Intimate Caresses (The Love and Danger Series) (17 page)

Nina hadn’t seen Brock in three days.  She was exhausted and behind on her computer game project, but for some reason, she was thriving.  And it was all because Brock texted her.  Sometimes it was just a funny quote or a picture.  Other times, he’d tell her that he loved her, which really made her stomach flip over several times.  And yet other times, he’d tell her what he was doing.  He might be in a boring meeting or interviewing suspects or just filling out paperwork, but he’d send her something that would make her laugh. 

She didn’t see him though.  He was furiously busy with a new case, working late at night.  And as much as she wanted to see him, to feel him, she respected that he needed to work.  She also got a lot accomplished during that period.  She finished up several sections of her project at work, getting her team
’s work ahead of their schedule.  She ignored Reggie’s repeated attempts to entice her into taking on the leadership role and she started beta testing on her computer game.  It was thrilling to finally be playing the software she’d been building for the past three years too.  Every time something worked the way she’d envisioned it, she wanted to pick up the phone and call Brock, just to share with him what she’d done. 

But she didn’t.  She kept that success to herself which actually tarnis
hed it somehow.  Too many times she’d lifted her phone to tell him what she’d done, still laughing over how perfectly the game ran, but she put the phone down, refusing to allow herself the luxury of telling him about her game.

And at night, while she held her cell phone in her hand, she trembled with the need to tell him about her system.  She knew her experience with Steven was the only thing holding her back. 
But she couldn’t change that. 

E
very night, she texted him in the darkness, laughing and torturing herself with his words.  At the end of each conversation, he said, “I love you.  Sleep well.” 

He didn’t seem to expect a response, but her fingers ached to tell him how she felt.  Unfortunately, she wasn’t exactly sure how she felt about him, so how could she express it in words? 

Nothing made sense but she kept going with the flow, wondering when she could say the words that seem to be on the tip of her tongue.

It was a Friday morning when she checked her system.  She was about to head off to work
, but wanted to correct one minor issue in her program that she’d discovered the previous evening, but had held off because Brock had texted her. 

When she logged in, she thought she saw something strange.  But it flashed out of her screen almost immediately. 

With concern, she sat down in her chair, dumping her bag and purse next to her.  “What’s going on?” she mumbled to herself.  Her fingers clicked over the keys, pulling up the program.  Nothing seemed to have changed but she ran a diagnostic test, just to be sure. 

When the results came back, she gasped in horror.  Her fingers flew over the keyboard, her mind frantically trying to find…

It took her about an hour, but she finally figured out a way to track down who had been hacking into her system.  The guy was pretty good and she was furious that anyone would dare to try and steal her stuff. 

She printed out the evidence, her mind clear on what needed to be done.  Driving through the streets of Chicago, she wondered why
the morning rush hour traffic was so light, but when she looked at her clock, she was surprised to realize that it was mid-morning.  Most of the commuters were already at their desks. 

She certainly hoped one guy in particular was at his desk.  She needed him.  She needed his scariness and his expertise.  But most of all, she needed him to just hold her and for him to tell her…”

She pulled into a parking space and grabbed her papers and purse, almost running into the police station. 

“I need to speak with Detective Transom,” she said, trying to catch her breath.  She hadn’t realized she’d been running until she’d stopped. 

The uniformed officer looked at her warily, but she picked up the phone and dialed a number.  “There’s a woman out here who needs to speak with you,” the officer explained.  “A Ms. Jansen, she claims.”

Nina was pacing back and forth over the linoleum flooring, desperate to see Brock. 

A moment later, he burst out of the door and Nina drank in his large form like a person coming off of the desert.  “You’re here!” she said and threw herself into his arms. 

Brock ignored the snort of amusement coming from the uniformed officer at the reception desk, too worried about Nina.  “Hey,” he said, hugging her gently, worried about why she was trembling so badly.  “What’s wrong, honey?  What’s going on?”

“I need your help!  I can’t believe he did this again, but I’m not letting him get away with it this time!”

Brock took her shoulders and tilted her head up, wiping her tears away with his thumb.  “Who did something to you?”

“My ex-husband!  This is the second time he’s done this!  But I can prove that this is my work this time.  We didn’t separate our work last time and he stole it.  All of it!  The jerk claimed it was his effort and the judge gave all the credit to him.  And then he launched the game and it didn’t work.  It was panned everywhere with glitches so bad that people were knocking it, the reviewers were claiming it was a piece of trash.  So now he’s trying to get my new game.  But I’m not letting him, Brock!  And you’re going to get him to stop, right?  You can arrest him for intellectual thievery, right?”

Brock smothered his laugh when she used that term because he knew she was genuinely upset.  “Okay.  Let’s go back to my office and you can tell me all of this again.”

“You’re going to arrest him though, right?”

“Yes, honey.  I’ll
arrest anyone you want.  Just tell me who and why, okay?”

He was leading her through the locked door that he opened with a badge, his arm around her shaking shoulders.  As they walked down the hallway, he nodded to Sam and Walker who were
in the cubicle area, indicating that he was going to need their help.  Sam turned and waved to someone Brock couldn’t see and Colt peered around the corner.  A moment later, all three men were filing into the conference room and Brock closed the door.

“Okay, honey.  Tell me what happened.  Start from the beginning.”

Nina shivered, so thrilled to be close to him she buried her face in his chest, needing his strength and his arms, not to mention just filling her lungs with his scent.  “Thank you,’ she whispered, fighting back another surge of tears.

Brock wrapped his arms around her, unconcerned that his friends were standing there watching, wondering what the emergency was.  Nina was in his arms, she’d come to him for help and he wasn’t going to do anything but savor this moment. 

He was reluctant to release her when she pulled back, but he also knew that something was seriously wrong and he wanted to fix it for her.  “Okay.  Tell me what happened.”

Nina took a deep breath, spread the papers out on the conference room table and started explaining slowly.  “My ex-husband and I were working on this computer game called
Nixy Nines.  It was a game where people were challenged to use their math skills to find clues.  The more math they worked out, the more clues they would get.  It was our way of helping the kids, to encourage them to learn math, to do more math and also show them practical ways to use math in their daily lives.”

“I’ve heard of it,” Sam mentioned, but he didn’t say more.

Nina smiled and nodded her head.  “Lots of people heard about it.  Mostly because it was reviewed as one of the worst computer games to come onto the market in several years.  There were so many bugs, so many things that didn’t work correctly, that most people asked for their money back.  It was bashed from both critics and users.”

“So how were you involved?” Brock asked gently.

Nina smiled, feeling a warm rush of feeling overwhelm her for a moment with Brock’s conviction that it wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d been fully involved. 

“My
ex-husband and I worked on it from the moment we were married until he decided that he wanted full credit for the program.  He pulled all of our coding out of the computers we were using while building the system, then convinced a judge that he had created the whole thing himself.  That he was the sole programmer, even though the code definitely had different styles.  He’d always been a sloppy programmer, but he was also one of those men who tried to get away with anything he could.  It used to bother me when he would just shoplift something.  But when he stole all of our work, saying that he’d done it all…well, that really hurt.  And then he divorced me,” she looked over at Brock at this point, feeling the tension shooting out from him and wishing she’d explained all of this before now, “and claimed all of our work as his own assets.” 

Brock looked down at her, becoming furious with her ex-husband on her behalf.  “So you started your own computer game, is that it?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

Nina nodded her head.  “Yes.  I was just entering the beta testing phase where I hire users to go into the game and find the flaws.”

“That sounds expensive,” Sam commented. 

Nina shrugged. “It can be, but there are tons of users out there who are willing to play with a game for a lower cost just so they can be the first ones to discover the game.  They’re also the worst critics as well, so they’re perfect for beta testers.  They don’t let anything by them.”  She shook her head, thinking of some of the comments that the beta users had already sent her in the last twenty-four hours.  They were harsh!

“So what’s going on now that has you so upset?”
Brock asked, bringing everyone back on track.

Nina took another deep breath, trying to focus on the big issue. “I logged onto my system today, just to check the status. And I found that someone had hacked into my system and
started to download my programs.  I don’t think they’ve gotten all of it and I’ve taken the whole system offline, but the majority of the code has been stolen.”

Brock’s body was bracing for a fight with those words.  He wanted to find the person that had hurt Nina and bring them to justice.  And if the guy showed up with a few bruises, or maybe even a couple of broken limbs, Brock was pretty sure that everyone would turn the other way.  This was personal now.

“So we need to get the technical people in to do an analysis,” Walker said, stepping forward.  “They can download your software, figure out where the hacking took place.”

Nina shook her head.  “No need.  The computer gaming community is extremely competitive and this has happened too many times.  So before I even started building my computer game, I developed software that would, first of all, protect a system from being hacked and, if that line of defense didn’t work, would track back to the person hacking into the system and find evidence of a person’s identity.”

Brock stepped forward, his eyes bright with the light of fire.  “So are you telling us that you already know who did this?” he asked.

Nina nodded her head. “Not only do I know
, I have evidence that shows how and when they hacked into my system.  I wasn’t going to let anyone best me this time.”  And with a grin, she straightened up.  “They might have gotten into my system and stolen a good deal of my work, but they also downloaded a very horrible virus.  And the culprit is going to be in a world of hurt.  The only thing that stops this virus from damaging every single file on the culprit’s server is a password I built into the code.”

Brock almost laughed out loud at her ingenuity.  “And who is it that you want me to go out and arrest?” he asked softly, feeling his body tighten in reaction to how brilliant she was.  His first priority was to get to this asshole who had upset her, put him in jail
,…well, and maybe punch his face.  A few times.  Maybe more than a few times.  And then put the person in jail for the rest of his life.  Brock had no idea what the prison sentences were for a computer hacker, but he hoped they were long and painful.

Colt stepped forward, his eyes intense.  “How much could this computer game be worth?” he asked.

Nina shrugged her shoulders.  “With the right marketing, people have sold millions of copies of computer games.”  She shook her head.  “I don’t do it for the money though.  I do it because I love programming.  And this game could help a lot of kids learn math, without even realizing it.” She smiled slightly.  “They also have to speak properly.  They have to type in their instructions.  Any instruction that doesn’t have subject and verb agreement will put them back a level.” 

Brock chuckled and hugged her close.  “You think you’re pretty smart, don’t
ya?” he asked, obviously thinking she was borderline genius himself. 

She laughed softly, wrapping her arms around his lean waist.  “I thought it was pretty fun.”

Sam, Colt and Walker all rolled their eyes at their little love fest but they turned slightly, giving the two of them a small bit of privacy. 

Brock pulled back.  “So who is the person who hacked into her
system?”

“My ex-husband,” she
snarled.  “Steven was always such a lazy programmer but this reaches new levels.  I can’t believe he’d think I was stupid enough to fall for his tricks twice, but I definitely got back at him this time with that virus.”  She looked at the four men and smiled.  “Want to see the evidence I have against him?” she asked.