one of two dozen people who were in a position to design and propose things like new nuclear energy paradigms that would be both safe and far more sustainable than fossil fuel.
The bomb Langston had been trying to track down? A portable nuclear device large enough to level a city. That pants-shitting, terrifying idea had barely seemed to rattle Selene, who’d been brought in to interpret the bomb plan.
He’d met her at a tense gathering in a dramatic underground conference room beneath the Boston Public Library—because of course the cult had underground meeting rooms. The moment Oscar looked at Selene, there had been a spark. Something he hadn’t felt in a very, very long time.
He relaxed as she leaned against him, her lovely breasts brushing the back of his head. Relaxed wasn’t his default state. She leaned down, which meant even more boob contact, and peered at what he was doing.
While she wasn’t a computer engineer like he was, he was pretty sure there wasn’t anything she couldn’t understand if it was explained correctly.
Well, that, and she liked it when he pulled her hair.
Oscar had been studying the local storage of the bomber’s tablet. This whole shit show started when Langston had inadvertently switched tablets with an Italian man named Luca. Langston had been unknowingly carrying around the plans for the city-killer bomb with a potential twenty-kiloton output. Luca had followed Langston to the U.S. and was apparently willing to do anything to get the tablet back. Considering what was on it, that made sense.
Oscar tapped the external hard drive he had sitting in a cradle. “When I copied Luca’s data, I put it on here. I’ve opened up a similar tablet to attempt to recreate, not just mirror, his.” He pointed to the disassembled tablet he had propped up on a book, which looked almost lewd with its glass gone and thin wires running out of it. “And my laptop is running the data.”
He scooted his chair back and patted his lap. He liked touching Selene, being close to her. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman, and Selene knew how to push all his hot buttons. The two of them shared a chemistry that was off the charts. She slid onto his knee, the sheet parting so her bare ass was against his thigh. His cock thickened.
“And what do you hope to find?” she asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe nothing, but the tablet had even the pre-programmed apps stripped out. I want to see when and how that happened. Or if they were never there, it might mean the tablet wasn’t bought retail, but as part of a bulk custom order, shipped out pre-consumer interface.”
“And that could potentially be traced?”
“Exactly.”
Selene cupped the back of his neck and smiled at him. “A clue.”
“Yes. And my program can run in the background.” Oscar nipped the soft skin at the crook of her elbow.
“Oh? Well then.” Selene let go of the sheet.
Was there anything hotter than a naked woman on your lap?
Oscar licked her nipple before sucking it into his mouth. When she started to whimper, he stood, hoisting her up with his hands under her ass. She wrapped her arms and legs around him, head falling back as he nibbled on her neck.
He carried her to the bed, dropping her on the mattress. He was just about to strip his boxers off when something caught his eye.
Glancing back toward the desk, his heart practically stopped. “Fuck.”
Selene tensed. “What?”
He leapt across the room and slapped the tablet facedown on the desk, then quickly shut his laptop. Selene jerked up, his tension clearly spreading to her, but her voice was calm as she asked again, “What’s wrong?”
“The camera turned on.”
“Perhaps you accidentally hit a button when you stood up?”
Oscar shook his head. “Not my computer. I have tape over it.” Most hackers, whether white or black hat, blacked out their cameras—aka, put a piece of electrician’s tape over it—or custom built computers without a camera. This was his travel laptop, and though he’d customized it, he hadn’t bothered to mess with the screen, except to black out the camera.
He’d done the same with the tablet he’d brought in order to test his theory, but the tape had been on the glass.
The glass he’d removed.
“Fuck,” he snarled. “It shouldn’t even be possible to…I mean, the functionality beyond the internal storage is all disabled.”
Selene rose, not bothering with the sheet this time. “The tablet—you’re saying it was the tablet’s camera?”