Bleeding Edge: Elliot Security (Elliot Security Series Book 2) by Evie Mitchell (books to read for beginners TXT) 📕

to give you this.” He dropped a bright pink A3-sized envelope on my desk. It landed like an atomic bomb, ballooning a mushroom cloud to coat Max, my workstation, me, and everyone within a 2-metre radius in a thin shimmer of glitter.

“What the hell is that?”

“Ah! It’s in my eyes!”

“Get it off me!”

I gingerly picked up the offensive material and turned it over, ignoring the protests from my colleague. The front of the envelope featured a giant stick drawing overlapped in pink, purple, gold, and silver glitter. The back was a giant heart decorated in bright pink. I pressed my lips together to withhold the giggles that threatened to erupt.

Holding it at arm’s length I ripped it open, causing another shimmer shower of glitter. By this stage, a small crowd had gathered around my desk. I raised an eyebrow at the gaggle of geeks.

“Really?”

Sawyer stood front and centre grinning at me. “Come on, Sparky. Don’t leave us hanging.”

I rolled my eyes, but pulled out the giant card. The handmade card was in deep ruby red while a crescent moon sparkled in gold and silver glitter. Luc’s handwriting decorated the front in dark black marker.

Will you be my Sailor Moon?

My heart, already warm and gooey, melted into a puddle of warm Luc-shaped goo.

He remembered.

I opened it, jerked, then started laughing. He’d crafted a giant red pop-up rose inside the card. Green glitter on the stem, red for the petals. It wobbled precariously as I read the thick marker that proclaimed his bold statement.

I know how to do romance.

“Is this an inside joke?”

I looked up at Greg and burst out laughing. His moustache was bejewelled with all the colours of the glitter rainbow. Wiping tears, I nodded. “Yeah, he remembered something I said a while ago.”

“Put a ring on it.” This came from Sawyer.

“Thanks, mate.” I rolled my eyes. “Bit early for that.”

“If it’s right, it’s right.” He nodded, then clapped his hands sending a new glitter cloud flying.

“Now, I think that”– he pointed at my card− “deserves a place on the winner wall.”

I groaned, pressing a hand to my eyes. “No!”

“Yes!”

“Win-ner wall! Win-ner wall! Win-ner wall!” The chanting started, and the card was liquidated from my hands and positioned on our wall of pride. There, in a cloud of glittery goodness, rose now lopsidedly bobbing, Greg pinned it to the board.

I laughed, tears prickling for reasons I couldn’t explain.

“Thanks, guys.” I stood, brushing my hands over my top and lifting a hand to show them the obscene amount of sparkle on my palm. “I may look like a kindergarten teacher–”

“I’d say closer to stripper.” The suggestion came from the doorway. Luc’s broad grin and casual stance told me he’d been there a while.

“You are so cleaning this up, Falco.”

He laughed. “I already paid the cleaners extra.” He pushed away from the door and stepped into the room. “Besides, who do you think made the damn thing?” He shook his head like a dog, sending a cloud of shine tumbling from his hair.

We all roared with laughter. He stalked to me, pulled me into his arms, and pressed a quick closed-mouth kiss to my still laughing mouth. He dropped his arms, stepping back with a wink. My face flushed as I realised all eyes were on us. Surprisingly, I was okay with that.

I… I think I like being claimed.

“Grade school.” He looked at the ruin of my desk. “My work here” −he twinkled, actually-physically-goddamned-twinkled− “is done.” Turning on his heel, he left.

“Em.”

I looked over at Sawyer.

“If you don’t put a ring on it, I will.”

I threw back my head and laughed.

Chapter Thirty-Six

Emmie

The West Investment case continued to niggle me. I’d started crafting my report, outlining my findings and our recommendations for immediate, short, medium, and long-term security upgrades. My IT side would be combined with Luc’s physical findings over the next few days, and we’d present a summary to Mr Stoltz and his board next week.

I’d been working through the data and spent hours analysing how the malware had integrated into the investment system. Essentially, it started with the trojan keylogger. This allowed the hacker to gain entry to the system by installing a backdoor. A backdoor was a hidden program which provided remote access to the system. They’d used this backdoor to install the algorithm and build the accounts that allowed the money to pool and then be funnelled out. Unfortunately, the accounts were shifting money to offshore bank accounts, which was beyond my legal reach. Unofficially and off the books, I could definitely continue to track the transactions.

I wasn’t, because that would be illegal, but I could.

None of that bothered me. No, it was the way the money shifted. I’d moved to Fleas, our name for a series of computers that were specifically set up for testing. Their entire purpose was for us to be able to safely test new and emerging threats. This testing allowed us to identify patterns, understand how a virus would infect a system and then develop solutions and improve our own software.

I’d been scenario running to map how the algorithm selected accounts, how it gathered and transferred money, and whether we could reverse engineer it to work out exactly how much money they’d stolen and from which accounts.

The reverse engineering was easy. Now I knew about the fake accounts and how they acted, I could run a patch to search for them, and then we could track back the transactions. Easy. But there was still… something that didn’t sit quite right. I couldn’t put my finger on the reason, so I was running test number fifty-six while I typed up the report.

“Yo, working beauty.” Luc propped a hip on my desk. “Emergency staff meeting.”

“Mm?” I continued typing, frowning at the screen.

“Emergency meeting. Now.”

“Uh-huh,” I murmured, tilting my head as I deleted a sentence and reworked how I described my findings.

“Em.”

“Mm?”

He waved a hand in front of my face. I blinked twice, turning to look up at his half-smile. “Oh, hey.”

“Hey, gorgeous.”

Cue my underwear