Exploited
Page 53

“Oh, playing hooky. You’re such a rebel, Kyle.” I rolled my eyes and he snorted.
“Just needed some time off. Working on a few things,” he answered vaguely.
“Anything you want to share?”
“Not really.” Kyle seemed off, but I dismissed it. On top of everything else, I honestly didn’t want to worry about Kyle too.
I rolled my chair back a few inches, forcing him to drop his hand. “Okay, then. So on to work news: This hacker into the company network is one smart cookie,” I told him. Kyle seemed unimpressed. He barely registered a response. He was being decidedly flat. Unemotional. Had my not realizing he was out of the office pissed him off?
I had never seen Kyle upset or angry about anything, so it was hard to know if that was how he was behaving.
“I’m sure he is.” Kyle picked up my phone and flipped it over in his hands. “So, what else has you so distracted? It can’t be just work. You don’t care about it enough.”
I took my phone from his hands and dropped it into my bag. “Why would anything else be distracting me?”
“How are things going with the guy you’re seeing?” Kyle flipped his hair out of his face. He looked tired. Like he hadn’t slept in days. Maybe he had been sick. His skin was waxy and his lips were dry. He clearly wasn’t taking care of himself very well.
I didn’t know much about his personal life. Whether he had friends he hung out with. What he did on the weekends. Maybe I should make more of a point to find out.
“What about you, Kyle? How are things with you?” I asked him. God, I sounded lame. I didn’t even know how to make small talk. Being a friend was hard work.
He looked surprised by my questions.
“Uh, fine. Good, actually.” He brightened a bit, becoming more animated. “Things are going to be really good soon, I hope.”
“You live with your parents still, right?”
Kyle ducked his head, obviously embarrassed by my question. “I’m going to move out. Probably by the end of the month,” he answered defensively.
“No, I didn’t mean that like it’s a bad thing. I just wanted to make sure you’re doing okay. That things are good with you,” I reassured him.
Kyle looked at me between strands of messy hair. “You want to know if I’m okay?”
I reached over and squeezed his arm quickly. Platonically. So there was no room for misinterpretation. “Of course. We’re friends. You just look like you could use some sleep. Those bags under your eyes would need to be checked in at the airport.”
Kyle laughed. “You know how it is when you’re working on stuff. You don’t always remember to sleep.”
“Yeah, I know how that goes. Why don’t we go and hit the cafeteria. Let me buy you a sandwich. It looks like you need it.”
“That’s cool of you, Hannah, but you don’t need to do that.”
I pulled him to his feet. “Come on. Let me. I can’t take staring at this computer anymore right now anyway.”
“Is he treating you right?” Kyle asked as we got into the elevator to go to the ground floor.
“Who?”
“The man you’re seeing?” Kyle clarified.
Why was he asking about Mason? It was weird. And very much out of the blue.
“Yeah, he’s fine.” I tried to be offhanded. I didn’t want to talk about this with Kyle.
“You’re my friend, Hannah. I just want to make sure I don’t have to bust anyone’s kneecaps,” Kyle remarked, pretending to punch his palm.
I chuckled. “No busting of kneecaps required. Promise.”
I changed the subject. Badly. “What kind of sandwich do you want?”
Kyle rolled his eyes. Then narrowing them, he said, “You don’t want to talk about him. He must be special.”
I gave him a tight smile but didn’t respond. Kyle stared at me a little too closely. It was as if he was looking for something.
“I hope they have those chicken and stuffing sandwiches. I love those,” he said after a while, and all talk of Mason was, thankfully, over.
“Me too. We should start a petition to have them every day,” I suggested with a chuckle.
“Changing Holt IT one chicken sandwich at a time,” Kyle joked, and we were both laughing, the awkwardness gone.
We got off the elevator and made our way to the cafeteria. It was empty. Probably because it was only ten-thirty in the morning. Everyone else was actually doing their job.
My phone started to buzz in my pocket and I had a brief moment of elation, thinking it might be Mason.
I pulled it out and looked at the screen, my jubilation dissipating instantly.
I handed Kyle a twenty-dollar bill. “Go get a sandwich, and I’d like a Danish. I’ll just be a minute.”
Kyle frowned. “Everything okay?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Everything’s fine.”
I slipped out into the courtyard and answered the call.
“Why are you calling me again? I thought we had said everything we needed to say last time,” I snapped.
“I told you I’d do some digging. I thought you’d want to know what I found out,” Rose responded nastily.
“I can do my own digging, Rose,” I snarled into the phone.
“Chill out, Han, seriously. I’m just trying to be helpful given what’s at stake here. Remember, in the chaos you have to find calm.” I hated Rose’s fortune cookie bullshit. It had always pressed my buttons, now even more so.
And that particular line of garbage annoyed me. She seemed to wheel it out whenever she wanted to seem extra poignant.
“Well, I looked around and I didn’t see my name anywhere. How is it that you’re seeing something that I can’t find? I think it’s a little strange.”
“What exactly are you accusing me of, Hannah?” Rose demanded.
After Rose had told me about my name being mentioned in relation to Freedom Overdrive, I had asked Toxicwrath about it.
22:01 <T0x1cwrath> I’ve seen nothing like that. Who told you this?
22:01 <Freed0m0v3rdr1v3> A friend. She says it was during an encrypted chat.
22:02 <T0x1cwrath> I’ll look around. But I wouldn’t believe it. If you don’t want to be found, no one can find you.
Neither of us found any indication that my real name was floating around the Web. Which made me question what Rose was up to.