Page 91 of Wicked Beautiful (Wicked Games 1)
I can tell Tabby is resisting the urge to roll her eyes by the way her lashes are fluttering.
“Victoria. Think about it. Even if he did think it was a strange coincidence you were in Laredo, there’s nothing to tie you to it. Everything created by me and my predecessor, the late, great Mr. Dooney, says you’re from California. School records. DMV records. Voting records. Everything. And everything tying you to Laredo has been wiped out. Anyone looking for traces of you in Texas will hit nothing but dead ends. You’re a ghost there.”
When I don’t answer because my face is buried in my palms, she asks, “So how’d you explain it to him?”
I whip my head up and snap, “I had to make up a cover story on the fly about stopping to see my dearly departed old boyfriend’s grave on my way to see my sick mother in California, because my number one henchman—henchwoman—got sick and went AWOL!”
Tabby leans back in the chair, puts her feet up on my desk, crosses them at the ankle and says sarcastically, “Why, yes, I am feeling much better, Victoria. Thank you so much for asking.”
I collapse back into the chair. After engaging her in a staring contest for a few seconds, I finally grumble, “I’m glad you’re feeling better. What was it?”
“Sushi, I think.”
“I keep telling you not to eat that disgusting sea urchin.”
“If someone told you filthy Grey Goose martinis were disgusting, would you stop drinking them?”
I wrinkle my nose. “Martinis can’t give me food poisoning.”
“They can give you cirrhosis.”
Tabby doesn’t drink. Normally I consider that a character flaw in a person, but she has other redeeming qualities, so I let it go.
“Can we please get back to the subject at hand? Namely, what can you do to prevent something like this from happening in the future?”
She swings her legs off the desk. “Nothing’s foolproof, Victoria. I told you that when I was hired. I’m one of the best, but I’m only human—and there’s only one of me. I’ve got programs in place that alert me to any mention of your name, but if I’m out of commission, that intel is useless. And once a story’s out there, trying to contain it is like trying to cut off a hydra’s head.” She casually inspects her fingernails. “Maybe we should consider staffing up.”
I stare at her with narrowed eyes. She’s been at me for at least a year to hire her an assistant. I’ve always given her an unequivocal no. There are only so many people I want knowing my business. As in, one: her.
Watching her so nonchalantly inspect her manicure, I’m hit with a terrible thought. I gasp, bolting upright in the chair. “Tell me you didn’t do this on purpose so I’d hire you an assistant!”
She sighs. “You think I’d risk my job—my extremely well-paid job—to try to teach you a lesson? Besides, if you go down, I go down. I highly doubt the trustees of Stanford University, the Secretary of State of California, the IRS, or a dozen other public and private institutions will appreciate all my extracurricular activities associated with keeping the Queen Bitch on her throne.”
Her logic, as always, is impeccable, but I’m still not convinced. “Why couldn’t you just go in and crash Drudge’s servers like you did with that story from TMZ?”
She explains slowly, with exaggerated patience, as if speaking to a child. “Number one: if I had to crash every server of every company that ran a story on you, half the servers in the United States would go down. Number two: there are people who track that stuff. People who work for government agencies with three initials, like FBI. CIA. Too much weird activity like that and it would eventually point a big red arrow at your head. At my head. Number three: I once met the guy who owns TMZ, and he told me I looked like the love child of Pippi Longstocking and Marilyn Manson. So any chance I get, I fuck with that dude. Number four: the story in Drudge had already been published, and it was a dud. It wasn’t worth the risk of drawing attention to it by taking it down. That would’ve made it more conspicuous, not less.”
“According to you!”
She looks at me from under her fringe of red bangs. “Yes. According to me. Who’s the expert here. And by the way, the best way to keep this kind of thing from happening again is to stay the hell away from Laredo, Texas.”
Game, set, and match: Tabby. Defeated, I sag back into the chair again and rub my fingers into my pounding temples.
Unlike me, Tabby isn’t one to wallow in a victory. She moves right on to the next topic. “Any luck with his safe this time?”
“His desk drawers were all locked. Locked! For a man who lives alone, he’s definitely paranoid about someone getting into his stuff. So I took another look at his safe, and I realized why there wasn’t a dial.” I give Tabby a meaningful look. “The round silver thingy that I first thought was where you insert a key is actually where you insert your finger.”
Her brows lift. Now I’ve got her full attention. She looks at me with eager eyes. “Biometrics? Sweet!”
“No—not sweet! Extremely unsweet! How the hell am I supposed to get past that? Chop off his thumb?”
She purses her lips as if she’s considering it. When I groan in frustration, she relents. “I’m kidding. No chopping. Now, listen, this is important. Since I didn’t find anything incriminating about him in the usual places, I dug deeper, like you asked. I hit both his business and home computers.”
Instantly I’m all ears. “And?”
One corner of her mouth curls up, as it always does when she finds something delicious. “And he’s got defenses on both systems that are so sophisticated it made my panties moist.”
I blink, nonplussed. “Honestly, Tabby. The things you find arousing.”
