It’s all too much. I need space. Time to sort out how being here with him makes me feel.
I need what I’ve always needed when the world gets overwhelming: to work. To be useful. Right now, that means I need to figure out how Sentinel is involved in this Flash Bomb fiasco that’s terrorizing the Russian businesses in town.
I take a deep breath. Most of all, I need Tomas to see why I need those things. He might not be my boss or my boyfriend. But I want him to understand. I want him to agree.
“If I mean something to you”—I’m calmer now, reaching out to tangle my trembling fingers in his hair—“you know how important my job is to me. How much I want to help you and the businesses. But I need you to trust that I can take care of myself.”
He’s wavering. “Don’t ask me to let you risk your life, Corrie.” But his eyelids flutter shut when I push my fingers through his hair.
“Please don’t ask me to give up something I love because you need to save me from monsters that haven’t even come for me yet.”
“What if I’m too late when they do come?” He pulls me to my feet and circles my waist with his arms. “I don’t want to save you when they get you. I want to protect you before they come for you.”
There’s a long, tense pause hanging in the air between us. I don’t know what he’s going to say next.
But when he leans his forehead against mine, I know I’ve won.
He sighs. “Okay. I’ll make a deal with you.”
And that’s how I end up with my own personal bodyguard the next day who stands at the elevator watching me, who follows me down the hall to the bathroom, who sits at a nearby table when Leila and I go to the coffee shop, and yet doesn’t speak. Not. A. Word.
He’s tall, because I think it must be a law in Russia that all male children grow to a certain height or else they get jettisoned into space or something. And he’s dark, like Tomas but without the designer stubble and artfully messy hair. He’s more buttoned down, more scarred. From temple to jaw, across his chin, and along the other side of his jaw, giving the impression of a second smile, which would be a stretch considering I don’t know if he’s ever tried a first smile. And his name is Evgeni. Not that he told me. Tomas did.
Also, he’s supposed to be watching me, as far as I understand, but when Leila walks into the bullpen, his gaze follows her. And when we went for coffee earlier, I’m almost certain he checked out her ass. Maybe Evgeni isn’t a robot after all.
Right now, Leila standing at my desk, leaning over, and if the Russian Terminator is watching, he’s probably getting a full-frontal view of her boobs down the front of her shirt. “So how long is he going to be with us?” she whispers.
I shrug. “Until I don’t need him anymore, I guess.”
She straightens and crosses her arms. “What happened to his face?”
We have a thousand more important things to discuss than Evgeni’s backstory, but I can’t do what I want to do with her standing at my desk, and what she needs done will only take me about forty seconds. And she damn well knows it.
Which makes me wonder why she hasn’t asked me what else I’m working on. Why Peyton hasn’t asked for a progress report on whatever project he thinks I’ve been assigned. If I didn’t already know there’s something fishy in the pond water, these facts alone would have my pole jumping.
It’s also why I’m glad I’ve started pulling away. If I can figure out how to stop the attacks and build a framework to protect the network, I’ll have proven my worth to Tomas and his network of contacts, and I can use them to start my business. No more working for a fickle tech prodigy like Peyton. No more selling my soul and my work to whatever shady bidder needs it, to whichever client decides they want me to get dolled up in high heels and heavy makeup just so they can ask me about my “personal life” because it scratches some weird itch of theirs.
If this all works out the way I think it can, I’ll be able to choose. I’ll be free.
I wait for Leila to walk back into her office then open the program I’m using to render Flash Bomb useless. Normally, I would look over my shoulder, check for someone lingering, at least smell the perfume or cologne of a person standing over my shoulder, but it isn’t until I see Evgeni with his sad smile-and-a-half staring at my desk that I realize I’m being watched.
Shit. I slam the laptop closed. Evgeni doesn’t react. He just blinks and retreats into his own head, like he turned on the screensaver that goes over his eyeballs.
Hardly two seconds later, Leila is back out of her office and pulling me up by the arm. I jerk free. “What is it today with people treating me like a rag doll?”
She doesn’t reply. But I follow her into the conference room.
Only when we’re alone does she slam the door shut and spin to face me. “What the fuck are you doing?”
There’s an urgency in her voice that triggers my alarms. A desperation that tells me she knows exactly what I was doing. Exactly what it means and why I shouldn’t be doing it.
Leila knows more about Flash Bomb than she’s letting on.
I decide to lie. “I just stumbled on this program in a network I’m freelancing on. I wanted to check it out.” I can’t tell if she knows I’m lying because she’s turned away from me now and is looking out the slender window that runs along the frame of the door.
“Oh. Okay.” I see her smiling in her reflection, although it looks more like she’s constipated. “Well, you know how Peyton feels about moonlighting and bringing the work in with you.” It’s a very boss-lady tone, almost condescending.
“Right. I’ll be careful.”
“Tell me about it.” She clears her throat and fans her face with her hand. “The program, I mean.”
Her neck is blotchy with red circles on her skin and she has a sheen of sweat on her forehead. Gold medalist at the Liar Olympics in action, ladies and gentlemen. “It’s just a virus. But it’s so unique. I mean really good programming. Because its behavior relies on mine.”
“How so?” Her hand is going about ninety miles an hour now.
“It’s happy to just do what it’s intended for. Disrupt processes, delete information, change parameters for searches. Little annoying stuff that isn’t a big deal unless it’s all lined up.”
She swallows hard and continues fanning as a bead of sweat rolls from her hairline, over her temple to her chin.
“And if I try to trace its origin, it appears to change. If I try to reroute it to a vault, it releases a new chain of commands.”
I’m dragging this out deliberately so I can watch her as I speak. But it’s so obvious: I’m not telling her anything she doesn’t already know.
Goddammit. Of all the people I didn’t want to be involved, Leila’s at the top of the list.
Something very bad is happening at Sentinel.
“I’ve beat it twice, but it’s either regenerating itself or I’m fighting the creator himself.”
Before she can stop it, Leila blurts out, “Himself?”
I cock an eyebrow. She’s a horrible liar and we both know it. And when her shoulders sag, I know I’ve won. She’s going to tell me.