Home > O Magnet (Titans of Tech Book 2)(7)

O Magnet (Titans of Tech Book 2)(7)
Author: Tessa Layne

To her credit, her face remains impassive. I want to ask her if she plays poker. Not that Danny would ever let a woman in on his high stakes games, but if he did, I'd bet even odds that she'd run the table. She holds my gaze for a long moment then reaches for the laptop. I open the file Agent Locke gave me, while keeping half an eye on the keystrokes scrolling down my monitor.

She passes the first level easily, in about ninety seconds. At the same time, I skim the file. Penelope Fischer, age nineteen. No named father. Mother in and out of jail, currently serving time in the State Pen for dealing meth and general child endangerment. Pulled into foster care at eleven, ran away for the first time at fourteen. Juvenile delinquent until tenth grade when a high school math teacher saw her potential. Nearly flunked out but managed a full ride to Missouri Science & Tech, probably thanks to a few dedicated teachers. I glance up. She's made it to level three with four minutes left.

I quickly scan the rest of her file. She's always had issues with authority, no surprise. Yet in spite of her terrible attendance record, she's at the top of her class - taking graduate-level coursework. Wunderkind indeed. I can see why Steele wants her working for us. Better to have her on our side than working against us. But holy shit, nineteen? Two-and-a-half-minutes. I shut the file and watch her. She's at level four. It's game over and her face shows she knows it. A crease appears at the bridge of her nose, and her tongue worries at the hoop in her lip. There is nothing remotely sexy about the girl in front of me, but a zing of awareness flashes through me, nonetheless. I've never seen that level of focus from anyone, except maybe Steele when he wants something.

I'm transfixed, eyes shifting between her and the clock, wanting desperately for her to beat my program. With twenty-two seconds to spare, she shoots me a glare then jams her index finger on the return button. The clock on my laptop stops. I push back from the table. "What the fuck?"

She folds her arms across her front. "You Kobayashi Maru'd me," she says referring to the second Star Trek movie Wrath of Kahn.

I don't deny it. I've set her up to fail, giving her the test we reserve for last. No candidate has ever passed it - by design. And no candidate has ever made it as far as she did in as short a time. I created a neural network that mines keystrokes then shifts the access requirements accordingly. The only way to win is for someone to rapidly figure out what the network is doing and then adapt their keystroke habits. "What the fuck did you just do?"

"What does it look like, Captain Obvious?" she shoots back.

She's. Fucking. Brilliant.

"You're a brat, too, I see."

She makes a face at me that has me biting back a laugh. Nice. If she was anyone but a scrawny nineteen-year-old, I'd have a raging hard-on for what just happened, because, fuck. A woman who's my intellectual equal? Hell, maybe even my superior? I'm like a fucking junior high kid looking at porn for the first time. And the whole brat thing she's got going on just makes it worse.

This complicates things in every possible way. For starters, she can't live with the cybersquad. We'll have to come up with alternate arrangements, which in and of itself is a problem. Our program works because newcomers live with and are mentored, monitored by my top guys - Cameron, Drake, and Hector - a.k.a. the cybersquad. The house they share is state of the art, and since there's always the potential for newcomers to go rogue or bolt, our goal is to quickly assimilate them. But how the fuck is that going to work with a female? A flash of caveman-like possessiveness rips through me. There's no way I'm letting a girl, especially one who's barely out of high school, live with those guys. Even if she can hack circles around them.

I jam my hands in my slacks pockets. "Nice work, shutting down the timer. That's a new one," I grudgingly admit. The cybersquad is going to go nuts when they find out how talented she is.

"How do I disable the trigger?"

Again, her question surprises me. Of course, no computer has survived the test, so it's a moot point.

"I'll have the guys in the office dismantle it."

She cocks her head. "That presumes I'm accepting your offer."

"Why wouldn't you?"

"I'm weighing my options."

I fight a smile. I like her spirit. "Think jail is going to be more fun?"

She lifts a shoulder again. "Three square meals."

She can't be serious. I reach into my briefcase, pull out the offer, and push it across the table. "One-twenty a year for four years, half goes into escrow to be paid out at your four-year anniversary. At that point, you'll receive your escrow and a twenty-five percent pay raise. You'll also be eligible for profit-sharing. We also provide your housing for the first four years and a car allowance."

She scans it quickly, scowling at intervals, then spears me with a look. "Skirts or slacks? Are you for real?"

I clear my throat. "We have an image to uphold."

"In Twenty-Twenty?" She's incredulous, and suddenly I want to laugh, because she's absolutely right, and I'm wondering now why I didn't see this coming.

"Look, kid," I say kid on purpose. As much to remind myself that Penelope Fischer is a child, even though her brain gives me a boner. "The choice is yours." I look at my watch again. "And you have exactly three minutes before General Abel Woodward who is the head of U.S. Cyber Command, director of the National Security Agency, and chief of the Central Security Service, and some of his top dogs march through that door. If you want to spend the next seventy years owned by the military, be my guest. But let me remind you, their dress code is far stricter than ours. As is federal prison."

Checkmate, sweetheart.

 

 

Chapter Four

 

 

Penny

 

 

Four Years Earlier

 

Kid.

The word makes me grind my teeth. I've been underestimated my whole life. And if this guy wants to pat me on the head like Cindy Loo Who and send me off to bed with a glass of milk while he Grinches around, I say bring it. He will not know what hit him.

I can't deny his offer is incredible. The thought of that kind of money in my checking account makes me salivate. Any person in their right mind would take it. But Stockton Forde makes my pulse race to the point of distraction. If I'd been paying attention to the code challenge and not the spicy warm scent of him that permeated the room when he walked in, I'd have realized in the first thirty-six seconds of the test that I was walking into a trap. The first level was too easy. The second one a little harder, but by then it was too late. My ego got in the way. I mean after all, I did just expose a trillion-dollar vulnerability at the highest levels of the government. As soon as I realized the program was learning my keystrokes, I shifted gears, because dammit, I'm not going to lose a basic code challenge to a suit. No matter how handsome his cheekbones are, or how compelling his dark hazel eyes.

I hate that Stockton's right. The alternatives to his job offer are... less than desirable. I hate his smug look even more. But fuck that antiquated dress code. If he thinks I'm going to show up to work in a dress and remove my piercings, he's got another thing coming. I meet his gaze head-on, making sure he sees I'm not afraid of him. I've met worse bullies and come out on top - I can handle him. What's harder to handle is the riot of hormones he's stirring up. Even from across the room, he makes my belly quiver. And that spark of whatever it is that keeps passing between us makes me want to push all his buttons. I stare at him, mentally counting down until the time has run out because I take a perverse kind of joy in seeing the way his razor-sharp jaw ticks impatiently. Every twenty seconds he fists then relaxes his left hand in his pocket - he's dying to look at his watch, but doesn't want to let on.

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