Page 77 of Forced Proximity
“A hacker,” I repeated myself.
“Like, the type of hacker that goes to jail for breaking into the CIA’s stuff?” she asked.
“Like that, but I wouldn’t get caught,” I answered. “Those that get caught are either too stupid to be doing that in the first place, or they want to be caught. I don’t want to be caught.”
She took a sip of her coffee and froze, bringing it down to stare at for a few long seconds before she looked back up at me and said, “You weren’t lying about hacking into my Starbucks account, were you?”
I shook my head.
She took another sip of her coffee before shaking her head and saying, “I guess as long as you’re doing it for good and not bad, I’ll be okay with it.”
She didn’t need to know that sometimes I did it for bad.
I’d tell her later, once I really got her used to the idea.
In the meantime…
“What time do you get off?”
She jerked her head toward the nurses’ station when an alarm sounded. “Hold on.”
She walked to a speaker system and punched a button. “Hi, what can I help you with?”
The woman on the other end of the line said, “I need to go to the bathroom.”
“I’ll be right in,” Dru promised.
“Where is everyone?” I asked.
She set her cup down next to her area—and I knew it was her area due to all the food piled up around it ready for her to eat. The woman had a sweet tooth from hell, I’d noticed.
Most of her Starbucks orders consisted of a coffee and multiple cookies. Or cake pops. Or whatever seasonal shit was available that had sugar in it.
I also noticed that when the fall confections came out, she went overboard and always ordered two or three.
I’d tried to get a pumpkin spice cookie, but they’d been all sold out. I’d had to go to a local bakery that was thankfully open past midnight to get her the gingerbread ones.
She hadn’t noticed the type yet, but I knew they were her favorite.
Hopefully I’d put a smile on her face later when I wasn’t around.
“Staff meeting. We’re working on a skeleton crew unless they’re needed. They’re just in the breakroom, though, so they’re not far,” she said. “I’ll be right back.”
She left, and I moved to her spot and sat down, my gaze going to the computer in front of my face.
And, because I couldn’t stop myself, I started clicking away at her computer.
I was playing on it for a solid ten minutes before Dru came back and pulled up a seat next to me.
She didn’t say anything, but she did watch my every move.
“What’s all that?” she asked, pointing at the screen.
“Code,” I murmured.
“What are you doing to my computer?” she wondered.
“Making it run faster. Taking off all the monitoring. And putting Solitaire back on it,” I murmured. “I hate that they take it off company computers. It’s as if they think that employees will just get on the computer and play Solitaire all day instead of working. That was a staple on all computers. I think it’s bullshit that they take it off.”
