Page 64 of The Deals We Make
I look at the table of twenty-seven laptops for me to check. “Fun fucking times,” I mutter to Switch as I sit down at the table.
Each laptop has a username and password on it. Trusting fuckers, they all must be. It’s either that, or they’re all good schoolboys, never doing anything they shouldn’t on their machines.
Tony logs into the first one, then hands it to me.
“Virus codes run an infinite loop in a separate thread that spikes the CPU and makes the computer difficult to use,” I say to Alessio.
He looks at me blankly. “You say that like I know what you’re talking about.”
“The interface response time will slow down,” I say.
“If you find it on one of those machines, will you know how it got there?” Alessio asks.
I shake my head. “Nah. People think hacking is like it is on TV, that you hook up some kind of automated password generator and then, eventually, you’re in. But passwords are encouraged to be long now. A mix of letters, numbers, and characters. If there are sixteen characters in every password, there are over six quadrillion combinations. So, there’s only a couple of ways it can realistically have happened. Someone opened some shit they shouldn’t have. Or they left the laptop in place where someone else could access it.”
The muscles on the side of Alessio’s jaw clench as he grinds his teeth. “I suppose, as a subset of the population, there’s a chance I’ve got an idiot on my team who thinks it’s fine to open spam on what is essentially a work laptop.”
I understand what he means. I often wonder the same for the MC. It’s a miracle Niro hasn’t infected the whole system with all the random shit he decides he’s into and then goes searching for on the internet. When he was our treasurer, I gave him a second laptop for his own shit and locked up the club one so he could only do club business on it.
There’s only one way to see who let the virus in.
So, I knuckle down to begin, and pray that I don’t see a trace of Calista in what I find.
19
CALISTA
It’s been a long time since I snuck out of a man’s bedroom in the dark. There was one time when a dating app swipe led to dinner, and too much alcohol led to a one-night stand that was less than stellar.
I’d hoped nobody would witness my embarrassment, but there was some lady in a black car outside Mrs. Williams’s house putting something in the trunk of her car, and I had to do the neighborly thing and smile and wave as I passed her.
But I woke up in Ti’s arms, and after the initial feeling of warmth and comfort, embarrassment crept in. There’s a rush of heat to my cheeks, even as I think about it.
I could barely look Dr. Jacobs in the eye when she knocked on Mom’s front door.
It had taken ten minutes to convince Mom to talk to her at all. Then, another twenty for her to be honest in the answers to the doctor’s questions. But Dr. Jacobs had been sympathetic and suggested we needed more tests to see what’s going on. She was reluctant to proffer a diagnosis, as she’d explained many conditions could bring on the symptoms Mom is experiencing.
It had been an education. I learned dementia was an umbrella term, not a condition. Dr. Jacobs explained there are many types, from Alzheimer’s to Lewy body. And there were dementia symptoms linked to other diseases like Huntington’s and Parkinson’s and Korsakoff syndrome.
Dr. Jacobs also backed Mom up that it was very unlikely her wrist was broken, given the mobility and limited pain she had.
Thankfully, she agreed to take Mom as a patient and push for a swift diagnosis.
I can’t imagine what would have happened if I didn’t have money. I wouldn’t have been able to fly home, I wouldn’t have been able to clean her house like we have or get Dr. Jacobs to make a house call or find a caregiver to live with Mom.
But the whole time Jacobs had been speaking, I could still feel Ti’s hands on my body, the way his breath had felt against my skin. And I had to hide my face at one point as I’d flamed up at the thought of how I’d nearly died during that second orgasm.
Even now, I can feel the ripple of sensation it brought to my body, and I clench my thighs.
Which is highly inappropriate as I’m mid-interview with a candidate Becca narrowed down to be a live-in carer for Mom.
“You come with fantastic recommendations,” I say, looking down at the resume Melanie Dixon presented me when she entered the small meeting room I hired for the day.
Melanie sits upright on the edge of the chair. She’s in her mid-forties, has a wealth of experience, and a kind and patient manner. “Thank you. I worked for the Gifford family for the last ten years. First, working with Mrs. Gifford, who had cancer, and then, with Mr. Gifford as his dementia progressed. The references from the Gifford family are attached.”
Words pop out at me. Exceptional. Caring. Friendship.
“It must be hard to do the work you do. The end of it means the…death of someone you know, perhaps more intimately than their family.”
