Present Tense (Out of the Fire #3) - Candace Blevins Page 0,22

and talk.

In the future, consequences would happen at six in the morning, every morning she had demerits from the night, assuming someone was home to mete them out. If not, they’d rearrange it a few hours earlier or perhaps push it to evening, as this one had been. She’d realized this might mean she’d be punished twice on this night, and she’d shut up.

It had felt important to dole out consequences before she had a chance to rack too many demerits up, though.

“The building is around a hundred years old,” Collosa told her. “It’s an old school we’ve repurposed for our use. There’s an underground portion below what used to be the sports fields, so no one knows just how many square feet we’ve added to the place.”

He showed her the gymnasium, locker rooms, cafeteria, auditorium, and workout room, but there wasn’t time to take her downstairs before they were due to meet with Aaron. Just as well, since technically, she’d need her new company ID card before they could take her past those security doors.

Aaron is an excellent judge of character, and rather than bring up her reticence towards weapons, he pointed out she had thirty days to pass the Drake range test and then another five to pass the tests for her concealed carry license, and pointed out her pay would drop to fifty percent of current if she didn’t make those deadlines, and would remain there until the goals were met.

Based on what Collosa knew of the adorable little vampire, he thought the financial incentive was the best way to go with her. No threats that she had to, but a big consequence if she didn’t.

Thankfully, no one was in the range when the two men showed it to her. Fabio had checked out a paintball gun and a bucket of paintballs from the armory, and Collosa showed her how to handle it once they were in the range. It occurred to him the threesome could have a paintball war in the coming nights, to begin to teach her about weapons safety and how to shoot the bad guys without shooting the people on your side. Sneak training.

They dropped her off in the geek offices just before oh-two-hundred, and they went home. Someone from Drake would bring her home an hour before sunrise. She’d managed to keep her Aussie accent at bay, so she was good for the day. They weren’t going to ask her coworkers to tattle on her.

Kelsey’s personal computer equipment was the best money could buy. Well, with the exception of the graphics card since she didn’t use her unit for serious gaming. But everything else was top of the line and frequently updated.

The equipment in the Drake geek offices was miles better. The truly best stuff can’t be bought — one needed connections in the U.S. military to gain access to it.

Apparently, geeks new to Drake have to spend time proving themselves before they see the inner sanctum, but she was shown inside on her first day. She scented envy and respect from more than a few of the people in the room.

She also noted that, while most of the employees in the rest of the building were shapeshifters, she smelled primarily humans in this department.

Five people were in the room, counting her, and she was told the other four in this division would arrive at oh-five-thirty for a meeting. Unless an op was underway, people in this unit worked mostly when they wanted. So long as two people were in the office at any one time, and everyone got their forty to fifty hours in, Aaron didn’t care when people worked.

In just about every geek office, it’s standard protocol to give the new girl some impossible task the group has been working on for months. In this case, it was how to hack into one of the most expensive brands of cars on the market. One of those that makes thousands of them a year — not tens of thousands. Certainly not millions per year. Super elite, and hardened by the best uber-geeks on the planet.

Though, in this case, that meant second best, since Kelsey figured she was the best.

It took her nearly an hour to get in, and another hour and a half to gain control of all communications between a specific car — currently in Italy — and the internet.

It helped that Kelsey knew who they’d hired to harden their security, and she knew how he worked, but she figured