Page 41 of A Cursed Heart
Date With A Demon
Ryan
Goingagainstagangsterand taking a night off sounded like the stupidest thing ever, but I needed to buy myself some time for my program to work through the files with the most encryption on Salvatore’s hard drive.
Even with him looking over my shoulder, I’d managed to lift a fair amount of data. Part of my working day was taking the files and sorting them. I didn’t want to inadvertently send proof of what I’d done to Jasmine to the FBI. Still, there was a crap tonof stuff left for me to copy, and I had to cover my tracks at every step of the way.
You’d think with the data I’d already passed to him with the successful hacks I’d done, Salvatore would be a tad lenient. I did actually need more time for this one, since it had the highest security on the list. It was no joke to crack into.
Salvatore did not take my request well.
“I think you forget who you are dealing with, Mr. Mallory,” he had drawled into the phone when I did him the courtesy of calling.
“No. I haven’t.” I paced, agitated. Dealing with him was stressful. “I just know that while I’m still building a backdoor into the database you want me in, there’s nothing for me to do. There’s stuff working away, but I’ll get nothing done except piss you off by sitting in that seat all night watching the code do its thing.”
“Progress is far slower than I would have thought.”
“For this one, sure it is. I admit that. This isn’t my usual work, and their security makes the others’ look pathetic. I’m sorry I haven’t found what you are looking for on your servers.”
“If you are wasting my time, Mr. Mallory…” he trailed off, the threat obvious.
Fuck. He was losing patience digging out this mole. There was literally nothing in his files! Was he just being paranoid, or was his mole just that good? I’d have to increase the transfer speed to my device somehow, though that could lead to my missing something important.
“Well, that’s because I’m being careful. Neither of us wants to be caught, right? Besides, I think it looks suspicious me heading to your building night after night. I’m sure there are other things you’d rather be doing than babysitting me.”
“Is this so you can take your new boyfriend on a date?” he asked casually.
What the fuck? Was he still watching me?
“I want to spend time with my family.”
“I have to say I was surprised when I read the most recent home report. Your boyfriend, Malcolm, is it? Well, he seems to have settled into your household. Strange that there’s absolutely no trace of him. It’s almost as if he appeared from thin air.”
A prickle of anxiety worked its way down my spine. “He’s in the system. He just doesn’t have much of a record.” Once I got off the phone, I was creating an identity for Mal.
“Maybe so. I expect you back in my office tomorrow, Ryan.”
“Of course, Mr. Salvatore. Thank you.”
When I hung up the phone with him, I noticed a message from my contact at the FBI.
Con
Higher ups say everything is a go. Protection for more of the same. Delete this after. Usual protocol.
A grin stretched across my face while I deleted the message and erased all traces of it from my device. At least something was going right.
“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Mal asked a couple of hours later. We were in my car, Freya in her seat in back, headed to the movie theater.
“Yeah. We need this.”
“I’m just concerned now that we know Salvatore has someone following us. Perhaps he knows more than he’s letting on.”
It was tempting to reach out to touch Mal, to soothe him in some way, similar to how he was always calming me. Ugh, I could barely admit it to myself, let alone out loud or in a text to my sister, but there was something there. A hint of a crush. Okay, more than a hint.
“Don’t worry. I spent some time getting you a valid ID from a contact I have,” I said, keeping my hands on the steering wheel.“He’s going to put it in the mail. We’ve also started a paper trail for you. You’re officially Malcolm Cross, a high school dropout who is now studying for the GED so he can go to college.” Mal nodded. “The rest of your story is that after you left school, you worked a lot of under the table jobs until you started working at my gym, which is where we met. It explains the gaps in your history. We’re the same age, twenty-four, and your birthday is the twenty-fifth of October, making you a Scorpio.”
“I don’t understand what that is.”
