Page 94 of Boss of Me
It’s hard not to feel completely awed by the magnitude of Gunner’s power, wealth and influence. The fact that he’s my lover adds another level of surrealness.
“What made you get into the tech industry?” I ask him.
He smiles faintly. “I was a code monkey in high school. I enjoyed programming and playing around with algorithms to figure out how they work.”
I grin teasingly. “I know I’m not the first person who’s ever told you that you’re way too hot to be a computer geek.”
He chuckles dryly. “I may have heard that once or twice.”
My grin widens. “I’m trying to picture you as a socially awkward, fashion-challenged nerd huddled over your computer while aStar Trekmarathon plays in the background.”
He snorts. “For your information, I’ve never been ‘fashion challenged’ a day in my life.” Pause. “But the rest is pretty accurate.”
I laugh, thoroughly delighted.
His eyes sparkle at me. “The thing is, I was a privileged rich kid who’d seen and done more than most people will experience in a lifetime. There was only so much skiing, horseback riding and globetrotting I could do before boredom kicked in. I was restless as hell, always looking for new challenges and adventures.” He pauses. “That’s how I got into hacking.”
My eyes widen. “You were a hacker?”
“Shh.” He puts his finger to his lips, a mischievous glitter lighting his eyes. “Big Brother might be listening.”
I laugh, ridiculously titillated by the idea of him living on the edge as a bad boy hacker. “What kind of things did you h-a-c-k?” I say, spelling out the word with exaggerated caution.
He grins at me. “At first it was just harmless pranks. Like breaking into country club databases to switch people’s tee times and dinner reservations. Or hacking into newspaper websites to replace story headlines with satirical ones.”
I laugh in disbelief. “What a devious little shit you were.”
“I prefer the termdisruptor,” he says archly.
I snort and roll my eyes.
He chuckles before continuing, “Hacking gave me even more of an adrenaline rush than skydiving, bungee jumping or running with the bulls in Pamplona. It was insanely addictive. I found underground hacker communities and lurked on the forums, soaking up as much knowledge as I could. I had zero interest in committing crimes or ruining innocent people’s lives. I just wanted to push boundaries, shake things up a little. As my skills improved, I escalated to riskier challenges.”
I give him a wary look. “How risky?”
“At age seventeen, I was one of four hackers to crack a classified encryption algorithm run by the military.”
“Holy shit,” I breathe.
His mouth twitches at my reaction.
“That’s insane, Gunner. Did any of you get caught?”
“No. We covered our tracks too well. But it was a close call, so after that I decided to lay low for a while. Fast forward two years, I was a sophomore computer science major at UT. One day out of the blue, a three-letter agency contacted me about working for them as an information security specialist. I was suspicious, of course. I thought the feds had finally caught up to me. I thought they were laying a trap by dangling a job offer in front of my face.”
I find myself leaning forward, sucked into his story. “Were they?”
“No,” he says with a trace of humor. “As it turns out, one of my professors had been bragging about my coding genius to people in high places. After some back and forth, the agency hired me to expose security vulnerabilities in their systems.”
“Wait. Let me get this straight. The government recruited you to hack their network to protect them from malicious hackers, completely unaware thatyouonce cracked a military encryption code?”
His lips curve. “The irony wasn’t lost on me.”
“I bet,” I say, laughing. “So you were a college student by day and a white hat hacker by night.”
“Basically.” He chuckles. “It was a good job. The hours were flexible, I worked remotely from campus and the pay was phenomenal. Over the course of those three years, I gained valuable experience and made important contacts that proved useful when I launched my startup.”
“That’s awesome, Gunner,” I say warmly. “Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur?”
