He was hurting. I hated myself for it. But it was necessary. This had gone on too long. Gone too far. I had gotten from him what I needed. Information.
Feelings were involved now.
Freedom Overdrive demanded I end this now.
And I felt like total shit.
“I care about you, Mason. Just give me some time.” What was I doing?
Why was I leaving the door open to him?
“I’ll give you all the time in the world. Just don’t shut me out, Hannah. Please don’t.”
“Goodbye, Mason.”
I hung up before I could renege completely. That wasn’t how I intended the breakup to go.
Could that even be construed as a breakup?
My email pinged and I had to put all thoughts of Mason from my mind.
It was time.
Chapter 25
Mason
I hung up the phone feeling dead inside.
Had Hannah really just broken up with me?
My desk phone rang. I thought about ignoring it. About slipping out of the office before anyone noticed so I could go to the bar and drink away my pain.
I answered it.
Because I was Agent Kohler and that’s what I did.
“Mason, you need to bring your laptop down to IT immediately,” Jacob Stout, the head of the IT department, said in an urgent voice.
“I was just getting ready to leave for the day—”
“You have a bug on your computer. I picked it up with the new scanning software we just had installed. I noticed it when you emailed this morning. I did a deeper scan and there’s a root kit embedded in your hard drive. You need to get it down to me now.”
I immediately unplugged my computer. “I’m on my way.”
—
“This is a serious problem,” Jacob muttered, looking at my computer screen.
“What’s going on?” I demanded.
Jacob scratched at the bald spot on top of his head and looked nervous. “Someone has installed a root kit onto your hard drive and has been sending all of your files, all of your information, to another device.”
My stomach dropped. “How does this happen? I know not to click on any sketchy emails, and our filters keep most of those phishing scams out, or so I thought.”
Jacob nodded. “They should. I think…” He clicked on the mouse and tapped at the keyboard. “Maybe this was installed manually.” Jacob looked up at me. “Do you take your laptop off-site?”
I shook my head. “Never. I leave it on my desk. So how does this happen? And how the hell can you tell if it was installed manually and not remotely?”
