Page 73 of Her Unflinching Warrior (Omega Sky)
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I’m glowing.I’m literally glowing. What in the hell?
At least she wasn’t skipping as she went down the hall to Gideon’s den, that would just be embarrassing.
“Yeah, yeah, I’m late. But I knew enough not to bring my Fritos and Coke into the Throne Room of Tech and Wizardry,” she said to Gideon and the three men and one woman who were currently displayed on the monitors. Two of the men laughed and the woman giggled. One of the laughing men saluted her with his bottle of grape Fanta.
Gideon turned to her and whispered, “If you’re not careful, I’ll make you sit in my lap for this meeting.”
“Bring it,” she dared him.
“Young love,” the woman crooned. “Reminds me of you and A.J., Kane.”
“Shut it down,” the non-laughing blond man said.
He must be Kane.
“We don’t have time for this shit. I promised A.J. a night out tonight, and if I bail on her again, she’s going to force me to watch another pilot of some reality show. I will holdallof you responsible for that, and you won’t like how I retaliate.”
“That sounds like fun,” Jada piped up.
“Don’t mess with Kane, Angel. He hates reality TV, and his wife produces it. She keeps threatening to do a series around the dating lives of special operatives. It keeps him in line.”
“What you forget is that all of us are paired up,” another blond man spoke up. “You’re the one who should be scared, Gideon. Omega Sky would be the team on the chopping block.”
Jada and the other woman giggled.
“Enough,” Kane roared. “I want to get down to business. Dex got information for us on Bonham. It doesn’t make sense how it relates to anything to any of us, but hopefully, it will make sense to Jada.”
Jada sat down on the other rollie chair in Gideon’s office and pulled it up next to the bank of monitors on Gideon’s huge circular desk. “Okay, let’s hear it,” she said.
“Hi, Jada,” the man who was drinking the grape Fanta said. “I’m Dex Evans. Let me do the gentlemanly thing and introduce you to everyone, since all Gideon seems to be able to do is look at you with puppy dog eyes.”
“It’s true,” the woman said with a big grin.
Dex grinned big. “I handle computers and communications for the Black Dawn SEAL team out of Coronado. The beautiful woman who just agreed with me is Lydia Hildalgo-Archer. She is married to the man sitting next to her. He is Clint Archer and he has the same job as the rest of us, only for the Midnight Delta team, also out of Coronado, California. Lydia can run circles around the rest of us, and she props Clint up on a regular basis.”
“Archer,” Lydia said. “I’m not hyphenated.”
Jada noted that she had a Hispanic accent. It sounded Mexican.
“Good to know.” Dex smiled. “Now, the last guy is Kane McNamara, he is on the Night Storm team near you in Virginia Beach. He can be a bit of a pain in the ass, but you’re used to temperamental geniuses like Gideon, so this shouldn’t be a problem for you.”
“Hey, don’t be trying to dress me down. I just got back on her good side,” Gideon protested.
“Find out her favorite video game and play it with her, then you’ll be golden,” Lydia said. “Clint and I fell in love over League of Legends.”
Jada looked at Gideon and burst out laughing. “I think we’ll find something else to do,” she told Lydia.
“Okay, okay, let’s get back to work,” Kane said irritably. “I really don’t want to watch a show about humans and dolphins falling in love or some such shit. Dex, tell them what you found out about Bonham.”
“Bonham was working on ensuring that Risk Guard’s clients’ firmware wasn’t compromised.”
Jada shrugged. “Yeah. There’s a whole department devoted to that, which only made sense. I mean, yeah, software is where most of these companies are most vulnerable, but if somebody can get into a company’s firmware, they are really up shit creek.”
Everybody nodded.
“Bonham was doing something a little bit different than the rest of the team members,” Dex explained. “He came from Homeland Security, and he was actually devising tech that could be installed into companies’ hard drives.”
