She looked at her best friend. Dani had been invaluable in planning some of the rescues. Her strategic mind was damned impressive.
“Okay. Thank you. But only for the planning. I don’t want you involved in the execution. I don’t want you drawing the company’s attention.”
“Fair enough,” Dani said after thinking it over.
“Plus I need you to run the bar.”
“Of course you do.” Dani laughed.
“And first...” Taryn paused, embarrassment tinting her cheeks. “I need to let Ash know he’s not banned anymore.”
“You’re insane,” Dani said through exasperated laughter.
Yeah, she probably was.
Chapter17
“You sleepingon the job over there, Ash?” Mocking laughter followed the question.
Ash started, then glared at the man who’d said his name. “Real funny, Mendez.”
Removing his hands from the keyboard, Ash laced his fingers together and cracked his knuckles. He’d been staring at his computer screen for what felt like hours, waiting for the cyberattacks that brought meaning to his day.
Over the satisfying pops, he taunted Mendez. “Asleep or not, I can kick your ass any day of the week.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so. You were over there with a goofy look on your face. New lady?”
Damn. He needed a better poker face. Mendez wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t completely right either. Ash had been focused on—okay, obsessing about—his confrontation with the Jack.
He’d fucked up.
“Maybe,” Ash said. If he had a friend on the team—which he didn’t—it would be Mendez. The other man had been here longer than Ash had. They got along but Ash didn’t trust him. He didn’t—couldn’t—trust any of the other hackers who had been pressed into service by the Tremaine Corporation.
Mendez was clearly waiting for an answer and when Ash took too long to reply, he crowed, “You do! Spill, man!”
Ash sighed and shook his head. The whole team was looking at him now. He had to say something. “There’s nothing to tell. Yet.” There, that sounded mysterious, right?
Razor Jack’s wasn’t a team hangout—it was on the other side of town—but why take unnecessary risks, like giving any of these jokers real information.
“Let’s bet on it.” Excitement tinged Mendez’s voice.
The crazy bastard’s mind worked in mysterious ways. “How is this bet-worthy?”
“Give me a break, Ash. I’m dying of boredom here. So are you. Let’s do something to make this shift less shitty.”
That was why he liked Mendez: the other man wasn’t completely under Tremaine’s thumb.
“Fine. What’s the wager?” The only way to get out of this was to go through it. Any more protesting and they would decide he really did have something to hide. That was the last thing he needed.
Some of the other hackers shouted suggestions ranging from dumb to downright pornographic. Ash swiveled in his chair to study the rest of the group. His team was small, a dozen or so hackers on duty at any given time, with a bona fide Tremaine Security grunt riding herd.
The security center was smaller than most people expected. It was set up like a theater, with three rows of workstations stair-stepped up one side of the room. Ash’s desk was in the top row, Mendez’s right next to him. Some hackers worked with a cluster of screens mounted around their station, hands practically strapped to their keyboards. Others preferred headsets that put them right into the cyber battle. The only way to get closer to the action was to link up through a bodyport. No one on this team was allowed to have an active port.
Ash raised a hand to the back of his neck, brushing his fingertips over the skin at his hairline. His port was a hard metal nub, right below a layer of skin. So close to the surface, but sealed off as long as he was under Tremaine’s thumb.
He thought about taking a razor to the skin and freeing the port almost every damn day. Each time he resisted the urge, knowing it wouldn’t do him any good and might make things worse for Hope.
The curved wall at the front of the room was essentially a giant monitor. Computer code scrolled along the edges of the screen, with a digital map occupying the center of the display. Little red dots indicated where the nonstop barrage of attempted hacks originated.
