Page 2 of Wicked Sexy (Wicked Games 2)
I have the fake badge in my pocket that would pass a visual inspection—I googled what they looked like, laughing that the information was accessible online because some dummy posted a shot of himself on Facebook at the company picnic with the security badge clipped to his shirt pocket for all the world to see—but if the guard runs it through the scanning unit on his desk, I’m dead in the water. So I wing it.
“Sure. It’s here in my case.” I set my case on the edge of his desk, open it, make a big show of rifling through it, and then frown. “I thought it was in here. Oh, shoot—did I leave it in the car?”
Hoffmeier says impatiently, “Surely you can let her in—you see her name there on the roster. And,” he adds, sounding pompous and smug, “she’s with me.”
When the security guard’s expression sours, I know Hoffmeier has said the wrong thing. Obviously there’s no love lost between the two.
Wide-eyed and blinking, I protest, “Oh no, no. Please. I don’t want to be any trouble.” I turn to the guard. “You have a very important job to do, sir, I completely understand. I’ll just go get my badge from the car.” Patting my pockets, I mutter to myself, “Gosh, I hope I didn’t leave it at the hotel.”
Then I hesitate as if something has occurred to me. “Or maybe you could just give a quick call to Cathy Suzinski in corporate HR? She could verify my identity.”
Cathy Suzinski does indeed work in corporate HR, but today any calls to her from this facility are being rerouted to my home in Manhattan, where a skinny, scary-smart high school kid named Juanita “One Eye” Perez who has a voice like a forty-year old woman with a two-pack-a-day habit is lounging in front of my TV, feet up on my coffee table, stuffing her face with Cheetos and Red Bull.
I pay Juanita well for the work she does for me, but she’d probably do it for free just to get out of her house. She’s the youngest of seven kids—who all still live at home.
But the guard, after a moment’s thought, shakes his head. “That’s all right. Cathy’s got her hands full this week with new-hire orientations. I probably won’t be able to reach her for hours.”
Another reason I picked a Friday afternoon for this sting is that people aren’t nearly as diligent at their jobs when they’re counting down the minutes to the weekend.
The guard notes my arrival time on a clipboard, prints out a sticker bearing my name that I affix to my blazer’s lapel—avoiding the dragonfly brooch that’s really a tiny camera I’ve been using to photograph everything—and then takes a cursory look inside my briefcase. Then Hoffmeier and I walk through another set of locked doors. We enter a large room inhabited by quietly humming towers of computer mainframes arranged in long rows. Everything is white and gleaming. Combined with the chill in the air and the faint scent of ozone, it puts me in mind of virgin snowfall in a winter woods.
I grin. This virgin’s about to get her cherry popped.
“As you can see, we have state-of-the-art equipment in this facility,” Hoffmeier says, chest puffed. He adds, “It has to be kept air-conditioned for the computers, you see.”
I bite my lip to resist unleashing a scathing tongue-lashing on him. Because apparently the Senior VP of Corporate Information Technology would be ignorant of the fact that large banks of computers have to be temperature controlled on account of her vagina. Which makes her stupid.
Obviously.
Mistake number…oh, hell I’ve lost count: Don’t put the sexist dipshit in charge of VIP tours. Or anything else for that matter.
“Hmm,” I respond, acting impressed and clueless, a nearly impossible combination for me. “And where does the IT team work?”
“They’re just over here.” He holds an arm out, allowing me to move in front of him as we walk the length of one wall, our heels clicking on the tile.
Now comes the risky part.
There’s a chance any one of the guys in the information technology department has actually met Dena Johnson in person during the interview process. If that’s the case, I’m screwed. She’s a sixty-year-old stick-thin blonde with a fondness for pearls and pastel sweater sets, and I’m a twenty-seven-year-old curvy redhead who wouldn’t be caught dead in a cardigan, much less a lavender one, much less a set of pearls.
My heartbeat picks up as we approach a mirrored door. We stop in front of it. Hoffmeier swipes his badge through the reader mounted on the wall, enters his pin number into the keypad, and presses his thumb to a square black biometric scanner.
Nothing happens.
He gives the scanner a quizzical tap, waits, and then tries the whole process again. When there’s still no result, he glances at me with an embarrassed smile. “Must be on the fritz.”
Then—in a breach of security protocol so fantastic I nearly squeal in glee—he simply raps on the door with his knuckles. It opens from the inside.
“Ruben,” he says curtly to the bearded hipster in the skinny jeans and untucked T-shirt who stands inside the door.
Ruben replies drily, “Hoff.”
Hoffmeier stiffens. Brushing past Ruben—who is now openly staring at my chest—Hoffmeier mutters, “Don’t call me that,” and disappears into the dim interior of the room.
I hold out my hand to Mr. Ruben. “Hi. I’m Dena Johnson.” I smile. “But you can call me John.”
All the risks pay off when my new best friend Ruben, who clearly has never set eyes on the real Dena Johnson in his life and hates Mr. Hoffmeier with a passion, raises his gaze from my boobs to my face and drawls, “Don’t mind if I do, John.”
With a lazy grin, he takes my hand in his and leads me inside.
