Page 44 of Between Passion and Revenge: Part Two

“That’s not true. You keep me on menial tasks. Sure, you have me in the room with you on many things, but not all, and the fact is, you need someone you can trust in your corner to tell you the truth. Because everyone else here is bullshitting you.”

She seems shocked at how much information she’s just divulged, but I don’t let her back down.

“Say more.” I keep my tone light, even though stress and worry start to creep in. Melissa’s talking about people bullshitting me…but are they betraying me, too?

Her lips twist again, and she takes three deep breaths before saying, “The Keystone deal. It’s not right.”

I blink rapidly, a cold wash of anxiety slapping me in the face.

“What makes you say that?”

There’s more lip-twisting.

“Melissa,” I press, my tone hardening but not from frustration with her, but more from fear of what she’ll say next.

“I’m going to tell you something, and I don’t want you to freak out. Okay? And if you fire me…again…after I tell you, that’s fine. But it’s important you understand what’s going on and who I am.”

My eyebrows go up and then slam down, and I know if I were looking at myself from the outside, I’d laugh at how quickly my expressions change.

“I’m…a hacker. Not for bad and not ever to damage Orisun or any of its interests. I mainly…um….”

I make a choked sound, looking her up and down. Sweet Melissa is a hacker? What?

“No, keep going. I’m not freaking out. I’m confused, but— Keep going.”

Another breath.

“I only go after the bad guys. The last few years, I’ve been breaking into cells that peddle child sexual abuse material. It’s a deep, dark web. There’s so much of it. And if I can get some of it off the Internet and get those perverts thrown under the jail, I’ll have done some good in the world.”

She looks so fierce as she says this, her jaw hardening, her eyes turning flinty, that I realize there’s so much I don’t know about Melissa. I’ve always suspected that Melissa has some kind of inside scoop on things because she always manages to bring me information that no one else could access. But…sweet little Melissa is a computer hacker?

I shake my head to focus.

“That’s excellent, Melissa,” I reply. “But bring this back to Keystone. Why do you think the deal is bad?”

“Right,” she replies. “So… Okay, so first, you need to get a new head of IT because your systems aresoporous. But I installed a few patches to keep things secure. Like, if I hadn’t, I’m sure the FTC and SEC would be all up your ass before the year is through. Anyway. I installed a patch, and when I did, I found you already had a bug. I squashed it, but the line went back to someone tied with Keystone.”

I nod, listening intently, even though that’s a bombshell I wasn’t expecting.

At all.

God damn it all to hell if Storm is actually telling the truth.

“And you’re sure? What were they looking for?” I ask, not sure of the inner workings of what she’s talking about, but following along enough to know this isbad.

“That’s the thing, they weren’t looking at anything. They hadn’t pulled any data that I could track, but their plant was tied specifically to your servers. And only your servers.”

Wow. Fuck.Fuck.

My eyes go to my desk and the sticky note Storm left behind, then to the digital clock on the wall.

The tick of the second hand feels like the countdown on a bomb.

“Why didn’t you tell me any of this before?” I rasp, feeling sick.

“I-I didn’t know how. I left the information for the head of IT.” She rolls her eyes. “The man’s an idiot—I flagged it for him and he didn’t even blink. He needs to go.”

I grin, even though I don’t feel at all jovial.