In Kelly's Corner

  Rubbing her face, she said, "Someone has attacked the site. It's very bad." Rushing to the bathroom, she grumbled, "I'm in deep shit."

  Exhaling roughly, Kelly threw his legs over the edge of the mattress and shoved into a standing position. His instincts told him this day was only going to get worse.

  Chapter Eight

  "How bad is it?"

  I glanced up from the lines of code on my computer screen to see Yuri standing in the doorway of my office. Sighing, I flopped back in my chair and gestured for him to come in and sit with me. Not that he needed the invitation, of course. He owned the building and merely leased me this space.

  "It's bad but we had certain failsafe protocols in place. We estimate approximately twenty percent of our users were hacked."

  Yuri settled into the chair. "Lena said this attack was exchanging certain words in your users' blogs with profanity and racist remarks. Is that it?"

  "Porn." I cringed at the thought of some of the hardcore filth popping up on unsuspecting users' screens. "The program switched out photographs users had posted with some really awful stuff."

  Yuri stretched out his legs. "Lena is coming to see you in half an hour or so. She's bringing Ty with her. You know him, yes?"

  "I do." As far as anyone knew, we were merely acquaintances who ran in the same social circles, but that wasn't the real extent of our relationship. Of course, that was a secret I'd sworn to keep and one I wasn't about to reveal to Yuri.

  "It's important that you get out in front of this in a meaningful way. Lena and Ty are very good at crisis PR. They'll find a way to spin this positively. Insight is still vetting your company before they make their final offer and you need to be seen taking this seriously."

  "Do you think they will still make an offer after something like this?"

  Yuri shrugged. "You said yourself that it only affected twenty percent of your users. The fact that you had safeguards in place to protect the other eighty percent speaks highly of your security capabilities. Do you know how these hackers were able to manipulate your platform?"

  "It's someone with knowledge of our inner workings. It's definitely personal."

  "Your stalker?"

  "That's a complicated issue. Kelly and my guards now think I may have two stalkers. One of them thinks I'm, like, his girlfriend or something. The other one seems to be motivated by anger toward me."

  "Because you fired him?"

  "Maybe?" I toyed with the notepad on my desk. "There were a couple of guys early on in the business that I had to let go under less than amicable circumstances."

  "Yes," he growled. "Richard and Trevor." With a shake of his head, he murmured, "We never know what ghosts from our past may return to haunt us, Beatrice."

  Was he thinking of the crazy personal assistant and bodyguard who had tried to kill him and Lena?

  "How is Kelly?"

  His change of topic caught me off guard. "Okay, I guess. He should be back from his morning training session any minute now."

  "So he's really going through with it?" Yuri's displeasure was evident.

  "I offered him money but he refused it. He and his brothers had some sort of Connolly family powwow where they decided it was more honorable to let Kelly risk his life than to take my money."

  Yuri stared at me for a moment. "Do you love him?"

  "You know I do." I was pretty sure Yuri had figured that out the first time he saw us together.

  "I love my Yelena more than anything in the world—but my God—that woman can be maddeningly stubborn sometimes. It's easier to act first and ask penance later."

  "What are you saying, Yuri? Are you suggesting I go behind his back?"

  "I'm suggesting you think long and hard about what you want with Kelly and what you're willing to do to protect him. You can't build a life together if he's killed on some filthy warehouse floor."

  "Do men really die in those fights?"

  "Yes. I haven't seen one go that far in years, not since Moscow, but it's not uncommon. When Ivan fought, he always showed restraint. He was always careful to only put down his opponent but not injure him irrevocably. He fought with honor. His man—Sergei—will fight with honor. The others?" Yuri inhaled slowly. "I do not know."

  If he was trying to frighten me, he succeeded. "He'll never forgive me."

  "If he loves you, he will." Yuri rose from the chair and buttoned his suit jacket. "Let me know how the meeting with Lena and Ty goes. If you need anything from me, don't hesitate to ask."

  "Thanks."

  No sooner had Yuri left my office than Amita Chatterjee, programmer extraordinaire and the woman who taught me everything I knew about coding, popped her head into my office. "I found something you need to see."

  Her tone told me it was something I wasn't going to like. As I left my office, Sully shadowed me. Just as I'd expected, he had been flirting up a storm with every single woman on the floor. Not that any of them seemed to mind receiving attention from the wickedly sexy former Delta operator.

  "What did you find?" I followed her around the desk and leaned forward on my elbows.

  "Does this look familiar?" Amita tapped her screen.

  I read the lines of code she had isolated. "Son. Of. A. Bitch."

  "Yep. I was digging through the malicious code, and the moment I saw his signature, I knew this was all about ReadIt."

  I dropped my head into my hands and smothered the scream of frustration threatening to erupt from my throat. "You know, I should have listened to you about hiring Trevor. You were so right."

  "You know what they say, kid. Age and wisdom and all that."

  "Thanks for not rubbing it in, Amita."

  "I wouldn't dream of it." She patted my back. "What do you want me to do?"

  "We'll have the site cleaned up by midnight so would you mind digging out all these little signed bits of code for me? Knowing Trevor, he's left me some pernicious message."

  Amita laughed. "Pernicious, huh? Is that our word of the day?"

  Smiling, I pushed off her desk. "I'm taking a meeting with Lena and Ty soon. Would you like to join us?"

  "Sure."

  "Great. I'll call you when they get here."

  Crossing the wide open office floor, I caught sight of Kelly and Ron coming through the main entrance. The sight of the two men took me by surprise. Seeing the delivery boxes filled with piping hot coffee and pastries they both carried, I nearly did cartwheels. Hands on hips, I admitted, "I can't decide who I'm happier to see."

  Kelly leaned forward and pecked my cheek. His lips brushed my ear and he whispered naughtily, "I'll have to remind you who put that big smile on your face last night."

  "Behave. We're in public." I patted his hard chest. "Did you arrange this?"

  Kelly shook his head. "No. I found Ron downstairs and pitched in to help him.

  I stepped toward Ron. "How did you know I needed my coffee fix?"

  "The XSS attack is all over the tech blogs. I figured you might need a little extra caffeine this morning."

  I threw my arms around him and gave Ron the biggest hug before noisily smooching his cheek. "You're the best. Like—seriously. Today you just might be my savior."

  Face aflame, he looked so uncomfortable, and I silently cursed myself for forgetting that he didn't like to be touched. To his credit, he tried to play it off with a smile. "Well, I don't know about that."

  "I do. Let's drop most of this in the kitchen and take the rest to my office."

  We segued into the office, picked out what we wanted and headed to my office where Winn and Sully waited.

  "We should make this delivery a regular thing, Ron." I noticed the way the scent of coffee and the promise of free pastries was pulling people from their desks. "But you have to bring those sprinkle cookies I love so much."

  "The ones I brought to the housewarming party?"

  "Yes!"

  "Not a problem. I'll be here bright and early tomorrow."

  "Fantastic."

  Once
inside my office, I leaned back against my desk and sipped the hot coffee loaded with creamer and sugar, just the way I loved it. Winn and Sully were spreading out files atop the long table at the far side of my office. I used it for brainstorming sessions and smaller meetings. Today, it seemed to be the space they'd claimed as their command center.

  Ron wandered over and earned an annoyed look from Winn. Not easily daunted, he scanned the table. His face lit up with recognition. "Hey! This guy? He was in the coffee shop four or five times over the last few weeks."

  When he held up the photo, I nearly choked on my coffee. My reaction didn't go unnoticed. Kelly frowned. "Baby, what is it?"

  Swallowing my mouthful of steaming hot coffee, I explained, "Right before you showed up, Amita pulled me into her office to show me some of this malicious code she's isolated. Most programmers leave a signature when they want their work to be recognized. The one left on this shit-storm belongs to Trevor Cohen." I pointed to the picture Ron held. "That guy."

  Kelly snatched the photo from Ron's hand. "What's the story, Bee?"

  "He's extremely talented. I met him at a hackathon right after I'd first launched LookIt in beta among a small group of friends. When I got funding from Yuri to go big, I needed more hands on deck, you know? So I approached Trevor and he accepted my offer." I took another sip of coffee. "Amita pegged him as trouble from the first moment she met him. She begged me not to hire him but I thought I could handle him. Clearly, I couldn't."

  "What was the problem?" Winn asked.

  "He had that brogrammer mentality. Everything was a joke or a game. He didn't like having tasks delegated to him, especially by women. He spent all his time working on an app that he called ReadIt instead of working on the projects assigned to him."

  "ReadIt?" Kelly's brow furrowed. "What's that?"

  "It was a bookmarking app that never went beyond beta," Ron answered. At Kelly's strange look, he held up his hands. "Sorry."

  "Don't mind him, Ron. He's grumpy this morning."

  "Maybe he needs more coffee," Ron suggested.

  Smiling at my friend's remark, I continued with my tale of woe. "When I decided it was time to let Trevor go, he wanted to take ReadIt with him but he couldn't. His employment contract didn't allow him to claim ownership of anything he built on my time."

  "That's harsh," Sully commented.

  "He built that app on my framework while I was paying him to do another job. He used my computers, my office space and my temps to do his coding." Realizing I sounded overly defensive, I reined it in a bit. "Look, I made sure that he was compensated for his product. Frankly, he was overpaid. It was buggy as fuck and never worked. He accused me of sabotaging him—and then he took ReadIt and built an identical product for Richard. Hence the lawsuit."

  Kelly turned to Ron. "You said he was in your shop multiple times? Did he say anything?"

  "I assumed he was a contractor." Ron winced. "He asked about your new building, Bee. I thought he was thinking of bidding on the renovation project. I told him he could find you at the coffee shop in the evenings."

  "It's all right, Ron."

  "No, it's not." Kelly spoke through gritted teeth. "You told a man that he could find a single woman who rides her bike after dark back to an empty building how to find her and stalk her."

  "Kelly!" Aghast at his tone, I gaped at him.

  "Bee," Winn carefully interjected, "Kelly has a point. I'm sure your friend didn’t mean to put you in harm's way but that doesn't change the facts. You said yourself that you started finding photos in your backpack after you'd been to the coffee shop. What if this Trevor fellow was able to hide in the background and slip them into your bag?"

  "Well…"

  "I'm sorry, Bee." Ron looked so guilty. "I should have been more careful."

  "It's fine, Ron. Really," I added before Kelly could interrupt with some rude remark. "I share way more blame in this mess. I'm the one who didn't pay attention to my bag. I'm the ditz who rides her bike at night and lives alone in a big, empty building."

  "You are not a ditz." Ron scowled at Kelly and Winn. "Don't let these guys make you feel guilty for living your life. You have every right to do what you please."

  Kelly narrowed his eyes at Ron. "Don't you have a coffee shop to run?"

  "Kelly!"

  Ron waved his hand. "It's okay, Bee. He's right. I need to get back."

  After shooting Kelly an ugly look, I walked Ron out of my office. "I'm really sorry about that. Kelly can be a bit testy."

  Ron glanced back toward my office. "He cares about you."

  "Yes. Very much," I said. "That doesn't excuse his rudeness."

  "I've taken worse from customers." Smiling at me, he said, "I'll be here in the morning with your coffee delivery."

  "I'll make sure to put my Rottweiler on a leash."

  With a laugh, he waved and pivoted on his heel. When I re-entered my office, Kelly offered a contrite smile but I glared at him. "Dimitri swore that you guys had taken sensitivity training and that you were skilled in handling the public with finesse."

  Kelly's jaw tightened. "I could have handled it better."

  I arched one eyebrow. "You think?"

  "Come on, Bee. Don't make me grovel."

  "If you're going to make him grovel, let me get my camera," Sully said, already digging in the front pocket of his jeans. "We'll use it for our company Christmas card."

  The wisecracking guard killed the tension with his funny remark. Kelly sent a smoldering look my way that promised he would make this up to me. I planned to wrangle a huge apology to Ron from him first.

  "So," Kelly crossed his arms, "Trevor Cohen, huh? Looks like we have our prime candidate for the stalker sending you threatening messages."

  "Why doesn’t that make me feel any safer?"

  He held out his hand, silently bidding me to join him. I let him drag me into his protective embrace. He brushed a tender kiss to the crown of my head. "We'll deal with this Trevor asshole as quickly as possible. Then we focus on stalker number two."

  He made it sound so simple and easy. Sully and Winn's confident expressions encouraged me. If the three of them concurred, that had to be a good sign. I trusted these incredibly skilled men knew what they were doing.

  While the trio stood around the table strategizing, I returned to my desk with my coffee. Hourly updates on the crisis were popping into my inbox so I triaged the messages waiting for me.

  A certain email address caught my eye. Certain I was hallucinating, I read and reread the name of the sender. I gulped nervously and sneaked a stealth glance at Kelly, Sully and Winn. With their heads together, the three men had their backs to me and were totally unaware of my panicked state.

  Trying to convince myself this was just some stupid spam email with a spoofed address, I clicked on the message. My stomach pitched violently as I skimmed the email. Somehow that rat bastard Trevor had hacked into Jeb's old email account and gained access to thousands of his messages—and very private photos.

  ReadIt and weep, bitch! I know all your brother's dirty secrets now. If you don't want me to share them, I suggest you pick up your phone and make me a deal. Seven days—or these go live!

  The message had been written under a snapshot of my brother, cuffed and collared, wearing lacy panties, fishnets and heels while kneeling at the feet of his Master.

  With a click of my shaking, clammy finger, I closed out of the window and stared at the ominous message still fouling up my inbox. I thought I had deleted every single photo in the account but obviously I'd been wrong.

  Regret punched me right in the stomach. Why the hell hadn't I closed Jeb's email account? At first, I had left it open so I could receive and reply to messages from his friends and fellow Marines. Later, I hadn't been able to close it because of sentimentality.

  I tried to ignore the gut-churning terror ripping at my belly as I spared another glance toward Kelly. He remained blissfully oblivious to my personal hell. The weight of Jeb's secret li
fe weighed so heavily on me. The things he had done—and the people he had done them with—were not the types of things that anyone wanted publicized.

  It wasn't embarrassment or disgust that kept me from acknowledging publicly who Jeb had been. He was my brother and I loved him—all of him, even the fetishes and kinks that he had indulged in secret and on the side for years and years. The pain and anguish his unorthodox desires had caused him had been so great. He'd never been able to fully mesh his life as a heroic Marine with the man who enjoyed wearing women's clothing or following his Dominant lover around on a leash.

  As far as I knew, Jeb's secret sexual life was the only thing he had ever kept from Kelly. Sometimes I wondered if Kelly hadn't suspected that Jeb was…different. If he had any suspicions, he'd always kept them to himself. Of course, Jeb had been extremely good at keeping his two lives separated from each other. Maybe Kelly truly didn't know.

  I couldn't let him find out like this. Fury burned hot in my chest at the idea of that asshole Trevor blackmailing me like this. If he'd been able to access and recover this photo, he may have been able to find others where Jeb's lovers' faces were visible. A couple of internet searches would yield him even more blackmail material.

  His Master—his longtime lover—was still in the Marine Corps. I hadn't spoken to Peter in years, not since a few months after Jeb's funeral, but I didn't know how I could avoid him now. He had to be warned, just in case I couldn't get Trevor to stop his threats.

  "Bee?" Kelly's concerned voice cut through my troubled thoughts.

  I tore my gaze away from my screen. "What?"

  Kelly uncrossed his arms and gestured to the door. "Lena and Ty are here."

  "Oh." I popped out of my chair and hurried to greet my guests. The duo of PR experts hovered just inside the doorway.

  Dapper as always, Ty wore a two-button blazer in the softest dove gray layered over a plaid shirt. He'd paired the ensemble with dark jeans. Beside him, Lena looked so incredibly beautiful in her exquisitely tailored dress. The bright pinkish orange color popped against her warm brown skin. I wondered what they called that shade. Probably something exotic like papaya.