lies and deception.
The shifter serum.
In an email to someone named Gray, Nick indicated that he had the serum locked in the safe in the office.
If Shaw was going to be the cybersecurity employee he should be, he would tell Nick that discussing such sensitive information over email, even encrypted email, was not advisable.
But first, he would go snooping for the serum.
Shaw left his burrowed office and went straight to Nick’s. If there was any logical place for the safe to be, it would be in the boss man’s office. He was glad that the entirety of the staff had left for the night. It made his snooping that much easier. If there had still been other people around, he would have never been able to force the lock.
A few paintings were hanging on the walls, and all of them looked out of place in the lion shifter’s space. Shaw knew that the art pieces would have most likely been picked out by Nick’s wife. One in particular seemed to catch his eye. It was a painting of the savanna, and two lions were lounging peacefully in the long grass.
That had to be what hid the safe.
Shaw looked over his shoulder, even though he knew he was alone. His imagination was already running away with him. He tried to tell himself that his fingers weren’t actually shaking as he moved the painting to the side. The truth of it was that they were trembling like leaves in the wind.
Before he had started this entire plan, he had never really broken the law. Well, not a real law. The ones he broke had always been cyber in nature, which meant he had always done it from the comfort of his own home. And always abiding by the gray hat hacker code.
This was different.
If he was caught, there would be hell to pay at the hands of a pissed-off lion shifter.
With a deep breath, Shaw pushed the painting to the side.
Nothing.
With an annoyed grunt, he let the painting fall back into place. He eyed the other suspiciously. He took wide steps to the other portraits, only to discover that the safe was not hiding behind a painting. Where did people put safes? In movies, they were always set inside of the walls.
Shaw went to the desk and stood behind the chair. The desk was a large rectangle that gave enough space for a thick seat. To the left side were three drawers. The right was a cupboard.
“Bingo,” he said out loud.
He tugged at it, and it opened to reveal a large stainless steel safe. Shaw didn’t even try to contain his smile when he saw that it was an electronic keypad. He knew how to deal with those. Had it been anything else, he would have had to do a bit of research.
This was his lucky day.
And if his chance held, he could walk out of the office with the serum tucked somewhere in his backpack. Shaw retrieved a tool from his bag. It was the size of a regular smartphone, with a thick cord that plugged into his laptop. He settled into Nick’s chair and began typing away. His fingers were moving fast and entirely out of memory. He had done this before for other clients who wanted to make sure regular coding couldn’t confuse the safe enough to let it open.
Nick had hired no such security help. It only took Shaw five minutes to mess with the safe’s keypad computer. It dinged as it believed the right password had been keyed into the pad.
If Shaw’s fingers had been trembling when he pushed the first painting aside, they were downright quivering then. He closed them around the small handle and pulled. The air left the safe with a loud pfft that made him jump. He laughed at how much of a coward he was.
Those days would soon be behind him. All he needed was to get the serum and inject himself. Then he would know if someone was sneaking up on him, because he would be a shifter with super hearing and a sense of smell that could only be found in the animal kingdom. He was positively giddy when he pulled a small vial of greenish liquid from the safe’s interior.
He had done it.
He slid the vial into his pocket, closed the safe and disengaged his tool. He even went so far as to spray some air freshener into the office to mask his smell. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew