“I hear you loud and clear.”
For a few minutes, he typed so rapidly that his fingers made a machine gun sound on the keys. While he worked, I went through my inbox and replied to various student questions.
“I think I have a way in,” he finally said, snapping his laptop closed with a click. “Let me talk to a buddy and get back to you.”
“Keep me updated,” I said. “Even if you end up not being able to help. And… if anyone ever asks…” I struggled to think of the words.
“I’m good at keeping secrets,” Cam said. “But I’ll gladly take some extra credit, if you’re giving it out!”
He had this boyish charisma that was cute, in a totally different way than Jace’s charm. “Your reward is that I’ll keepyoursecret about the faculty Wi-Fi.”
“Oh. Yeah.” He flashed a grin. “Mutual assured destruction it is. I’ll email you when I have news.”
“Actually, have you heard of an app called Signal?” I asked. “I’m not sure I want this information going across my faculty email.”
“Signal? Now you’re speaking my language. I didn’t realize you were so cool, Professor. I’ll hit you up on there.”
He gave me a mock salute, then left in a hurry.
I smiled to myself after he was gone. I hoped Cam was able to work a miracle. Mostly because I didn’t want those messages floating out in the world somewhere.
But also because I couldn’t wait to see the look on Jace’s face.
13
Camden
Ohhellyeah.
When I had a challenge, I was like a dog chasing a ball. I didn’t relax until I had it.
And Professor Hotty had given me a hell of a challenge.
I skipped my afternoon class and went straight back to the dorm to work. It was easier to get things done there because I had a lot more screen real estate. My laptop adapter connected to a pair of widescreen monitors that helped display enough IP information and server data to give me a full picture of the task ahead of me.
And it wasn’t an easy one.
I cracked open an energy drink, turned up some techno music in my headphones, and got to work. My roommate came home with his girlfriend, a sorority girl with fake lips and even faker tits. She loudly complained that I was always there, and that she and my roommate never had any timealonein the dorm, but I turned the volume up until I couldn’t hear her anymore.
I waslocked in.
They left. The fire alarm in the dorm went off two hours later, but I ignored it until it was silent. Probably another idiot freshman burning food in the community microwave. I was twenty-one, which sometimes made me feel like a goddamn boomer compared to the eighteen-year-olds living in the dorm. In addition to buying my roommate beer whenever he asked, I had to show him how to upload completed assignments to the University website. And how to use a laundry machine. He’d grown up rich, and had obviously never had to take care of himself.
I didn’t resent that my life had been harder. It had turned me into the man I was today. But it pissed me off when he disrupted my flow, especially while I was trying to break into the cloud servers of a major corporation.
Eventually, I hit a roadblock that required some outside help. I fired off an email—encrypted, of course—to a buddy of mine in Singapore who had access to all sorts of back-door tools and file system loopholes. While I waited to hear back from him, I could get back to my work on Joshua Fucking Davenport, the Cunt Supreme of the basketball team.
But instead, I went back to the photo I’d seen on my professor’s Tinder account.
I wasn’ttryingto snoop. She asked me not to, and I was a man of my word. But I had to access her Tinder thread with Jace in order to see the unique chat number that was stored in the server, and it was impossiblenotto pause when a half-naked woman suddenly appeared on my screen while I was scrolling.
She was standing in the mirror, wearing a bra and panties.Onlya bra and panties. The bra pushed her breasts up in the most beautiful display of cleavage I had ever seen in my life. Only the lower half of her face was visible.
I felt guilty for staring at it. But she had to have known I might see it since she logged me into her account and showed me which specific thread she wanted deleted. And now that I’d seen it, I could see why she wanted it gone.
“Okay, Cam,” I told myself. “You got an eyeful. That’s enough.”
Someone else’s voice suddenly sounded outside the music that was blaring, and I tore my headphones off and turned around. My roommate stood there looking over my shoulder.
