Kyle shot Jamie a look over his shoulder, the possessive smirk on Jamie’s face sending a shiver down his spine.Maybe shopping for clothes wouldn’t be that bad this time around if Jamie was the one making the choices for him.
10
A COMPROMISE OF LIES
Katie finished breaking the encryption on the solid-state drive very early Tuesday morning.Jamie and Kyle were woken up by her pounding on the bedroom door and calling Jamie’s name.They’d turned the privacy and soundproofing mode off last night after having sex, but they couldn’t do anything about the lingering scent of it in the room.
“Give me five minutes,” Jamie called out to her.
He rubbed at his eyes and checked the time on the bioware embedded in his left forearm.The bright numbers of 0347 glowed softly back at him.
“Did she even sleep?”Kyle muttered, face burrowed in his pillow.
“You know she rarely sleeps when she’s running her own personal hackathon.”Jamie rolled over far enough to kiss Kyle on his bare shoulder.“Stay here.We’ll deal with it first.”
“Wasn’t gonna get up anyway.You wear the railroad tracks for a reason.”
Jamie snorted softly at Kyle’s half-asleep retort, the other man already dozing off with the skill of a soldier who could nod off anywhere.A nice warm bed was just asking to be used.
Jamie got out of bed and headed for the bathroom.He spared a couple of minutes to wash his face and brush his teeth, take a piss, and make sure he’d cleaned up all evidence of their time together before they fell asleep.Pulling on a clean pair of underwear and a pair of sleeping pants that hadn’t seen much use lately, Jamie left the bedroom and headed downstairs.
Katie had three tea bags steeping in a large mug on the desk, one of the tiny jam jars he’d given her empty and tipped on its side near the very edge.Jamie grabbed the jar and lobbed it at the garbage bin, not wanting to risk it falling and breaking and someone walking on it with their bare feet.
“What is it?”Jamie asked.
Katie’s grim expression meant Jamie knew he wasn’t going to like whatever it was she had to show him.
Turned out he was right.
Katie spun the entire holographic display around to face Jamie and spread the data windows apart, moving from one to the next as she briefed him.“Edward Saunders is the vice president of Saunders & Associates, a financial consulting group in London that handles a lot of international clients looking to sink their money into Britain’s land and economy.It’s a multimillion-pound company that’s been around for decades.The father formed it, but it’s the son who is the target.”
“Let me guess.Young, rich, with a social circle of similar people,” Jamie said.
“And blood ties to a business with broad connections the Pavluhkins can infiltrate.”
“Does Edward have a controlling stake in the company?”
“Not yet.He’s twenty-eight.His father granted him a quarter-stake in the company when he turned twenty-five.He earns ten percent more when he turns thirty, and the rest gets allocated to him at age thirty-five, leaving him with forty-nine percent.His father won’t pass the company on to him until he retires.”
“No guarantee the father will sign over the shares at that time either.”
“A little less than fifty percent control is still more than most people get in a lifetime.Saunders & Associates was hacked late last year, resulting in some of its proprietary information being stolen.None of it has popped up for sale on the dark web, which leads me to believe the Pavluhkins are using the stolen information as leverage against Edward.”
“What do they have on him?”
“I don’t know, but I’d put good money on it being pictures or video of Edward in a compromising situation.I backtracked his whereabouts through the holidays.Edward showed up on the guest list to a swanky, invite-only house party thrown by a famous footballer.Guess who else was on the list?”
“Jansen.”
Katie nodded, rubbing at her eyes.The skin beneath them looked bruised, and her blonde hair was a little on the stringy side.Jamie made a mental note to order her to bed after this.“Got it in one.I’d go with the act being sexual in nature over drugs.Edward is newly married, and he’s played up the wholesome businessman identity because it helps the company’s bottom line.Cheating on his wife would be a scandal, at least in the business world.”
“Can’t have that,” Jamie murmured.
“A middleman contacted Edward with an offer to destroy the evidence—which we both know won’t happen—in exchange for the business agreeing to a cybersecurity company of their choosing to run integrity tests on the company’s system.Rather than go to the police, Edward agreed to the terms without his father knowing about it.”
“Jansen probably got to him.”
“He sure tried hard enough to break into our minds at lunch on Sunday.I’d be surprised if he didn’t lay the empathic groundwork in Edward’s mind during the party.”Katie rubbed at a stiff shoulder before crossing her arms over her chest.“We’re the company Jansen—and by extension the Pavluhkins—want to use to undermine Saunders & Associates.Our job is to create a zero-day exploit in their security system during the test and patch phase that allows the Pavluhkins to trawl their client information in secret through a back door, probably for new victims.”
