Page 20 of Asking For It

Sadie stuck her tongue out at me and flipped me off. “Two minutes early is not late.”

“Come on.” Anne grabbed my arm. “I skipped lunch. I’m starved.”

“How did you skip... Oh. Chase is out of town, isn’t he?” I put the pieces together. She needed a Chase in her life to keep her fed, she was so skinny.

That was the last thing I needed in mine. A man who wanted me to eat more. Lunch with Owen and Kingston rushed back, rapidly followed by the memories of amazing sex, and asinine things said after.

Tomorrow was only to make connections.

We were shown to a table, and conversation was stuttered as we ordered drinks and food. I wasn’t in the mood for Sadie and Anne to give melooksfor getting a salad, so I indulged with quesadillas, and asked for a box, so I could put half of it aside immediately.

As our food arrived, things relaxed.

Anne and Luna slid into more technical conversation, filled with terms I only understood in the loosest sense. They were swapping programming stories and, from the laughs, jokes in a literal different language.

I’d never seen Luna this interactive. It made me smile that she and Anne were getting along so well.

“You obviously know your shit. What do you need me for?” Anne dipped a fry in enough ranch dressing to drown it, and popped the food in her mouth.

“I can’t get anyone to talk to me. Like, interviewers and such.” Luna pushed her food around her plate.

She could be some serious competition for me when it came to picking-but-not-eating.

Anne tilted her head and studied Luna. “What’s your specialty?”

“Network security.” Luna’s enthusiasm for high-level java jokes vanished beneath a soft voice.

Violet nudged her. “She’s the best. Seriously. She did this thing with my VPN... Am I allowed to tell them about that?”

Luna nodded. “Only them.”

“She did this thing where... hell, she basically rewrote it, and now I can watch K-Dramas as they air.”

“You don’t speak Korean.” Not that I was aware of, anyway.

Violet grinned. “No, but I can infer a lot from what’s happening on the screen.”

“Jealous.” Sadie’s tone was playful. “You can hook me up, Luna? Pretty please with sugar on top?”

Pink dotted Luna’s cheeks, but she smiled. “Sure.”

“I can talk to our security guy, see if he has any referrals for you,” Anne said.

Luna’s eyes grew wide. “No. That’s okay. Taurus is... I mean, really, it’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”

I wasn’t understanding this conversation for entirely different reasons than I didn’t understand the programming one. Rinslet’s head of network security was Zane. “What’s Taurus?”

“Never mind.” Luna ducked her head. What I thought was quiet before was practically shouting compared to her volume now. “I wasn’t sure what I was hoping you could do for me, but don’t worry about it.”

I looked between Luna and Anne. “What did I miss?”

Anne paused, burger halfway to her mouth. “Zane was an old school hacker, and he went by Taurus.”

“He’s-the-best. Probably. Definitely.” Luna’s jumbled reply sounded defensive.

Pieces clicked in my head. How didn’t I see it sooner? I loosely followed cybercrime, because I had to make sure my café was safe. A few years ago there was a huge FBI takedown that no one was talking about outside of those circles. A young woman who had supposedly written a piece of malware that brought an entire sector of the college system to its knees. “You were behindProject Fail.”

“I wasn’tbehindit.” And now it looked like Luna was trying to vanish inside herself. A move I was intimately familiar with. “I didn’t mastermind it or anything. Someone paid me to do a job, it was a challenging one, and... I’d like to say I didn’t know any better, but really my ego won out in the end, and I convinced myself it would be okay, mostly because I wanted to prove to myself I could do it.”

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