Page 3 of Hidden Ties (Made Men #11)
TWO
INTO THE BACK OF THE COP CAR
“ L ike I said, more predictable than the news,” she huffed when the glow in the blinds went out.
“Lights out?” Justice laughed.
“Mmhmm.” It was between Sal, the bimbo, and God what they were up to now.
“Speaking of the news …” Her online friend broke into her lewd thoughts, bringing her back to the game at hand. “Have you seen the news today?”
Skillfully, she sniped an opponent down on the other side of the map. “No. Why?”
“There was a cyberattack at the Horseshoe.”
“That’s not surprising,” she grumbled before she took on a bit of a karmic laughter in her tone as she continued, “I told them for months we needed a serious upgrade in our firewalls.”
The Horseshoe was a casino in downtown Kansas City that Valerie had been employed by for almost a year before she got the boot for opening her mouth too much about the lack of cyber security.
She was young and newly graduated from college with her IT degree when she’d started working there, and unfortunately for her, being young wasn’t the only thing that caused the senior members not to listen to her …
She was also a girl. Even in video games, she was in enemy territory.
Numerous amounts of times she had been told, “Be careful not to break a nail,” or worse, “Get back in the kitchen.”
Males lacked serious creativity with their humor, and it wasn’t until she was matched in an online game with Justice that she actually gave out a chuckle when he cussed her out about not picking up the health stick to revive him in a game.
He had at least treated her like any other player, not like a girl.
Valerie was sure, like in most male-dominated fields, women were severely misjudged and not listened to.
She had been obsessed with computers by the age of four and could build a PC by the age seven, but no one at her place of previous employment even cared to learn what she was capable of.
Hell, she could have fixed the cybersecurity in an afternoon after coming back from lunch if they had let her, for no extra pay to her salary.
Instead, the Horseshoe would most likely go bankrupt before they could afford another company to fix the fuckup now.
It was never good to fix it after the attack, with all the work you needed to do to repair the firewalls and start over with all new logins, passwords, and security, not to mention the lack of trust you’d lose from your customers.
Their competition across the street, the Casino Hotel, would chew them up and spit them out.
It had stood there since the dawn of the city, and only the newness of the newly remodeled Horseshoe brought people in to gamble for the last year.
The new owner was an I-D-I-O-T who used all the renovation money to make it look pleasing to the eye while totally ignoring the important infrastructure … like upgrading the cybersecurity.
She didn’t know why they even bothered hiring her in the first place.
The dinosaurs still employed by the casino matched the infrastructure.
Her boss, the head of IT, Edmond, finally kicked her ass out before she had worked there a full year when she showed him a simulation of what she could do to fix their firewalls.
Now Valerie was shit out of luck for getting a good reference, and it didn’t look good on her resume that her only place of employment in IT was for a job for less than a year after graduating.
Getting fired from your first big-girl job was just simply a bad look.
All she had to hope for now was for Game Hookup to literally hook her up by wanting to buy her game that she had been working on since she’d started college.
“Well, you were right. They’ve been shut down completely. Anyone who was gambling there since the attack this morning is still trying to get their money out of the machines.”
“Good. I hope no one steps foot in the Horseshoe ever again,” she said with no remorse as she showed the same respect to Justice when the head of his avatar landed in her crosshairs.
“Dammit,” Justice huffed. “You got me.”
Grabbing a Twizzlers from the now half-eaten bag, she placed the end of the red twisted candy in her mouth and tore it. “Up for another one?”
A yawn could be heard through the mic. “It’s pretty late. I got work in the morni—”
“Oh, come on, Justice. We have to at least break the tie.”
“Fine,” he gave in. “One more. But I mean it; that’s it.”
Tearing off another bite of her stick, she began setting up the next game and taking out some of the health and other helpful items on the map to make it harder. They had been playing all afternoon and into the night, but she was going to make this one count.
She was about to press Start on the game when she first heard it. When she looked out the window, the flashing blue and red lights off in the distance told her she wasn’t imagining the sounds of the sirens.
“Is that police sirens?” Justice asked, now hearing them through her headset.
“Yep. What the—” Valerie stared out the other window in the room that faced the street. “Oh my God.”
“What? What is it?” He knew he was about to get some juicy intel based on her reaction.
She had to blink at what she was seeing to make sure she wasn’t imagining the scene. “They just parked between our houses. Holy hell , I think they might be going after Sal!”
“Are you serious? No way!”
Suddenly, Valerie swallowed hard at what she was witnessing now. “Um, Justice …”
“Yeah?” You could practically hear Justice sitting excitedly on the edge of his seat.
“They’re heading toward my front door—” Her voice came out a bit strangled with fear. “Not his.”
Stunned silence met her on the headset, followed by the knock on the front door that had her jumping out of her gaming chair.
“Valk … Valkyrie,” he called out when she didn’t respond as she took her headset off. Placing it on her desk, she could still hear his tone turning serious as he yelled over the mic, “Don’t open your mouth! Don’t say shit—”
As she walked to the front door, she tried to remind herself, Be cool. You didn’t do anything wrong. But why couldn’t she help herself from feeling like she did?
Upon opening the door, she somehow made her voice as cool as her thoughts. “Can I help you?”
It was the biggest and scariest cop who spoke. “Valerie Monroe?”
“Yes?” she managed to strangle out, her coolness running out quickly.
The cop took her wrist in a tight grip, and before she knew it, cold metal was tightening on her skin. “You’re under arrest for the cyberattack on the Horseshoe.”
“I’m what ?” With all collectiveness completely lost, the cop kept speaking, giving her her rights.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to talk to a lawyer for—”
The haze Valerie went under no longer let her hear the words the cop spoke to her. Everything spun and became blurry in the flashing blue and red lights, and before she knew it, she was being shoved into the back of a cop car.
All alone in the back seat, she couldn’t help but feel like a caged animal as she stared through the metal gates and right at Sal’s front door.
The flicker of light had her shaking her head. The glow of the light in the window had returned.
Her stomach managed to sink even lower. She realized he had witnessed the most embarrassing moment of her life, along with Katie most likely, and all her other neighbors.
Even though Valerie didn’t commit the crime she was being accused of, she no longer needed to worry about rewiring her house. She would be moving first fucking thing if she was lucky enough to get out of this mess.
She released a small sigh of relief when the driver’s door finally opened, hoping they could leave before the whole goddammed neighborhood woke up.
But, alas, her embarrassment had only just begun as the front door she was ominously staring at through the gates opened, and the only thing she could do was watch in horror as Salvatore walked right toward them.