Total D*ck(13)

“Come on, Carey, a bunch of dorks with computers don’t go around killing politicians.” I leaned back into the wall of the elevator. “If they did, they’d get, I don’t know, medals or something.”

Scarlett snorted and then schooled her features back into the perma-frown she seemed to have reserved just for me.

“Say what you want, but I know these are people with whom one does not fuck.” Carey seemed genuinely spooked.

Scarlett softened her approach and put her hand on his arm. “I don’t want you to do anything dangerous. I just want you to check and see if you can find any traces of him. That’s all.”

He shot a glance down at her and she smiled. His lips twitched, a return smile trying to break free. Fuck, she was good.

“Let’s exhaust all our other options first. If that doesn’t work, then I’ll see what I can do.” He sighed, defeated. “But I won’t make any promises.”

“That’s all I can ask of you. Thanks, Carey.” She squeezed his arm.

I wanted to karate-chop my hand in between them, severing the connection. The elevator did my dirty work for me as the door pinged open and we shuffled out into the parking deck.

Scarlett slid into the driver’s seat. She nibbled her lip, clearly deep in thought, and didn’t notice her skirt riding up. I got a good look at her creamy thighs and stared at the shadow between them. She punched the ignition button and I turned to look straight ahead before she busted me.

Since I’d first met her, I’d learned two things: One, I underestimated her. Two, I underestimated my own attraction to her.

Both those things could have been overcome with most other women. But with Scarlett—I stole another glance at her as we got onto the road, and she gave me a withering look in response—things may have already reached FUBAR status.

I pulled my sunglasses from my pocket and eased them on, a smile playing across my lips. I was up to the challenge. She may have looked at me like I was beneath her, but once I got her beneath me, her face would be nothing but pink cheeks, swollen lips, and a mouth that said only my name.





Chapter Five


Scarlett

The next afternoon, Carey sat across from me at the conference table, his eyebrows pinched together. We’d been working together all day, going through each step of access into Rhone’s system. Carey had tried it so many different ways, looking for any other trace of the hacker that would point in a direction other than Discord. Night fell over the city as we ran through different scenarios and researched every last scrap of information on Greenwood.

Kennedy had taken up residence at one end of the table, pretending to work on his laptop while I could only assume he was looking at porn. It didn’t matter. Until we could trace the breach back to Greenwood, we had no case.

A strange pinging noise sounded from Kennedy’s laptop and Carey whipped his head around toward him.

“Is that BloodSands?”

Kennedy nodded his head and tapped his arrow keys in rapid-fire succession. Carey rose and went to stand behind him, watching the monitor with the same intensity he’d been using on his own screen. More pinging erupted and something that sounded like a roar.

“What? What is it?” I followed Carey and peered at the monitor.

A little cartoon man ran sideways across the screen, a huge gun in his muscled arms. He fired shots at bats and zombies and whatever ran toward him. It was some video game from the 1980s. Kennedy was goofing around when we were trying to get a multimillion-dollar case off the ground. I should have been surprised. I wasn’t.

I sank into my chair and rubbed my eyes. What would Guy say if he knew he’d partnered me with an utter buffoon as cocounsel?

A horn sounded in the game.

Carey snorted. “You suck.”

“I know. That’s why I have to start out with the cheat code every time.”

“You do extra lives or infinite?”

“Aw, fuck.” Another horn blast. “I died again. I have to do infinite.”

“I remember this game from back in the day.” Carey shrugged. “Though it was before my time, we used to boot up an old Nintendo system and play the hell out of it when I was a kid.”

“You ever have to use the cheat code?” Kennedy leaned forward and started tapping the keys again, and the pinging sounds picked back up.

“Yeah, up, right, right, down, right, up, left, up, left, up.” They both repeated the code in unison. Dorks.

“I never needed it, though.”

“Of course you didn’t,” Kennedy grumbled under his breath.

Kennedy played. Carey watched. I drummed my fingernails on the table and sighed audibly. After about ten minutes of it—interspersed with too many horns of death to count—I cleared my throat. “I think we should focus on the case.”