My coworkers didn’t realize that they sat in the same room with a woman who could destroy them if she so chose.
Wearing a smile while I plotted vengeance wasn’t new for me.
But using Mason felt different. I didn’t get a thrill from kissing him with a mouth that spewed lie after lie. It was difficult to look into his blue eyes and assure him I was genuine. To bleed deception disguised as sincerity felt wrong.
This was the path I had chosen. The course I had devised and designed.
But the real and the invented were starting to become blurred. Mason wasn’t black and white. Not anymore.
Yet I had made my choice.
Hadn’t I?
Good morning, Agent Kohler. I’m not sure either of us is up to another round of kissing the ice. Maybe we could think of something else to do.
It was just coy enough to tease him. Flirty enough to draw him in.
Is it too soon to make plans for the weekend? No ice-skating, then.
I buzzed with excitement.
No. Not soon enough. Maybe a movie. Your place. We can order in.
Was that too forward? I didn’t want to come across as easy, but I wanted him to think I wanted him.
Ididwant him.
Discomfort froze me.
I wanted Mason. Of course I did. My denial wasn’t strong enough.
I enjoyed talking to him. It was simple. Uncomplicated.
I was being tricked by the deception just as easily as he was.
His reply was immediate.
Sounds perfect.
I turned off my phone before I could freak out any more.
“Hannah, there you are. I’ve been calling your desk for the last fifteen minutes.” A man not much older than me, with a hipster beard and trousers too tight for his muffin top, appeared in the doorway to the break room looking slightly harassed.
“Hi, Todd. Uh, is everything okay?” I asked in confusion. I rarely spoke to Todd Perkins outside of emails. Sure, our jobs overlapped at times, but that never required us to have an actual face-to-face conversation. And I was okay with that.
Todd scratched at his beard and I tried not to make a face as a piece of food fell from it onto the floor. Yuck. “There’s been some activity on the local firewall. Evidence that our security is being compromised.” He pulled at the waistband of his pants. He looked incredibly uncomfortable in his clothes. The look of a man trying to be cool and failing miserably.
I frowned. “Okay. Well, I don’t do security. That’s your department.”
Todd gave me a look of complete exasperation. “This is a big deal. Chuck told me to pull you in. Whoever is attacking our firewalls knows what they’re doing. We need all hands on deck.” He gave me an annoyed look. “I don’t need to explain what it means for an IT company to be taken down by hackers, do I? How that could destroy our credibility and result in loss of business?”
He was speaking to me as if I were a child. A really small and stupid child. I wanted to slap him.
Sure, my interest was piqued. I could probably solve their ridiculous security problem in a matter of minutes. But that was well above my pay grade. And not what I had been hired to do.
I couldn’t make it too obvious that I could walk my way through their security systems with my eyes closed.
“Okay” was all I said. Though “Go fuck yourself” was on the tip of my tongue.
