Heart-Shaped Hack

  When both batteries were lying on the coffee table, she said, “What about the SIM cards?” In a regular cell phone, the SIM card contained the identity of the mobile subscriber, but Ian bought prepaid cards and when the minutes were up, he replaced them.

  “I already wiped the phones, and I’ll swap out the cards tomorrow.” As he typed, he muttered a string of curse words, which did nothing to soothe her nerves or slow the galloping of her heart.

  Kate went back into the bedroom and retrieved Ian’s glasses from the nightstand. After cleaning the lenses, she sat down on the couch and handed them to him.

  “There’s that quickness I like so much,” he said, putting them on with one hand and taking the other off the keyboard just long enough to give hers a brief squeeze. “Don’t worry. I’ve got this. Go back to bed.”

  Kate didn’t want to go back to bed. She was wide-awake and wanted to ask a stream of frantic questions about what had triggered the alarm and what it meant for him and for them. But Ian had entered a hyperfocused zone and he kept his eyes on the screen, pounding the keys and typing faster than she’d ever seen anyone type before.

  Not wanting to impede whatever it was he was doing, she let him be and went back to bed.

  But sleep would not come, and Kate stared at the clock, watching the minutes tick by as different scenarios played out in her head. An alarm had to be a bad thing, and an alarm that woke you in the middle of the night seemed even worse. And asking her to pull the batteries from their phones. Kate knew what that meant and half expected him to rush into the bedroom and start gathering up his things.

  He’d said he’d tell her if he ever had to leave, but the promise did nothing to lessen the impact of how she’d feel if he actually did.

  At 3:48, she got out of bed. Silently she stood in the doorway and watched him. He was still typing, but at a much slower speed. Then he took off his glasses, laid them on the coffee table, and rubbed his eyes. When he looked up and spotted her, he smiled, held out his hand, and beckoned her. She went to him, and he pulled her down onto his lap.

  “Why aren’t you sleeping?” He scanned her face, and his smile faded as he registered the worry etched in her expression.

  “Will you have to leave? I’ll understand if you do, but I don’t want you to.”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “No?” she asked, relieved.

  “No.” His voice was soft, soothing.

  “Then what was that all about?”

  “I’ve been monitoring the traffic moving over a network. I wrote an alarm into the code to alert me to any intrusion attempts, but I didn’t really expect to get a hit. It’s kind of like entering a building you thought was abandoned and walking around a corner and encountering someone.”

  Though she knew it didn’t work that way, Kate couldn’t help but picture Ian coming face-to-face with the intruder in a dark cyber hallway. “Then what happened?”

  “Then I reconfigured the firewall to stop the attack and prevent him from hacking me.”

  “Did he try?”

  “Yes, repeatedly. He was good, I’ll give him that. But I was better.”

  The best, she thought.

  “Does he know where you are?” Kate twisted the sash of her robe, and Ian reached for her hands, stilling them.

  “I use a proxy server to conceal my IP address. We all do.”

  “Then why did you have me pull the batteries on our phones?”

  “It’s protocol anytime someone attempts to breach my firewall.”

  “I thought disposable phones couldn’t be traced back to us.”

  “When it comes to hacking, nothing is impossible. There’s always a vulnerability, a weakness, somewhere. But removing the batteries stops the flow of information.”

  “So everything’s okay?”

  He wrapped his arms around her tighter. “Everything’s fine.”

  She exhaled, feeling some of the bottled-up tension leaving her body.

  “Hey,” he said pulling back to look at her. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m just not used to being awakened in the middle of the night by a cyberattack. I didn’t know what it meant.”

  He smiled and brushed the hair back from her face. “Welcome to the cyberwars, sweetness. Sometimes things get a little bumpy.”

  She could sense his exhilaration, almost feel the adrenaline coursing through him. When the alarm sounded and he’d leaped from bed, he’d been wearing only his underwear, but his back felt warm under her fingertips, as if what he’d been doing had invigorated him and kept him warm.

  He loves this. He’s a junkie and hacking is his drug, she thought.

  He slipped his hands into her robe and kissed her.

  “Tired?” Kate asked, kissing him back.

  “Wired,” he murmured against her lips. “Do you know what a cyberbattle does to me?”

  “I can probably guess.”

  “What about you, Katie? Are you tired?”

  “I’m not that tired,” she said.

  He took off her robe, and now they were both wearing only their underwear. He lay back on the couch and pulled her over on top of him.

  “Don’t worry about what happened tonight, okay?” he said, twisting a lock of her hair in his fingers.

  “I just didn’t want you to have to go.”

  “It would take a lot more than something like this to make me leave you.”

  “So it wasn’t a big deal?”

  “Pretty mild in the grand scheme of things. Remind me to tell you about the time I got into it with a hacker from the Russian mafia. Boy, did I piss him off. I did leave town after that. It seemed like the smart thing to do.”

  “Ian,” she said, hoping he could hear the frustration in her voice. “That’s not helping to ease my mind.”

  He grinned. “But it’s such a good story.”

  She wedged her hand between their bodies and pinched the front of his thigh, hard.

  “Ow,” he said.

  “You exasperate me.”

  “I don’t mean to.”

  “Try to remember that your world is very strange and I’m not completely used to it.”

  “I’m sorry. I’ll do better. Now let’s kiss and make up.”

  “I’ve already kissed you.”

  He reached for her hand and held it, their fingers intertwined. “I think we should kiss some more.” He kissed her hard. Then soft. Then hard again. “Still exasperated?”

  She trailed a finger along his bottom lip. “Maybe a little less so.”

  “Ah, it’s working.” He kissed her again, and Kate’s body relaxed.

  Now that the threat of him leaving had been eliminated, she convinced herself there was nothing to worry about, and she lost herself in his kisses and his touch. He led her back to bed, but it was another hour before they slept. And when Kate’s alarm clock went off at eight and she awakened with his arms around her, she was no longer quite so exasperated with him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Ian was sitting on the couch looking incredibly handsome in his dark jeans and sport coat when Kate walked into the living room on New Year’s Eve. She was wearing the black cashmere sweater dress he’d bought her, and she’d paired it with her black over-the-knee high-heeled boots, the ones she’d been wearing the day they drank champagne in the park. The dress hugged her curves, and the short length made her legs appear as if they went on for miles. She’d styled her hair in the messy French twist again, which had required a multitude of hairpins and quite a bit of patience. She stood in front of him, and his eyes roamed up and down as he studied her.

  “I see what you mean now,” he said. “Not an outfit for Dad.”

  “Nooooo,” she said.

  Leaning forward, he lifted the hem of her dress, pulling it up until the lace of the thigh-high stockings became visible. He lowered it without saying anything. He already knew she was wearing the bustier because he’d laced her into it, but she hadn’t put on the stockings
until the last minute.

  “You weren’t supposed to see those yet,” Kate said.

  “Sometimes I have poor impulse control.”

  She grinned. “Sometimes?”

  He pulled her down onto his lap, wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, and looked into her eyes. “I love you.”

  “You do?” She nuzzled her cheek against his newly restored scruff.

  “I never say those words unless I mean them.”

  “I love you too.”

  He smiled, his eyes crinkling at the corners. Oh how she adored him when he smiled at her like that.

  “I loved you first,” she said. “I just hadn’t told you yet.”

  “Someday I’ll tell you exactly when I knew I loved you. Then we’ll see who was first.”

  “Must you always have the upper hand?”

  He cupped her face and kissed her. “Always, Katie.”

  After his declaration of love there was a part of Kate that wanted to stay home, to keep him all to herself. She pictured him lighting a fire and them sipping drinks and snuggling on the couch. But she was also excited to introduce Ian to her friends. Certainly no one would think he was imaginary after tonight, and they’d have plenty of time to be alone when they returned home.

  Kate slipped her arms into an A-line black wool cape with a hood.

  Ian whistled. “Holy smokes, a cape.”

  “A necessary purchase when you’re dating a superhero. I bought it when my mom and I went shopping the day after Christmas. Do you like it?”

  “Yes. You look like Little Red Riding Hood’s beautiful—and more adventurous—big sister.”

  “I am definitely open to new experiences,” she said, laughing.

  What Ian didn’t know was that he was the one who was making her that way. He was as free-spirited in bed as he was in everything else, and she’d gone along for the ride eagerly, willingly. She had no reason to say no when everything he did felt so good. He seemed to love taking her out of her comfort zone, which was a bit of a misnomer considering nothing he’d done to her so far was uncomfortable in the least. Stuart had simply not bothered to explore that side of Kate, which was something she hadn’t fully realized until Ian had come along.

  He grinned. “Would you be open to wearing the cape sometime without anything on underneath it?”

  “Keep saying things like that and we’re not even going to make it out the door. But yes, I would.” Kate reached for her purse. “Okay. I think I’m ready.” She turned back around, worry creasing her face. “Are you sure my dress isn’t too short?”

  “Sweetness, there’s no such thing.”

  The New Year’s Eve party was being held at the W Hotel in the Foshay Tower downtown. Ian pulled up in front, gave his key fob to the valet, and opened Kate’s door, helping her out of the car.

  “Paige made a bottle-service reservation,” Kate said as they walked into the hotel. “We’re supposed to meet everyone upstairs.”

  Ian held her hand as they made their way to the second floor. When Kate spotted Paige, she pointed and said, “They’re over there.”

  Paige and her husband, Jason, were sitting at one end of a large, circular booth. Audrey and her fiancé, Clay, were sitting in the middle, and after Kate introduced Ian—Smith because Bradshaw was a name she wouldn’t share with anyone—they slid in next to them.

  “What’ll you have, Kate?” Clay asked.

  She eyed the array of bottles and mixers. “Stoli and cranberry, please.” Clay poured the vodka, added cranberry juice and ice, and passed it to Kate.

  “Ian?”

  “Bourbon. Thanks.”

  After the drinks were poured, Kate and Ian fielded the obligatory round of questions: where was Ian from, what did he do for a living, where had he gone to college, etc. It was not the ideal venue for Kate’s friends to get to know Ian because the DJ was already playing crowd favorites at an earsplitting decibel level, but Kate knew by their interested expressions and their smiles that they liked him.

  It felt good to be out with her friends, and it was easy to get caught up in the pounding rhythm of the music and the excitement of the occasion. And Kate was flying high because Ian’s “I love you” was still playing on an endless loop in her head.

  “Let’s dance,” Paige said, tugging on Jason’s sleeve.

  “I’d much rather watch you girls,” he said. Kate and her friends loved to dance, and they’d been tearing up dance floors for years. “You’re in for a real show, Ian.”

  “Is that so?” Ian said, looking over at Kate and raising an eyebrow.

  She laughed. “Club moves are even more fun than the Electric Slide.”

  “I don’t think they’re ready yet, though,” Jason said. He topped off his wife’s drink, and Kate’s and Audrey’s too.

  “Not quite,” Clay agreed. “But soon.”

  Forty-five minutes later when Paige couldn’t wait any longer, she pulled Kate and Audrey onto the dance floor. They had to shout to hear each other over the music.

  “Kate, your man is gorgeous,” Audrey said. “And tall. What is he, six three?”

  She smiled. “Four.”

  “Where did you find him?” Paige asked.

  “Actually, he found me. He saw me on TV and made several donations to the food pantry.”

  “He must be doing pretty well,” Paige said knowingly.

  She shrugged. “I think he does okay.”

  Kate wasn’t about to shed any light on Ian’s situation, financial or otherwise. He might own nice cars and reside in a luxury apartment, but so did lots of people who lived in Minneapolis. He seemed most comfortable when he was sitting on Kate’s couch wearing jeans and a sweatshirt or when he walked hand in hand with her to a nearby restaurant and they each ordered their favorite meal, even if it happened to be the least expensive item on the menu. She liked that about him. One of the things leaving the law firm had done was make her realize she didn’t need as much money as she’d once thought. Seeing how little her clients were getting by on had been a real eye-opener.

  “Are we going to talk or are we going to dance?” Audrey asked.

  “We’re going to dance,” Paige said. “Just try to keep up, girls.”

  It wasn’t long before they were in their element. Kate’s dance moves were tempered a bit by her concern that her dress would ride up and expose the tops of her stockings if she raised her arms over her head. She made up for it by moving her hips in a way that had Ian smiling and clapping when she looked over at him. Jason held his finger in the air and moved it in a quick circle, urging the girls to give them a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree show, a request they happily obliged. When they finally returned to the table, they fanned themselves, ready to take a break and cool down. Clay refilled their drinks, and it wasn’t long before they were back out on the floor. When the DJ played a slow song, the men joined them, claiming it was the only kind of dancing they knew how to do.

  At midnight, they counted down and toasted each other with a bottle of champagne. Ian gave Kate an especially hot kiss, sliding his hand up her dress under the table until he reached the top of her stocking. Then Paige—who’d had a considerable amount to drink—leaned over and gave Kate a friendly peck on the mouth.

  Jason, who was sitting between Kate and Paige, yelled, “Yes!”

  “Seriously?” Kate said, laughing.

  “I hope you enjoyed it, because it’s the closest you’re ever going to get to a threesome,” Paige said, turning to her right to give Audrey a kiss too.

  Kate looked at Ian.

  He smiled and then leaned in to brush her ear with his lips. “I told you it was universal. But all I need is you.”

  Downstairs in the lobby, Ian helped her on with her cape. “Stay here while I give the ticket to the valet.”

  While she was waiting, she heard someone say, “Kate?” Glancing up, she spotted a man standing a few feet away, his brows knitted together in confusion, a woman by his side. He looked vaguely familiar
, but it took her a few seconds to make the connection because she’d only seen his profile picture and had never met him in person.

  Kent from online dating. Supposed lover of cooking, animals, and long hikes in the woods.

  He approached her, eyes glassy, shirt untucked, hair mussed.

  “Hello,” she said coolly.

  “So it is you.”

  “Yes.”

  “Wow. You look great. Weren’t we supposed to go out once?” he asked.

  “Yes, but you decided I was too fat and you canceled on me at the last minute.”

  Ian walked up then.

  “Look,” Kate said. “It’s Kent.”

  Ian looked contemplative. “Speaking of threesomes.”

  “You’re not fat,” Kent said.

  “Well, maybe not now, but I could blow up again at any moment.”

  “She really likes Cinnabon,” Ian said.

  Kent looked her up and down. “Maybe we could reschedule.”

  Ian folded his arms across his chest. “Never gonna happen.”

  Kent’s date said, “I’m standing right here,” and she did not sound pleased.

  “Just so we’re clear. Now that you know I’m not fat, you think we should go out?” Kate said.

  “Sure. Why not?”

  “Oh, sweetness,” Ian said, “let him have it.”

  “You know, I thought I’d dodged a bullet by not going out with a guy who tapes himself having sex with unsuspecting women—”

  Kent’s panicked and guilty expression confirmed Ian’s hunch, and if either of them had any lingering doubts about the tapes, the look on Kent’s face had certainly removed them.

  “—but now that I know you’re not even bright enough to figure out when someone’s profile picture has been FatBoothed, the bullet I dodged was twofold.”

  “You FatBoothed yourself?”

  “My boyfriend did.”

  “Why would you be on a dating site if you already had a boyfriend?”

  “He wasn’t my boyfriend at the time.”