A Huge Mistake

by Laney Kay

  He dealt with women clients all the time and never had this kind of problem. It had been a long time since he felt such a strong, instant attraction for a woman. Actually, the last time he felt this way was when he met his ex-wife. He shook himself mentally. What the hell was wrong with him? She obviously had a problem, and he was supposed to be helping her out, not trying to figure out a way to help her out of her clothes.

  He suddenly realized they’d stopped and were in her bedroom. He stared at her. “Where are we going?”

  She laughed at his confusion. “This is my bedroom.”

  He inclined his head toward the bed. “Yeah, I got that part. But why are we here?” He tried to look casual as he gazed around at the sleek furnishings and a different view of the skyline. “Nice, by the way.” Nice view. Nice bed. Shit, surely he hadn’t said anything out loud about getting her out of her clothes. Did he?

  She turned toward her closet. “I have a panic room that’s completely secure back here.” She tapped a hidden panel in the back wall and scanned her eye. A door slid open and she walked through the door, saying with her best sultry, Mae West imitation, “Come into my lair, little boy, if you dare.”

  He laughed and followed her inside. She hit the button to close the door and walked across the room to her computer, pulling over an extra chair for Jake. “Here, let me log in and I’ll show you what I’ve got.”

  As she typed busily into her computer, Jake looked around. He saw the monitors on one wall and recognized a live feed of all of the rooms they had just been in, plus a live picture of the garage, the elevator, and several views outside the building. He whistled. “Ms. Lola, this is some setup.”

  Lola stopped typing. “It’s awesome, isn’t it? We call it the Batcave. My main man Mike did it for me after I had a nasty run in with some corporate guys I was prosecuting several years ago. He’s an ex-Navy SEAL, he’s my brother’s best friend since elementary school, he does my personal and business security stuff when I need it, but mostly, he runs my businesses for me.” She finished entering information and as she waited for the computer to run through its scans and setup she turned to face him. “This place is bullet-proof, blast-proof, sound-proof, poisonous gas-proof, and all kinds of surveillance-proof. The computer has every protection possible and the encryption level is whatever the highest level is.” She smiled. “You’d know whatever it is. Me, not so much. Anyway, we put this in during the original construction so that Mike could build it and reinforce it exactly the way he wanted.” She laughed. “And I’d get the stuff I wanted, like a bathroom. Mike says it isn’t as perfect as it could be because I’m on the top floor and I insisted on plumbing with a drain, but he reinforced everything, put filters in, blah, blah, blah, so even he agrees we’re safe as a kitten here. Plus, he put in a generator, so in an emergency, I could stay here as long as I needed.”

  Jake was impressed. “Your buddy knows what he’s doing. This place is great.” He tried to sound casual. “So your ‘main man’, Mike. He’s great with security and he runs your business. I take it y’all are more than business partners?”

  Lola could tell he was as fascinated with her as she was with him, so she decided to mess with him. She gave him a wide-eyed innocent look. “Mike? Well, like I said, he pretty much does everything for me.”

  To say Jake was disappointed was an understatement. It figured. The first time he’d met a woman in years who blew his doors off, and she was taken. He nodded and smiled faintly, and looked at the computer, which was still running through its start-up routine. “Oh, okay, then.” He then looked directly at her before looking back at the monitor. “He’s a lucky man.”

  Lola tried to look serious. “He is. He’s got a job he loves, he makes tons of money, he’s in great shape, and he and his husband just adopted a baby from Guatamala.” She waited for the words to sink in. “And I love him like a brother.”

  His head whipped around. “He’s gay?”

  She laughed. “Yep. ‘Way gay’, as he says. He and his husband were both in the Navy during the whole ‘don’t ask don’t tell’ crap, so rejoining the regular world was pretty great for them. As soon as marriage became legal, we all hopped on a plane and they got married on the beach in Hawaii. It was amazing. My brother was his best man and I was the flower girl.” Her eyes were shining at the memory. “Which meant that I stuck flowers in my hair and walked down the aisle and passed out tropical fruit jello shots to the wedding guests. It was a great wedding.”

  Her computer beeped to indicate it was finally ready to go, and Jake motioned for her to move. “Switch chairs with me. I want to see what I’m working with.”

  Lola stood up and went to get the flash drive out of the safe while Jake started poking around. Within seconds, he was completely immersed in the computer, talking to himself under his breath. Lola sat down and watched him as his fingers flew across the keyboard. Apparently he was impressed with what he saw, and he finally sat back and looked at her. “Mike is your main man. He did a great job with this system. It’s secure, everything’s set up right, and I like the way the system is organized.” He smiled. “Tell him if he ever wants a job, I’ll hire him.”

  She looked alarmed. “Stay the hell away from Mikey. He’s mine.”

  He laughed at the expression of panic on her face. “Okay, okay. Maybe I’ll just borrow him occasionally.” She narrowed her eyes at him and he winked. Then he got serious. “Okay, sugar, enough messing around. It’s work time. Tell me what happened last night, from the beginning.”

  She told him the story, making him roll his eyes with a couple of nasty comments about Alabama, and he listened intently, occasionally asking questions when something wasn’t clear. When she got to the part about the flash drive, she handed it to him and he looked at it and stuck it in the USB port and then listened as she continued her story. When she was done he sat there, thinking intently. “Okay, so you’re not sure this flash drive is from Mitch?”

  She shook her head. “Not for sure. But otherwise, I don’t know where it came from. I lied to my friends that it was from someone else, because I didn’t want them involved, but the truth is, no other client has recently given me a flash drive and he specifically said that he had gotten some information that ‘was a matter of life and death’. And then he turned up dead.” She took a deep breath. “Bottom line, I need to figure what’s on this flash drive to see if it’s something I need to worry about. Because if it is, there’s already one dead person here, and I want to know if someone’s looking to make me the next.”

  He nodded. “I get that.” He turned toward the computer and pulled up the flash drive. “Let’s see what’s what we’ve got.”

  He rapidly scanned through the files until he got to the part that looked like computer coding and then he stopped. Lola pointed at it. “I have no idea what that is, but it looked like some kind of computer code. Can you tell anything from looking at it?”

  He nodded as he slowly scrolled through the pages. “It is code. Hang on a minute.” He stared intently at the screen, his lips moving as he muttered under his breath. Without looking away, he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out a pair of glasses and put them on.

  Lola sat back in her chair and took the time while he was focused intently on the screen to really look him over. Whew. Now he looked even better in a kind of Clark Kent, hot, nerdy way. She was actually kind of shocked at her instant reaction to him. Generally, if she felt a strong attraction to anyone, she would either immediately walk away, or as Daisy put it, attempt to “screw him out of her system”. Most of the time it worked because, other than her only serious boyfriend in college, she had yet to find a man that didn’t start to annoy her after a few days. Now, for the first time in years, she actually wanted to spend a little time with this guy to figure out what it was she found so appealing.

  Jake sat back in his chair and took off his glasses. “Lola, what do you know about computer coding and security?”

  “I know how to spell i
t, and separately, I could use each of those words correctly in a sentence.”

  That made him chuckle. “Okay, let me give you the simple version. Yes, this is some kind of code. It looks like some kind of computer learning app or game, but I really can’t tell exactly what it is right now because I don’t know a lot of specifics.” He stopped and looked at her. “How much detail do you want?”

  “As little as possible.”

  “Okay, here’s a very simplified version of how computer code works. Computer programs are written using a certain language, which is basically whatever language a coder chooses to use when he writes specific code. In order for that code to run on a computer, that code has to be translated so that it can used on a specific computer, because different computers have different sets of instructions programmed inside of them. You use a program called a compiler to translate that code so it can be executed by machines that want to run the program. Bottom line, first you write it, then you translate it using a compiler so that computers can use it. You with me so far?”

  She nodded slowly. “I think so.”

  “Here’s where it gets tricky. Since I don’t know what source code was used to write this, I can’t just read this program to see what it says. It would be like me trying to read a story in Italian without a way to translate it. I can tell it’s Italian when I see it, and I recognize words here and there so I might have a vague idea what it’s about, but since I don’t actually read Italian, I couldn’t tell you what the story’s specifically about.”

  “So there’s no way to figure out what this is?” She looked disappointed. “Shit, so we still don’t know if this is from that weasel Mitch?”

  He patted her leg comfortingly. “No, what I’m saying is that I can’t tell in two minutes while we’re sitting here. That’s what my computer minions are for. Trust me, I have dozens of very skilled programmers and hackers at my disposal that will be able to figure this out. That’s what we do.” He put his glasses back on and turned back to the computer. “Let’s see what the rest of this is about.”

  He looked at the spread sheets. “These are projections of something, and whatever it is, it looks like they’re expecting whatever it is to increase significantly over a period of time, whether it’s money or sales of an item, or whatever. Without knowing what they’re talking about, these numbers don’t mean much.”

  “I got that.”

  Jake scrolled up to the memos and started rapidly scanning them. “Is this Pandora Unlimited the company that Mitchell worked with, Lola?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. He worked with some pharmaceutical company, Deleon Labs, no Pandora anywhere I could find.”

  “What does Deleon Labs do?”

  She rubbed her face. The lack of sleep was starting to catch up with her, plus she was still hungry. She knew that was a bad combination for her, but she knew they needed to figure this out, so she tried to ignore her growling stomach and answered his question. “Some skin stuff, prescription sunscreen and acne treatments, plus some opioid pain meds and prescription level anti-inflammatories. Nothing weird or experimental.” Lola looked frustrated. “How is any of this information worth killing someone over?” Lola stood up and started pacing across the room, “Seriously, Jake, this doesn’t make any sense. It’s much more likely that slimy asshole stole money from the wrong person and it got him killed. I can’t see why anyone would get killed over these vague memos and random projections.”

  Jake watched her pace, enjoying her energy and her expressive face. When she finally stopped pacing she stood watching the monitors with her back to Jake. She lifted her sweatshirt to fan herself with it and Jake finally got a glimpse of her tight little butt. Perfect. He cleared his throat and she turned around as he pointed to her fanning herself. “Hot flash?”

  She rolled her eyes. “No, just a little hot under the collar. I’m pissed off, Jake. I don’t like people screwing with my life, and the fact that it’s that little shithead Mitchell doing it makes it even worse.” She stalked over to the seat next to Jake and threw herself in the chair. She pointed to the memos. “I thought these memos looked like they were related to some kind of testing, or something, maybe a clinical trial?”

  He wasn’t sure. “I don’t know. It talks about programming and pathways. Path can be a computer term, so maybe it has to do with software. I really don’t know.”

  She dropped her head back against the headrest. “So really, we don’t know anything more than we did before.”

  He ejected the drive, put it in his front pants pocket and shut down the computer. He then took off his glasses and spun her chair to face him, putting his hands on the arms of the chair so she was hemmed in. She lifted her head and looked at him as he smiled at her. “That’s not true. We do know there’s some kind of computer program and we know that I have people who can figure out exactly what we’re looking at. I can get some more information on the company Mitch worked with and maybe figure out what this Pandora Unlimited does. We don’t know if the flash drive is from Mitch, but we do know Mitch is a complete weasel. That’s something.”

  Jake pulled her chair closer and leaned forward so that his face was almost in the curve of her neck. “And I just discovered that you smell as delicious as you look.” He closed his eyes and inhaled. “What is that? Coconut?”

  Lola smiled and tilted her neck so he’d have easier access. “Coconut and vanilla body butter.” His nose tickled its way down her neck and she could feel his lips lightly drag down the length to the sensitive spot where her neck joined her shoulder. Damn, she wanted to feel that mouth on hers. She moaned a little, really more of a “Hmmmmmm…” before she finally came to her senses and pulled back. “Hey wait, buddy, we’re not done with business, yet.”

  He straightened up and looked at her, his eyes hot and hungry, and he slowly smiled. “Sorry. I thought we were.”

  Lola felt that look all the way down to her stomach and she felt her nipples tighten, but she tried to concentrate and shook her head. “Nope. What did we decide? Will you help me out? You’ll put together a contract? Do you need a retainer? Just tell me what you need to get started.”

  Jake looked offended and leaned back so there was more space between them. “This is just a friend helping a friend. There may be nothing to this, so I’m not charging you anything till we decide exactly what we’re dealing with, here. Let me give it to the guys in my lab, and in the meantime I’ll do what I do, which is poke around to see if I can find some information on Mitch, this Deleon Labs, and Pandora Unlimited. As soon as I hear anything, I’ll let you know. And in the meantime, you need to be super careful where you go and what you do. And if you see anything funny, call me immediately. Got it?” He scooted his chair forward and started to pull her chair toward him so she fit between his widespread knees. “Now, where were we? You said that we, quote, ‘could have a lot of fun as soon as the business was done.’ I don’t know about you, but I think we’re done for now.”

  Lola put his hand on his chest to hold him back. “Hang on, big boy. We’re almost done. Let’s get a couple of things clear first. One, you’re not the boss of this operation, so understand that if we do any of this, we do it as partners and we work together. I want to know whatever you find.” He wanted to roll his eyes, but he wisely held back, fairly sure that if he did, she’d punch him in the face. She continued. “Secondly, I will pay you for your time. Your geek minions aren’t free, and I have no problem paying for your services. I expect to pay some sort of retainer, and I’ll pay you just like any other client pays you.” She dropped her hand and leaned back in the chair with a challenging smile. “Got it?”

  He didn’t move, he didn’t say anything, he just sat there looking at her with a small polite smile. She started to look confused. “What?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Now are we done with the business portion of our meeting?”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “I don’t know. Are you okay with all that?”

  He shrugged.
“Whatever, partner. I’ll have my assistant send you a standard retainer agreement and we’ll go from there, and as far as keeping you updated on what’s going on, I want to spend time getting to know you, so if you want me to keep you current on everything, you’ll have to meet with me.” He started to lean toward her. “How’s that? Now, are we done?”

  Lola was tired of fighting it. “Yep. Now we’re done.” She leaned forward, grabbed his face, and kissed that beautiful mouth before he could say another word. Before Lola knew it, they were locked in one of the hottest kisses she’d ever had. Her arms were tight around his neck and he had one hand buried in her hair and the other around her hips so he could pull her closer between his spread knees as they kissed. After a few minutes, he couldn’t decide whether to lift her onto his lap or drag her down to the floor, and that’s when he realized they needed to slow down. He pulled his head back, and took in her dazed expression, her pink cheeks and her lips swollen from their passionate kiss. Whatever this crazy attraction was, he wanted them to take their time to figure it out. He didn’t want them to just jump into bed, because he was pretty sure that’s where they were heading if he didn’t put the brakes on. He decided to throw her a curve ball and see what happened.

  He hugged her close and put a big smooching kiss on her neck. “So, you hungry?”

  Lola was totally confused. What the hell? Why did he stop? Shit, how could he stop? She felt like another minute or two of kissing and she was going to pull off her clothes and climb him like a tree. Maybe it didn’t affect him as much as it did her. She pulled back and looked down at his lap. Nope. That wasn’t the problem. She looked him in the eye and saw the same desire she felt reflected back, so she decided to play along and see what happened. “Sure. I can always eat.”