by Lara Nance
She, a freshman mathematics major, had scored highest in the first round of evaluations. He, the junior computer whiz who’d believed the class an easy path toward fulfilling his life sciences requirement, had received the lowest mark. He’d needed a tutor, and she’d been too awestruck to say no. Over the next two years, they’d become close friends.
And then she’d botched it all in a single unrestrained moment.
With a mental slap, she brought herself back to the present. Needing to pretend for a few minutes they were old college buddies playing catch-up, she remarked on the baseball cap covering his curly, brown hair. “Since when did you become a Yankees fan?”
His brows drew together. “Since when did you get this pretty?”
The unexpected compliment brought a blush to her cheeks. She swallowed, took a deep breath, and beamed him her best smile “Since you switched out real glasses for fake hipster ones. LASIK makes everything clearer, and astigmatism lenses apparently add pounds. Everything looks narrower after the surgery.”
He scrolled his shoulders. “Hopefully it doesn’t have the same effect on you. I worked hard to buff up.”
She giggled. The schoolgirl reaction made her want to smack her own face. Of all the times to flirt, this moment couldn’t be worse. With a sigh, she brought up the elephant in the room. “This morning, I opened a package that had a brand new phone I didn’t order in it. When I turned it on, a video message from numero uno on the America’s Most Wanted list played. Why don’t you take a few seconds to remind me why I’m at the National Gallery with you?”
He stared at her for a long moment before shaking his head. When their gazes met once more, the shadows in his eyes were gone, his grin a perfect facsimile of the one he’d aimed at her on the day they met. She hadn’t been immune to it then, and her resistance hadn’t improved in the interim. “You’ve always wanted to smash your good desi-girl image. I’m about to offer you the perfect opportunity.”
His innocent expression could melt the Snow Queen’s heart. Nonetheless, she bared her teeth. “I can manage that just fine without your help. And as a second generation immigrant, the ‘from the homeland’ label doesn’t really apply.”
The dimples on his cheeks deepened, making her remember why he’d always been able to convince her to do anything. “What was that acronym again? ABCD? It used to get your brother’s panties in a twist.”
ABCD stood for American-born confused desi, a term used to describe young people whose parents emigrated from the Indian subcontinent who grappled with balancing their ethnic heritage and the cultural norms in the United States. As her brother’s dorm mate, Zack had quickly discovered the term’s utility as a way to annoy the South Asian class fellows who happened to make up a huge chunk of MIT’s student body. Since Maya had never found either aspect of her identity problematic, she’d never understood what the fuss was all about.
Lifting a challenging brow, she pointed at her skirt. It cut off a whole two inches above her knees. “My mother would be scandalized by this hemline.”
He snorted. “And your dad would tell her to take a chill pill. Remember, I’ve eaten half-a-dozen meals with your parents. Your mom’s on the traditional side, but, as her only daughter, you’d get away with murder. Besides, you always say, ‘Ji haan…. Yes…. Sure thing….’ on the phone.” He formed air quotes with his fingers. “And then you do whatever you want to do. Your prudishness is all on you, Owl.”
She playfully punched his chest. “Don’t call me Owl. I don’t even wear glasses anymore.” The absurdity of their banter wasn’t lost on her. Considering his predicament, this conversation couldn’t be more out of place. Yet the words, the smiles, and even the laughter came as naturally as breathing. “How much trouble are you in?”
He bent his head forward, bringing his lips a quarter of an inch closer to the top of her head. His expression could only be described as sheepish. “Can’t you tell I’m stalling? Give me a moment to enjoy this before I start acting like an ass.”
Deciding not to fight a losing battle, she leaned into his hold. “I don’t think you could be that if you tried.”
His grip maintained the short distance separating them. “It was a dick move to ask you to come here.”
“I agree, but why don’t you tell me how I can help you?”
Stress lines bracketed his mouth. “Aren’t you going to ask me some questions first?”
She frowned. “Like what?”
“Whether or not I’m guilty of espionage, for one.”
Though hampered by his hands, she managed a shrug. “It doesn’t matter. We’re friends, aren’t we?”
“It depends on your definition.” It took a moment before Zack realized he’d blurted the words out loud. Judging from the way Maya’s dark brows drew together, they’d zeroed in on the exact same memory.
Friends didn’t kiss. Given, they’d shared just the one, and he’d hightailed it out of her life almost immediately after, but the unfortunate lip-lock would always complicate the question of where they stood. And if someone asked him right then to slot their relationship into a neat little box, “friends” wouldn’t be it. Why? For one, he hadn’t thought about anything but kissing her for the past three minutes. Considering every branch of the all-powerful but dumb-as-fuck US government had painted a bright-red bulls-eye on his ass, his inconvenient reaction was a testament to their complicated status.
His brain should be devoted to the task of clearing his name, not figuring out how to shift his weight so his zipper wouldn’t press uncomfortably on a growing part of his body. He shouldn’t be fascinated by the hint of pink tinting Maya’s whisky-colored skin, or the scent of cinnamon and orange floating off her hair. The last thing he should notice were her long, curly lashes—the sooty fringes framing her almost black eyes such that they appeared huge on her oval face. The urge to press his lips against the pulse at the base of her neck, to move his fingers down her smooth, bare arms, to trace the curvy contours of her body, couldn’t have presented itself at a worse moment.
God knew he’d had a hard enough time not noticing how hot she was all those years before, when she wore thick, owlish glasses, baggy jeans, and sweatshirts and had hair so frizzy he’d once asked if she’d been electrocuted. Even then, he hadn’t been able to push her away when she leaned over to kiss him. Instead, he’d captured her head and angled it for full access to those luscious lips, tongue delving into her mouth and making her whimper with need.
That deep-seated, guttural need to possess, to push her onto the narrow mattress and wedge his body between her plush thighs, to slide his hands under her T-shirt to unhook her bra—it had driven him to run as far and as fast as he could. She’d stuck by his side when his disastrous love life had turned him into a moping, ill-tempered, ramen-guzzling hermit, and he hadn’t wanted to repay the favor by taking them on an emotional roller coaster doomed to failure.
After an arduous extraction from an eternity-long cluster fuck of a relationship, the last thing he’d wanted was to fuse lips with one of the few girls he could carry on a conversation with, or so his idiot self thought at the time. Twenty-three, newly graduated, with a dream job waiting for him on the other side of the continent, and single for the first time in what seemed like forever, the thought of turning his only real friend into his girlfriend—who would later blame him for everything that went wrong in her life—had almost given him a panic attack.
Maya’d had two more years of college to go, and having gone through the long-distance thing for half a decade, fucking it up so badly he could write a how-to guide on the hazards of Skype, he’d arrived at the conclusion he was an emotionally neutered, potty-mouthed embodiment of the world’s worst boyfriend. His crap logic led him to believe that if he’d tried to give the whole attempt at happily ever after another go, he’d end up hurting the person he cared about most.
If he could go back in time, he’d slap himself silly. The world had a limited supply of girls with brains who shared h
is taste for videogames and sci-fi TV shows. Discarding the opportunity to snag one was the very definition of dumb. To add insult to injury, the damn woman had gotten even more irresistible with age. Her hair flowed in layered waves down to her ribcage. That capped-sleeve, silk blouse hugged her breasts, the first button starting low enough he glimpsed a hint of cleavage. The cream-colored material tucked into a black, painted-on pencil skirt, which showcased her toned, evenly tanned legs. With her tiny little feet encased in kitten heels, his once dorky study partner had turned into temptation incarnate.
Which meant he needed to get the hell away from her as soon as humanly possible, at least until the CIA, NSA, FBI, and Homeland Security were no longer determined to send him to an off-the-map black-site prison for the rest of his wretched life.
“My definition of what?” Maya’s question jerked Zack out of his mental self-flagellation.
Mad as hell at himself, he scratched the back of his head. “It’s not important. Let’s go sit on one of those benches and talk.”
Without protest, she followed him to sit with her legs crossed on a slab of black marble. The exhibit wasn’t popular, and they were the only people in the room. He found his gaze drifting to her lap before he jerked his head up and plunked his ass down next to hers. Taking a deep breath, he flattened his palms on the cold surface and used the icy sensation to reel in his less-than platonic thoughts.
Deciding the best way out was to give her the necessary information as quickly as possible, he shifted mental gears and focused on the events leading to his current predicament. “About a year ago, I was contracted by the National Security Agency for what they called Operation Owl.”
She turned and squinted at him. “Operation Owl? Are you sure you’re not making this up?”
He rolled his eyes. “The irony isn’t lost on me either. Apparently, the person in charge of naming these NSA projects was a Nicodemus fan, so fairy-tale titles were used as operation code names. Mine happened to be The Owl.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You do realize the confluence of operation name, my nickname, and this meeting place supports the theory you’re a schizophrenic conspiracy theorist, right?”
He scowled. “And sane people don’t use words like ‘confluence’ in every day conversation. Do you want to hear my story or not?”
She patted his shoulder. “Sorry. Please continue.”
He had a feeling she was making fun of him but decided to let it slide. “The goal of Operation Owl is simple. The country’s top white hat hackers—”
“And now we can add delusions of grandeur to your list of symptoms,” she murmured.
Detecting a hint of amusement, he cleared his throat. “Some white hat hackers were hired to gain access to the Barn—a bank of servers the NSA uses to intercept any and all electronic communication. The government would like to think the facility is impervious to offsite attacks, but they wanted to make sure. We were given a simple task—break in, retrieve a picture of an owl they hid among the data, and brief them about their vulnerabilities. The people who contracted us were pretty damn sure we’d all fail.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t?”
He snorted. “The US government is the least technologically savvy entity in this country. Breaking into the Barn was like taking candy from a baby. What I didn’t expect to find was a vulnerability built into the code—a back door that would allow any systems administrator to not only read communications, but to also intercept and change them before delivery.”
Her spine snapped straight, her shoulders drawing back. As one of the most intelligent people he’d encountered, he’d known it’d take her mere seconds to connect the dots. “You reported it, didn’t you?”
Remembering the moment of stupidity tempted him to slam his fist onto the marble bench. Hindsight was a bitch. “Bill Camden—the contracting agent who gave me the job—was a buddy of mine. I omitted the findings from the official brief I turned in, but I gave him a verbal report. He told me he was going to send the information up the food chain as soon as I left his office.”
Silence surrounded them for a long while, truncated only by distant echoes of footsteps. “And?” she prompted.
Rage coiled in his gut and turned into a lump in his throat. “And the healthy, thirty-three-year-old triathlete died of a heart attack the next day, leaving behind a wife and two children.”
Her breath came out in a hiss. “D—arn.”
Despite the oppressive torrent of emotions pummeling him on all sides, he chuckled. “I’m pretty sure my story warrants ‘Damn.’”
She rolled her shoulders, as if needing to relieve the tension. “Swearing doesn’t improve any situation, and I’ve been trying to cut down on it. Okay, I’m guessing they figured out you were involved.”
“In a manner of speaking. They suspected I had a link to Bill after I hacked into their system again and downloaded a huge chunk of their database—specifically a two-year log of every intercepted communication, doctored or otherwise, as well as usernames of the agents who accessed the server. Then I hacked into a different system and matched those identifiers to personnel records.”
Her jaw dropped. “Of all the stupid, idiotic, egotistical moves—”
“I was pissed, all right?” His voice resonated in the empty room. Realizing the mistake, he modulated the rest of his explanation. “Bill was my friend. His kids are now fatherless. I needed to figure out who killed him—I owe the man at least that much.”
She puffed out her cheeks and pursed her lips. The woman had one of the cutest angry-faces he’d ever seen. “And now you’ve gone and ruined your life. Did you find out what you wanted at least?”
“No. That’s where you come in.”
“That’s where I what?” The question came out as a squeak.
He reached into his pocket and took out a USB thumb drive shaped as a gold bracelet. “I’m a hacker, not a forensic accountant.” Grabbing her left hand, he circled the memory device around her slim wrist. “Here’s a copy of all the data, close to a terabyte of it. I need you to use your voodoo math skills to figure out who profited from these interceptions and how.”
Contents
Title page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
~A Letter from the Author ~
Beyond Fairytales
Table of Contents
Title page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
~A Letter from the Author ~
Beyond Fairytales
