.5 To Have and To Code (10 page)

The minor devil she was related to pushed off the wall. 
In that case, let’s go meet him and decide if you’re going to let him live.

Nell grinned—sibling understanding ran both ways.  She tried to keep her evil cackle under wraps.  There were no bushes in the conference room.  No place to hide.  One lawbreaking witch, about to find out what happened when he messed with her turf.

She headed out of the main reception area for the conference room, pulling power as she went.  Time to make an entrance.  A really big one.

-o0o-

She was gorgeous. 

Daniel picked his jaw up off the floor and tried to rearrange the brain cells that had just been scrambled by one Nell Sullivan. 

Warrior-bright eyes, traffic-stopping curves, and thrumming with the kind of energy that had his caveman brain ready to explode.  She was pure sex in a red skirt.

It was time to fight.  Or run.  Preferably with one warrior goddess thrown over his shoulder.

He was pretty sure either would be a really bad idea.

Pulling his brain back online, he ignored the bombshell that was Nell Sullivan and reached out his hand to the guy who must be her brother.  “Hey.  I’m Daniel Walker.”

Recognition pinged on Jamie’s face.  “
The
Daniel Walker?  UC Berkeley’s MVP pitcher four years running?  You should have made the bigs.  Totally raw deal with the whole Giants trade thing.”

Daniel tried to make room in his brain for baseball.  “Could have waited them out.  I chose to walk away.”  When you were twenty-one and stupid, ego drove way too many decisions.

“Maybe.  They were dumb to make you wait.”

Old ground, and not where he wanted to be headed this morning.  “Thanks for agreeing to meet with me.”

Flashes of humor tracked through Jamie’s eyes—and something that looked almost like empathy.  “You made quite an impression.  We figured it was a good idea to have a chat with the guy who made mincemeat of our security protocols.”

A growl suggested his sister didn’t consider herself part of the “we.”  Daniel kept ignoring her.  No way he could talk code with a brain lost in testosterone haze.  “Your security’s pretty tight, but I could make it better.”

“Is that why you hacked your way in?”  Any traces of good nature had vanished from Jamie’s eyes.  “To make a point about our ‘pretty tight’ security?”

Dammit, it had been a compliment.  Realm was better protected than most banks.  “Look, I’m good at what I do, okay?  There’s only a handful of people out there with the coding skills to do what I did.”

“So you say.”

Tough room.  Daniel sighed.  “Pitching isn’t my only skill, believe it or not.  You’ve done most of the hard work.  Realm’s tight, and it won’t take much to make it even better.”

More compliments landing like bricks.  He cursed Pedro under his breath and swore never to take career advice from a psychologist again.

“Where’s the vulnerability?”  Nell finally joined the conversation, her voice carrying the same flinty steel as her brother.

Daniel felt more of his brain melt.  His ability to focus had been the stuff of college-pitching legend.  It was a damn good thing she’d never been in the stands.  “You have a couple of variable calls that go over the wall.  Avatar images, stuff like that.”

“Bullshit.”  Jamie leaned in, lead-off batter calling his bluff.  “That’s a rookie mistake, leaving images on non-secure servers.  We don’t make rookie mistakes.”

Not usually, they didn’t…  Daniel prepared to yank on the lion’s mane and hoped the pretty receptionist would hand him back his head on the way out.  “Not your main image storage, no.  But you have a way for players to upload a personal image stash.  Custom avatars.  A couple of your players got sloppy.”

If there was a God, they wouldn’t ask who. 

For a moment, he thought he’d made it past the lion.  Brother and sister exchanged glances, tinges of concern in the looks.  They smelled the truth in what he said.

Jamie looked at him, cop face back in place.  “Whose stream did you ride in on?  We have kids playing the game.”

Daniel’s temper flared.  He gritted his teeth and tried to remember that the guy across the table was only nineteen.  “I don’t hijack kids.”  Adults and dumb bank CFOs were fair game, but kids were a different story.  “You had a couple under-eighteen accounts with holes.  I patched them.” 

Surprise flitted across both Sullivan faces.

Screw them.  He wasn’t the scum they thought he was.  “Look—do your own homework, okay?  You have a vulnerability, I found it.  I thought you might want some help with that, but clearly you don’t want my dirty hands all over your pretty game.”  He stood up from the table.  Enough waste of a morning—this kind of team he didn’t need.

“Wait.”  Nell’s eyes held command—and something else he didn’t quite catch.  The first carried him almost to the door.  Bossy sex in a red skirt he could live without.

But when you’d spent four years looking hundreds of batters in the eye, you learned to read the stuff under the bravado.  He stopped at the door, needing one more look.  And cursed the truth his eyes could see.  Beneath the spit and fire, Nell Sullivan had layers.  Lots of them—and to a hacker, layers were irresistible. 

He sighed and leaned back against the door frame.  Apparently he wasn’t quite ready to leave.

-o0o-

Common sense warred with Nell’s fury.  Realm was her baby, and letting the guy who’d poked holes in her baby walk out the door was just plain stupid.

He’s not slime,
sent Jamie quietly. 
Dial down your mad.

It was already dialed down plenty.  And if Daniel Walker couldn’t handle a little temper, he wasn’t the coder they needed.

He handled you walking in the door coated in fire power.
  Her brother sounded duly impressed. 
I don’t think he scares easily.

Nell took a good look at the man standing by the door, one eyebrow raised, waiting for whatever she was going to say next.  And felt oddly unbalanced.

There were high-stakes moments in gaming—fragments of time where hours of strategy went up in flames or emerged victorious.  Sammy swore the same thing happened with cookies.  And watching the cool, contained panther that was The Hacker, Nell suddenly wondered if the same thing applied to men.

Or thieves.  “You always run from a fight?”

His eyes flared.  “No.  You always pick fights with people half your size?”

It was a miracle the conference-room table didn’t melt.  “You messed with my game.”

“You left a hole.”

Jamie slapped a file folder down on the table.  “So.  About that job.”

If looks could have killed, her brother would have been dead several times over.   And finding herself on the same side of furious as The Hacker tumbled Nell back to unbalanced.

Daniel watched both of them.  “You don’t think much of me.”

She didn’t.  Her brother was rapidly coming to like the guy.  Stupid Y chromosomes. 

He’s surviving a Nell Sullivan temper tantrum—what’s not to like?
  

Nell tried not to be amused.

Jamie leaned forward, his mind full of self-satisfied mission-accomplished vibes.  “We respect your skills.  For now, that’s going to have to be enough.”

The Hacker looked her way and raised an eyebrow.

Nell scowled.  Amusement might have dialed down her tempter, but she was nowhere close to respect just yet.  Jamie was right, however.  Daniel wasn’t entirely slime—he hadn’t messed with their underage players.  And he knew things they needed to know.  She met his gaze with as much calm as she could find and assembled the message she needed him to hear before they got on with business.  “You invaded our turf.  I don’t know who else you’ve hacked, but if you expected us to greet you with hugs and cookies, that was just plain dumb.”

He sat in stillness a moment longer—and then one corner of his mouth quirked.  “That’s one very weird apology.”

She blinked.  Hard.  That’s exactly what it was, but he wasn’t supposed to know that.  “Realm is evolving fast, and keeping our players safe is our biggest priority.  If you can help us out with that,
then
you might get cookies.”

He continued to watch her in a way that only stirred the churning in her gut.  The panther, half-tamed. “I’d need open access to your back end.  Admin passwords, player profiles.”

She snorted, sliding back into her comfort zone.  Smart-ass guys, she knew exactly how to handle.  “If you can’t get in, then we don’t need your services, do we?”

“Oh, I can get in.”  His face was poker blank, but his mind flashed one quick image of code, candlelight, and a sexy red skirt. 

Nell slammed down her mental barriers, ordered her cheeks to stop flaming, and studiously avoided looking at her brother, who was having way, way too much fun eavesdropping. 
Get out of his head.
 

Not in his.  I was in yours until you got all pissy there,
replied Jamie.  He ducked the mental punch she sent his way. 
I’m a teenage boy—what do you expect?

He wasn’t going to be able to use that excuse much longer.  Six more months and her brothers would be twenty.  Full-fledged adults, with all attendant decorum and responsibility.

He snorted. 
We’re witches.  The standards for adult behavior aren’t all that high.

Whatever. 
Some of us grow up just fine.

Right.  Says the woman who eats Doritos for breakfast and is playing chicken with a potential employee.

She wasn’t playing at anything.  Keeping Realm secure, efficient, and at the leading edge of gaming coolness was her biggest professional priority.  And if baseball guy could help with that, she’d make nice.

For now.  “We’ll give you all the access you need.”  And track every step he took with it.  “I’d like a full systems assessment.  Tell us anywhere we’re vulnerable or potentially vulnerable and how to fix it.”

He raised an eyebrow at either her tone or the message.  “That’ll cost you.”

“Not a problem.”  She named an hourly rate that had both his eyebrows zinging up in surprise.  “And we need it soon.”  Be damned if she was running a game full of security holes. 

One hole so far,
said Jamie calmly.  
And I’ll plug that one myself.

They’d do it together.  And let the new guy see if there were any others.

Daniel was still watching the two of them, weighing things she didn’t care to try to read.  He sat back suddenly, mind made up.  “I can start tomorrow.  Where do you keep your servers?”

Nell eyed him suspiciously.  “Why?”

He shrugged.  “Hacking can be done from anywhere, but the best place to plug holes is onsite.”  He looked around at the art deco prints and neat, clean stacks of coffee mugs.  “Where’s the coding cave?  You don’t work here.” 

It wasn’t a question.  Nell watched him, trying not to be impressed.  She’d grown up with a mind witch for a mother—and Daniel Walker had the same lightning-quick grasp of the important.  Without the mind magic.  Whatever kind of witch he was, he wasn’t getting an assist from reading her mind.

She shrugged off the twinges of fascination.  In a different time and a different place, she might have found him interesting. 

Today, he was just a guy who could help her with a problem.

And damned if he was working from The Dungeon.  “Most of our programmers work from home.  Flexible hours, no commute.  They seem to like it.”

“It’s how I generally work.”  He eyed her with a look that probably made clean-up batters squirm.  “But first I need two days with the servers.  I promise not to steal your Doritos.”

It took every ounce of self-control Nell had not to check her shirt for orange fingerprints.  “Two days.  And if you steal my food, I will melt your computer innards and sell them for scrap.” 

Shit, can you do that?
 

She’d forgotten her little brother was in the room. 
No.  But he doesn’t know that. 
And threatening to turn his baseball collection into pink daisies hadn’t sounded dire enough.

Daniel was still standing the doorway.  “Noted.”  He pushed off the wall and opened the conference room door.  “Email me the address.  I’ll bring my own Doritos.”

She watched him go.  And wondered what the heck she’d just gotten herself into.

Chapter 7

Daniel reached down and plucked a couple of dandelions—and then in the age-old ritual of summer, popped the tops off.  He watched the cheery yellow heads take flight.  One landed sunnily in the clover.  The other did an ignominious face-plant into some unidentified sticky goo.

He snorted.  And felt way too much empathy for the stuck dandelion.

It was a pretty decent metaphor for his day.  He’d cleared his plate, expecting to spend the day dancing with Realm’s code—and discovered it was Sunday.  Old work contract handed off to a buddy.  New one twenty-four hours away.

Which left him wandering aimlessly, face first in the sticky nothingness that was his life.

He’d done the circuit of his usual hangouts.  The pool hall, empty.  Baseball diamond, full of ten-year-olds.  And the group of kids on Skate’s basketball court had been way too white and polite for what he needed.