and she sat down to watch the movie that had been her life, she would be sorely disappointed.
