Page 23 of Stripping Bare

6

“I’mafraid someone hacked my files,” she said, “so I checked with the data company where I store all my clientnotes.”

“What did theysay?”

“They completely denied abreach.”

“Not smart.” Most companies had learned it was far better to get in front of something like this. Because by the time the inevitable truth came out later, customers had lost all trust. His mom was still boycotting a national discount chain after her credit card number had been compromised and the company claimed they’d never been hacked. But Jonah had been inside their system and knew better. “Have you checked all your other accounts? If someone hacked one, they might’ve wiggled their way intoeverything.”

“Identitytheft?”

“Maybe. Or maybe someone’s just doing it for kicks.” He’d done his own share of hacking in the past, but never just for shits and giggles. It always served a purpose, and one specific purpose when it came to Tessa. “But you can’t afford to ignore this. Did you report it toanyone?”

“Not yet, because I wasn’t sure what I was dealing with. That’s the reason I came to you.” Her expression of relief turned wary. “Maybe you could call thecompany?”

Now he was the one to snort. “If they denied a security breach, it’s doubtful they’ll change their story. What’s thecompany?”

“DataFort.”

“Irony is running wild and free today, isn’t it?” He reached for a laptop, one of six in his house. And that wasn’t counting all the equipment in his command center down the hall from the kitchen. With a few rapid keystrokes, he pulled up the company’s website just to get a feel for how the login process worked. Normal enough. “Do you keep your passwords stored on yourcomputer?”

“No. I don’t have to because I have a fairly goodmemory.”

“You’re way ahead of most people then.” He clicked over and opened a program called Exposure, which scanned sites for vulnerabilities. After typing in the company’s URL, he hit the “Achilles Heel” button. The search ran for several minutes, and he expected cracks to pop up right andleft.

Nothing.

“Well?” Tessaasked.

He glanced up to find her leaning over the counter, the neck on her shirt gaping just enough to show her silky-looking purplebra.

Stop looking at herbreasts.

The one time he’d had the pleasure of looking at and touching them had ended badly. Badly? It had been a shit show afterward, with him pushing away from her in self-disgust.

She, on the other hand, had calmly pulled on her half-torn camisole and made him talk to her. To this day, he wasn’t totally sure what he’dsaid.

Now, out of sheer self-defense, he shifted his focus back to his keyboard. “They look pretty airtight in thisscan.”

But that was only one small trick in hisbag.

The next piece of software he pulled up performed SQL injections and was humorously namedgulrót,Icelandic for carrot, slang for penis. Penis. Penetration. Har-har. Who said geeks didn’t have senses ofhumor?

“What are you doingnow?”

“Trying to penetrate their database and grab usernames andpasswords.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Tessa jumped off the stool and rounded the island in a flash. She grabbed one of his hands and pulled it away from the computer keys. Like that would stop him. He could type faster with one hand than most people could with two. “I just wanted you to find out if Ihadbeenhacked.”

“Takes a hacker to catch aone.”

“I changed my mind about this.” When she saw that capturing his hand hadn’t slowed him down, she inserted herself between him and the counter where his laptop was sitting. A space of about three inches, which meant her body gave his a full-contactsweep.

Every nerve in Jonah’s belly and chest went on high alert. Hell, some of the ones in his back did, too. Tessa was a petite woman, with rounded hips, a definitive waist, and breasts that would make any man alive take a second look. And they were all pressed up againsthim.

He cleared his throat and tried to step back, but she caught him by the forearms, which had apparently become an erogenouszone.

“I was doing something here,” he said, so damn glad his voice was even when he could barely thinkstraight.