Total pages in book: 115
Estimated words: 105813 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 105813 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 529(@200wpm)___ 423(@250wpm)___ 353(@300wpm)
My hands shook, and my ears pounded. If he fucking hurt her, I wouldn’t just kill him. I’d kill him slowly and painfully.
I spent my first two days as CEO of Trenchant Media ruminating on this shit between introductory meetings with department heads. Kaci didn’t return to work after she left with Collin, and Friday morning, she called in sick.
The GPS tracker I’d wedged behind her windshield turned me into a stalker. She took the bike out Thursday and Friday night. The app on my tablet showed her hitting top-speeds around the outskirts of the city. For two nights, I watched that red dot move over the map like a man possessed.
Like now, sprawled on the couch in Benny’s gaming area, I couldn’t bring myself to look away. There was comfort in it, knowing she was out riding her bike rather than at home riding her husband.
I ached to jump on my bike, chase her down, and demand answers. Hell, I had a key to her condo. I could barge in and fuck the truth out of her.
I pulled on the collar of my t-shirt, a desperate knot hardening in my throat.
Which was why my ass was on this couch. I needed to cool off as much as she needed to nurse her wounds. I’d give us both until Monday. Two more days.
Benny stretched out beside me with her laptop balancing on her stomach as she stalked Kaci on Trenchant’s internal network.
Using a clone of my top-level security profile, she dropped sniffers on servers and desktops tied to the network while disabling action-logging to hide her trail. These wire-taps were a lightweight hack, a simple way to monitor Kaci’s online activities, so I was surprised as hell when she told me an hour later she’d found something.
She leaned up and twirled one of the dozens of blue braids covering her head. “Jenna Greer.”
I hadn’t met Jenna yet, but I knew who she was. “Kaci’s administrative assistant.”
She gestured at the activity log on her screen. “Yeah, so she picks up these files from an encrypted server every day and e-mails them to Kaci.”
I raked a hand through my hair, unable to drag my eyes from the moving dot on my tablet. “What files?”
“Don’t know. They’re encrypted.”
And she’d need the private key to open them. The app on my tablet chirped, the dot moving north, Kaci’s speed reaching 160 miles per hour. My heart raced as I pictured her in her silver leathers, her braid whipping around her back, risking her goddamned safety at that speed. I wanted her straddling me, bent forward and ass up, her thighs gripping mine like her life depended on it.
Benny leaned over my shoulder. “No matter how long you stare at that dot, it’s not going to sprout an ass and tits.” She tapped her chin. “Though I could code a modification for that. Think about it. An x-rated GPS navigator that guides you to your destination with a naked avatar and a bedroom voice.” She tilted her head back and drawled a ridiculously low moan, “Take a hard right, baby. Yeah, right there. Drive harder.”
I sighed heavily and turned off the tablet. “Jenna sends encrypted files to Kaci. And…?”
She rolled her green eyes and turned back to her laptop. “I checked out the activity on the server. The only other users logging in are Hal Pinkerton and Trent Anderson. Hal drops files. Jenna and Trent pick them up.”
Who the hell was Hal Pinkerton?
For the next two hours, we hacked public and private records. Hal was a reporter at Trenchant under Kaci’s chain of command. He paid property taxes on a Hayabusa sportbike, and two months ago, his father was released from prison on a legal technicality.
But the most interesting discovery? We tracked him to an ID on the underground racing network. A feat only Benny could pull off since she’d developed the platform.
Hal Pinkerton had access to a network the FBI wanted to shut down and the Trenchant Times would love to expose. What disconcerted me was seeing both Kaci and Trent logging onto the same server. Were they working together? Was one tracking the other? Or was it coincidence?
The next night, I raced against an overweight American, who called himself The Sliminator. Before, during, and after I beat his fat ass, her silver Ducati loomed at the forefront of my thoughts.
But when I crossed the finish line, I didn’t look for her, my focus obsessively fixated on the red dot blinking at the edge of my visor display. She was fifteen miles away.
I circled the city to shake any tails that might’ve been following, something I did after every race. Then I went after her.
It was impulsive and futile. Dressed as Evader, I couldn’t ask her the questions that were gnawing at my insides. And the puzzle surrounding her and Hal Pinkerton magnified the importance of my anonymity. Last thing I needed was for her to connect the CEO of Trenchant to Evader.