White-Hot Hack (Kate and Ian #2)(64)

“Get away from her right now,” Rob said. The formerly-soft-spoken Rob had undergone a metamorphosis that would have frightened her had he not been coming to her aid. His voice had risen in volume, and the steely edge of it cut through the silence. Gone were the laugh lines at his eyes and the corners of his mouth. He seemed as if he would enjoy tearing the guard limb from limb and was simply waiting for one wrong move so he could do it.

“I caught her going through the dumpster,” the guard said.

“I’m not going to say it again. Get away from her right now.”

The guard held up his hands, smirked, and sauntered away as if he hadn’t done anything wrong, and Rob clenched and unclenched his fists in barely contained anger. Kate lowered the pepper spray, and she and Rob walked silently toward the car.

The guard who’d waved them through the gate earlier was berating the other guard. “What the hell were you doing back there? Your station was unmanned and there were people roaming around.”

Kate started shaking once they were back in the car, and Rob reached into the backseat and handed her the hoodie she’d left there a few days ago.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah. I’m just a little shook up.” What if this had happened before they got hacked and she’d come here alone? “How did you know?”

“It’s all in the walk. You moved with purpose, as if you didn’t care who saw you. His walk told me he hoped no one would notice him. I’m sorry I didn’t get there sooner.”

It had seemed like forever, but the encounter with the guard had probably only lasted a minute, maybe a minute and a half, tops.

“I take full responsibility,” Rob said. “I should have known better than to let you out of my sight.”

“It wasn’t your fault. You shouldn’t have to worry about an employee of the company accosting me while I’m on the job.”

“Even so, I’ll let Mr. Smith know what happened before I leave for the day.”

He put the car in gear, and when Kate could no longer see the company in the passenger-side mirror, she exhaled as the tension that had been coiled as tight as a snake ready to strike left her body. She pressed her cheek against the cool glass of the window and closed her eyes.

No matter how bad Rob felt, Kate knew it was nothing compared to how Ian would take the news.



“How did it go?” Ian asked when Kate walked into his office.

She bent down to kiss him and then pulled some papers from her bag and handed them to him.

He flipped through the pages and looked up. It said a lot about how lax the company’s security was if Kate had been able to score org charts and a company directory. “Where did you find this?”

“In the dumpster.”

“You went dumpster diving?”

“Just in the one that holds paper. When I visited the company during my pretexting, I noticed they had a bunch of them at the back of the property. It made me wonder if they were being as careful about what went into them as they should.” She told Ian how she’d convinced the guard to issue her a badge and then unzipped her hoodie. “I copied the image of the waste removal company logo off their website and used it on one of those online T-shirt design sites. Then I waltzed right in.” She pretended her fingers were legs walking along. “Pretty resourceful, huh?”

Hell yes it was. He’d never had the patience for that much involvement. “Very impressive, sweetness.”

She sat down on the couch. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

“What is it?”

“You’re not going to like it, and it’s going to make you angry.”

Her tone and the look on her face sent a jolt of anxiety through him. “Kate, just tell me.”

“The security guard that issued me the badge figured out what I was doing. I didn’t like the way he was looking at me so I gave him my letter, but he crumpled it up. So then I got out my pepper spray, and he didn’t care, and then Rob came around the corner, and nothing happened, and I’m fine.”

He sat there for a moment, stunned. Jesus Christ, what had he been thinking when he’d agreed to let her do this? Steve would come unglued if he ever found out, and rightly so. What if Rob hadn’t been with her? He held up a finger. “One second, sweetness.”

He picked up his phone and dialed. “Hi. Will Smith here. One of my employees checked in with your security guard earlier today, and he later refused to acknowledge the letter stating she had the right to be on the premises. That employee also happens to be my wife. We have an agreement when you sign our contract that no harm will come to anyone who is working for me. Either that security guard is gone by the end of the day, or I escalate this.”

He hung up the phone. Exhaling, he took off his glasses, laid them on the desk, and rubbed his eyes, suddenly feeling very tired. “What kind of cake would you like?”

She looked at him like he’d lost his mind. “Cake? What are you talking about?”

“For your retirement party.”

“I didn’t retire.”

“I just retired you.”

“I didn’t think you’d make me quit.”

“Because you wouldn’t have told me if you did?”

“I would never keep something like that from you,” she said and burst into tears.