The Price Of Secrecy (2 page)

Chapter
Two

Dominic
could barely control his thoughts let alone his hormones. He hadn’t found a
photo of her online, so this was his first look at her. He couldn’t stop
staring. Dark, curly hair that hung down in soft waves past her shoulders, and
smoldering dark eyes that flashed with intelligence and passion. The pretty
lavender pant suit she wore couldn’t hide her curves, and he kept picturing her
naked.

He
had to stop this shit right now. He’d been burned once, and badly, by dating an
employee and he could never let it happen again. It had almost cost him the
secret he worked so hard to keep. He was acting like a horny teen right now,
and he needed to rein it in. She was an exceptionally pretty girl, but he
couldn’t let it go any further. Maybe hiring her was a mistake?

No.
He needed her skills. Graduates with an MBA and IT skills were a dime a dozen
these days, but she had real talent. He’d watched her work, and she hadn’t even
broken a sweat. Her face had held a calm, engaged look the entire time. She
enjoyed this kind of work, and it was second nature to her. You don’t teach
skills like that. She’d been born with them, and she was exactly the kind of
person he’d been hoping to find for this team.

The
truth was that he’d made his decision to hire her even before she broke through
the test firewall. The machine ID was easy enough to find. Merrick had designed
the test that way on purpose.
but
tracing machine IDs
was only half the battle. Dominic understood that, and so did Merrick. Their
test system was the same one that all his friends were now using to screen
potential candidates for these teams.

He’d
selected her from a long list of job applicants and had hired her because of
that project in school, not only because of her test performance. If he were
being truthful, Dominic had known he’d hire her as soon as he’d looked at her.
He wasn’t ashamed of the kind of man he was, but he needed to put the brakes on
this time. His freedom wasn’t the only thing he’d nearly lost with that stupid
mistake five years ago. He could never allow his family to get that close
again.

“Why
do you have these prints everywhere?”

Her
smoky voice pulled him from his thoughts, and at first he wasn’t sure what she
meant with her question. Then he followed her gaze to the black and white
photograph of a decimated field after a tornado had gone through it.

“I
mean, I realize this is what’s going on, but they’re so … so devastating and
emotional to look at.”

“That’s
exactly why I have them displayed throughout this building. So we never forget
why we’re here, and what we need to do to reclaim our planet.”

She
nodded. The admiration in her beautiful eyes turned his resolve not to touch
her into dust that blew away in the breeze as they walked toward the stairwell.
He led Angela down two floors, inhaling her musky perfume as he walked behind
her, and then into the newly-decorated suite of offices the team would occupy.

“These
are beautiful,” she said. “Much more inviting than the metallic gray.”

He
grinned. “They are, but I don’t mind the color gray.”

“Yes,
I figured as much. Are the doors to your office really metal?”

He
was saved from answering when they entered Merrick’s temporary office, just
inside the entrance to the department. Merrick was bent over a laptop, but
straightened up as Dominic and Angela walked in. Dominic didn’t miss the
appreciative glance Merrick gave Angela. He couldn’t blame the man. She was
stunning, but Dominic was a jealous man. Merrick’s reaction was enough to make
him wonder if it wasn’t time to take a chance again on dating an
employee?

“Merrick
Anderson, Angela Davidson. She’s the first person on your new team.”

Merrick
stood and shook her hand. “Welcome. I’m glad to have someone here at last.”

“You
and Merrick will have the honor of setting the bar high for the rest of them to
follow,” said Dominic as he pulled a chair over. “Have a seat. Merrick and I
are going to explain why we need this team.”

Angela
took a seat, and Dominic sat close to her on purpose. She didn’t seem to mind,
but Merrick gave him an odd look. Too bad. Dominic had never made excuses for
the way he pursued women, and Merrick certainly knew that about him by now.
Even if he didn’t break his own self-imposed rule not to date Angela, he sure
didn’t want to watch Merrick pursue her.

This
girl excited him, and he wanted desperately to peek underneath the surface and
see if the passion in those eyes extended to her sex life. It would be
difficult to keep that desire in check.

He
cleared his throat and faced her. “There are twelve of us scattered throughout
the US who are essentially looking for the same thing. The bastards responsible
for the Tommy Twister virus. We’re also trying to hack into The Madeline
Project and either shut it down for good, or take back control of it.”

The
admiration in her dark eyes made his dick twitch. “I read about all of you
online. You call yourselves the Weathermen. Very clever.”

He
grinned. “Thank you. We started out looking for user names that were common on
message boards about weather control that were set up in the early part in this
century. It wasn’t until one of Ace Easton’s analysts who worked on his PR
websites, tracking user names to keep trolls off them, transferred to his
hacker team and found the correlation we had all missed.”

Dominic
didn’t think it was necessary to tell her why Harper Mathews had been forced
onto that team. He didn’t want her thinking Ace was a jerk. Far from it. The
man was seriously in love, and he and Harper were getting married in five
months. “Once there, she noticed a lot of the same names she’d tracked in her
former role. The systems are separate, for obvious reasons.”

“So
she never had the chance to search for them on the same places his hacker team
had access to when she was an analyst.”

“Exactly,
but all of us missed that possible connection, not only Ace. So now we have
teams working on tracking names across the systems. We literally have thousands
of names among the twelve of us, so what we need now are people who can do
something with all that information. It’s time to track them back to their
source, and that’s where you and Merrick come in.”

“Dominic
and the other Weathermen have each created new departments like this one,” said
Merrick, “I’m heading up this one, but until we hire more people, I’m still
phasing out my IT work for the company.”

“That
means you and I will be working closely on setting up the databases, and
working out the system bugs,” said Dominic. “Merrick will be available, of
course, but I need him to bridge both positions for a while yet until I find
someone to replace him, which won’t be easy. At the same time I need to find
more people with your skills.”

“Thank
you for the vote of confidence.”

He
rose, so she did, too. “I have no reason to believe you won’t do a stellar job.
Let me show you to your new office and we’ll let Merrick get back to work.”

Merrick
rose and stuck out his hand again. “I look forward to working with you,
Angela.”

She
shook his hand once more. “Thank you. Same here.”

Dominic
led her down the hall to an empty office, and she whistled as they stepped
inside. “This is really nice.”

“Merrick
will be moving to an office closer to this one soon. His current temporary
office will be a storeroom once he does.”

“It’s
really beautiful. Such a peaceful atmosphere to work in.”

“The
entire department looks like this.”

“I
suppose I assumed the entire company was decorated like your office.”

He
swallowed. “The doors are for protection, you understand.” He hoped she never
had to understand first hand why he had outfitted his office in that way. “You
weren’t expecting to have a bright, cheery space to work in?”

“I
wasn’t sure what to expect.”

He
moved closer, and when she didn’t flinch or back away, his damn cock jumped to
attention again.
What did you think would
happen, genius?
“From me, or from the job?”

“Both.”

“I
appreciate your candor.” He let his gaze travel over her face once more. This
close, he could see the depth of emotion in her eyes, and it took his breath
away. He was in very deep shit here. He shouldn’t have let his dick do the thinking
earlier, but he really did need someone exactly like her. He needed an entire
department with Angela’s skills.

He
took a deep breath and tried to clear his head. “I have an administrative
assistant for the department as well. She’s already in my employ, and will
transfer to this department on Monday, so I’d like that to be your start date,
too.”

“That
would be great. Thank you.”

It
was only Wednesday. He couldn’t handle not seeing her until then, but what
excuse could he give her that would be legit? It would take HR a few days to
get her paperwork ready. There was really no reason to keep her in the building
any longer, unless he gave her a tour. Unfortunately, there was no time for
that today. He was booked solid with meetings and more interviews the remainder
of the day.

“Let
me walk you out.” Pete or any of his assistants could handle that, but he
didn’t want to let her go yet.

“Thank
you. I’m so excited about this.”

“I’m
glad you are. We need people who are enthusiastic, and who want to nail those bastards
as much as each of us do.”

“How
old were you when you moved underground?”

It
was a common question people asked each other still, all these years later. He
led her into the elevator since it was ten floors down to the lobby from this
one. “I was thirty-four, and I was here seven years ago, before things got
really bad up there. How about you?”

“I
was twenty. Six years ago I transferred to the university here in town to
finish my undergrad degree.”

The
doors closed. They were the only two in the car, and it was so damn tempting to
kiss her that he was in physical pain. This had been a terrible mistake. “I
still remember so much,” he said. “The smell of real grass, the sound of
crickets at night, and most of all the feel of actual sunshine on my skin.”

She
looked at him for long moments, and time stopped. How the fuck was he going to
keep away from this woman? What had he done to himself?

“Same
here,” she said. “There’s no wind here. That’s what I find so hard to get used
to. It makes me feel claustrophobic at times, even all these years later.”

The
doors opened and three people got on from accounting. Dominic knew them all,
and they exchanged small talk until the three got off two floors down. Then he
and Angela were alone once more with five floors still to go. Why did these
things seem fast only when you weren’t in a hurry?

“I
miss the strangest little things,” she said, her voice all breathy and warm.
“Gazing at the real stars at night, and what snow feels like when it lands on
your bare skin. I miss walking through fields, and the smell in the air when
rain is coming. They can’t fake any of that underground.”

“No.
Especially not when they keep it a constant seventy-two degrees during the day,
and fifty-eight degrees at night.”

She
smiled, but there was a sadness in her eyes that he wanted to erase. “One
season is all we need. I hate that stupid slogan. It sounds like propaganda.”

He
couldn’t help but chuckle. “It is propaganda. Make no mistake about it. When
construction began on these cities in 2072, the architects couldn’t figure out
how to change the seasons without adding billions of dollars to the cost. So
instead the governments have spent that same amount of money in advertising,
trying to convince people that they no longer need leaves that change color in
the fall, or snow.”

They
reached the lobby, and Dominic walked toward the doors with her, nodding to
Tess at the desk. He followed Angela out onto the pavement. “Did you walk
here?”

“No,
I took the tram. I live about a half hour away, but that won’t be a problem.
I’ll be on time each morning.”

He
smiled. “I’m not worried about that. I have your email address so I’ll send you
the information you’ll need for Monday morning.”

“You
can text it to me if you’d like. Do you have my phone number?” She took out her
phone and handed it to him. What was he supposed to do? Refuse to exchange
numbers? That would seem rude. After he put his number in her phone and hers in
his, he handed her phone back to her. She stuck out her hand. “Thank you again.
Really. I am just thrilled about this.”

Her
enthusiasm was contagious, and it also told him he’d made the right decision in
hiring her, despite the fact that it would kill him not to be able to touch her
or kiss her. Skills and a work ethic were great, but positive people kept
morale up, and they were easy to work with. He shook her hand, hanging onto it
much longer than necessary. “You are very welcome. I’m sure we’ll do amazing
things together.”