Page 56 of The Hacker
“Sorry!” She held up her hand, remembering Alice’s revelations about his upbringing and his mother’s recent death. “I don’t know you well enough to say that.”
“I forget that it sounds impressive to have a concierge when really it just allows me to work without interruption.” He started toward the hallway where the elevator had delivered her. “Let’s get you into the bathrobe while I make the call.”
In an astonishingly short time, the concierge service had delivered three pairs of designer jeans, three blouses in various styles, and three pairs of shoes, all far more stylish and expensive than anything she owned. Leland stood outside the locker room, talking on his cell phone about something incomprehensibly techie, while she pulled on a pair of jeans and chose a rose-colored blouse that made her sigh at the drape of the exquisite silk. She’d balked at having Leland order her lingerie and used the time before the delivery to blow-dry her bra and panties. Since Leland had already dried her hair, she just used one of the locker room combs to smooth it out.
Then she picked up one of the shoeboxes and gasped at the label. Christian Louboutin. She opened it to find a pair of block-heeled black ankle boots accented with a red sole. She ran a finger over the butter-soft leather with a longing that she hadn’t known she could feel about a pair of shoes. She closed the box and checked out the next one. Saint Laurent. Inside were black-and-silver-striped ankle boots with narrow tapered heels. Utterly gorgeous. The third box claimed to be sneakers but the label said Balenciaga. She didn’t know they evenmadesneakers. She opened the top to find what looked like normal running shoes, albeit in an ultra-stylish combination of taupe, gray, and white with the designer’s name embroidered along the sides.
She tried to gauge which of the shoes was the least expensive because once she wore them, there was no taking them back. She had tried on her own boots, but they squished out water with every step she took, so she had to pick one of these exorbitantly expensive offerings.
She shrugged and chose the ones she would most like to wear again: the Louboutins. They didn’t shout their origin like the others. Besides, the leather was delicious.
“Did you find something that fits?” Leland called through the door.
“Yes, I’m coming.” She packed all the extra clothing back into the bags and carried them out with her. “What do you want to do with these?”
“They’re for you,” he said. “Keep them.”
“Look, you may not realize it but this stuff is all designer. It’s bad enough that I have to keep this one outfit because I’m wearing it. You can return the rest of it.” She held up the bags.
He hesitated a moment before he took them out of her hands. “We won’t argue about the clothes. It’s more important for you to take a look at the website.”
The elevator whisked them downward to stop at a floor that required Leland to key in a code before the doors would open.
“This is the executive level of KRG,” he explained. “If you don’t have the code, you have to go through multiple guardians of the gates to be escorted up here. Unless you’re staff, of course. They always have full access.”
The doors opened onto a sleek, contemporary seating area done in shades of blue and taupe. The wood-and-chrome reception desk was unmanned whereas the one on the floor she had originally been sent to by Alice’s arrangements was attended by a security guard. He had directed her up to the pool enclosure on the roof.
Leland led her across the thick blue carpeting and down a hallway lined with glass-walled offices until he turned into a windowless interior space. What it lacked in windows, it made up for in computer equipment, all clearly cutting edge, with slim, curved monitors set on utilitarian gray built-in desktops. Giant screens hung on all the walls while high-end gray-and-chrome ergonomic chairs stood scattered in front of the various workstations.
“Is this your office?”
He set the shopping bags down on the floor and gave a short laugh. “Define ‘office.’ This is where I spend most of my working time. I have an official and fairly useless office in one of the building’s corners because partners’ offices are required to look impressive.”
“This is a lot more impressive than a view of some skyscrapers. It looks like something out of that old movieWarGames.”
Leland’s eyes lit up. “You knowWarGames? It was one of my favorites as a kid. I bought a used DVD of it and watched it until the disc wore out.”
She was fascinated by this unexpected glimpse into the young Leland. “So you were into computers from a young age?”
The excitement drained from his face. “You might say that a computer was my best friend.”
She wanted to bring the light back. “My oldest brother loved that movie. Every time he’d see me doing my homework, he’d say, ‘Learn, goddamn it!’ And then Mama would yell at him for cursing.”
She winced. The mention of her mother had just slipped out. She would have given anything to take it back.
Leland did smile, but with such an effort that she ached for him. “Of course, I completely missed the overarching message of the movie. I was only interested in the computer teaching itself. I tried to write programs that would do that, which is what eventually brought me here.” He swept his hand around the room, clearly wanting to move on. “My partners call it Mission Control.”
“Yeah, I can see why. Does anyone else work in here during the week?”
“Any staff member assigned to a project under my supervision is welcome. Some like it here. Some prefer to work alone because they can concentrate better.” He rolled an extra chair over to what was clearly the central workstation since it had the biggest monitors arrayed around it. “Let’s take a look at Tactical Arms.”
Dawn sat in the chair he held. Leland slid onto the chair beside her in a way that showed he’d done it so many times it had become second nature to him, requiring no conscious thought. He woke up the screens in front of them with a sweep of his finger over a large, freestanding touch pad. She watched in fascination as his long fingers seemed to dance over the touch pad’s surface, reminding her of how skillfully he touched her body. As a frisson of heat surged through her, she considered how much demand there might be for a cross-training course that used a computer to train men’s hands for other, more intimate purposes. She figured wives would be a good source of funding.
“There,” he said, wrenching her attention away from her inappropriate but entrepreneurial thoughts. He sat back as three monitors displayed the image of a man pointing a gun straight at the viewer.
“They sure did a good job of making the product they’re offering obvious.” She scanned the copy beneath the website’s name. “Wow! They have quite a selection.”
“It gets better ... or worse, depending on your perspective.” His fingers did a jig on the touch pad and a menu with photos of various types of guns flashed up.
