Networked
Chapter One

by Belle
copyright ©2011

“Do it. Or die.”

Morse Barnes stilled when the pistol’s barrel dug into his temple.

This is a hell of a way to celebrate my fortieth birthday.

Out of the corner of his eye, he could see a man that looked like a concrete pillar dressed in black denim. Not fat, but big and muscular, like an offensive lineman. Morse could smell a hint of L.A.’s smog, mixed with the fragrance of night-blooming cereus.

The flower’s aroma called KC’s face to mind, blissfully sniffing one of the blooms. She’d planted hundreds of cereus, just for the smell, even though they bloomed for only one midsummer’s night. The rest of the year, though, they looked like crap – a bunch of dead bushes was a charitable description.

Still, KC loved them, so he had overlooked her mania for the ugly things. The fragrance, he admitted, was delightful. Almost as delightful as KC. Why the hell had they gotten divorced, anyway?

Oh, yeah. Something about the impossibility of living together without constant conflict.

A second person he hadn’t seen rammed the barrel of something into his left kidney. Morse knew it was a certain kind of firearm from the slide’s racheting chuh-chuh sound, pumping shells into the double-barreled chamber. Its owner laughed without mirth. “Guess he wants to die.”

Morse now knew the second opponent was male, but of unknown size and strength. He considered his odds against the unseen man with the weapon and the big guy with the pistol. He didn’t want to die on the front steps of the desert home he and KC used to share. In fact, he didn’t want to die at all. What he wanted to do was wait for his chance to escape. He was pretty sure he knew why these goons wanted him, and he was more useful to them alive than dead.

He raised his hands. “I’ll go with you.”

He let them cuff him and drag him to a panel van the color of dried blood. A third man opened the doors at the rear. Just before they shoved him inside, the thug with the nine-millimeter snatched Morse’s headset and cell from him, using his jackbooted heel to grind them both into the dirt. After the doors slammed and the van accelerated, Morse fell on his side against the unpadded metal floor. While his shoulder and hip twanged with pain, two letters repeated in his head: KC. KC. KC.

Welcome to my nightmare, punk.

KC Fielding had tracked the script kiddie to his electronic lair. The guy’s lame attempt to deface SixDegreez’s site had bounced off her software like a ball off a stone wall. She’d have the last laugh when she reported the unsuccessful breach to the authorities.

Her cell phone rang. Leaning back in her chair, she tapped her headset on. “Fielding.”

“Prepare to be owned. Eat dirt and die, bitch.”

Hearing the voice’s distortion propelled her forward in her seat, slamming both her feet onto the floor, but the call had ended. KC pressed a button on the internal communications system.

“Yeah?”

The security person on duty sounded bored, which annoyed KC. “You have anything on my most recent cell call?”

“Let me see.” She heard the keyboard’s clicks as the woman accessed records. KC required that all calls – wireless and landline – in and out of SixDegreez be routinely tracked. “Too short a call. No GPS. Either the phone’s no longer on, or it’s too old to have GPS capability. Bet it’s a cheapie prepaid – untraceable.”

KC rubbed her eyes. “Probably just an asswipe. Every social networking site has a target on their back these days.”

“Probably,” her employee agreed. “No intrusions so far. Quiet.”

“Where’s my network admin?”

“Tom? He said he was going out for Thai.”

Thinking, I wish he’d told me that, so I could have ordered dinner, KC asked, “When?”

More keyboarding clicks. “Looks like a couple of hours ago. Want the precise time?”

“Nah. Thanks.” After she disconnected, she thought about Tom. Two hours was a hell of a long time to be gone for takeout, especially this time of night. L.A.’s traffic was legendary, but at ten o’clock at night, it wasn’t that bad.

Leaning back in her chair, she stared out the floor-to-ceiling window. Winds had cleared out the smog, and L.A.’s lights twinkled with uncommon clarity. She’d probably end up firing Tom-The-Network-Nimrod. Damn it, why wouldn’t Morse work for her anymore? If he would, she wouldn’t have the problem of a missing network admin. Morse was like the sun – a heavenly body that never failed to rise. In more ways than one.

If I hadn’t been such a jerk, Morse would still be working for me. He’d still be my husband, too. Why didn’t he just spank me when I acted up?

Adrift in thoughts of her ex, KC sucked her lower lip into her mouth, biting it. What was it he’d called her? Oh, yes, “an alpha she-wolf.” Of course, Morse was alpha, too – he was just sneakier about it because he rarely confronted people. She, on the other hand, couldn’t have a normal conversation about the weather without raising most people’s hackles. She tried to get along, she really did, but she’d never learned the art of small talk. She was too introverted, too into her own head. And when she did interact with others, it never went well.

Muttering to herself, she called Tom-The-Network-Nimrod’s cell, only to hear it go to voice mail. Then she tried her ex, even though apologizing to Morse in order to ask him for a favor made her throat feel like she was swallowing ground glass.

Morse’s cell also went straight to voice mail. She puzzled over that. Morse never, ever turned off his cell, not even during sex. In fact, they’d argued about it the last time she’d made love with him.

“I want all your attention. You love that fucking cell phone more than me,” she’d said.

“Stop the prima donna crap,” he’d retorted.” Don’t tell me you don’t care about the network going down. You’d chew my butt for days if that happened. The phone stays on.”

Words had escalated to ugly heights. Then, Morse had stopped screwing her. Just up and stopped, his cock hard and pulsing. He’d jerked his jeans to his hips, saying two last words: I quit.

Groaning, she dropped her head in her hands. Half the time, she didn’t know why she acted the way she did. But she knew she would have thought twice about bitching to her husband if he’d only yanked down her jeans and walloped her good once in a while. She’d hinted she wanted exactly that more than once, but he hadn’t heard the clue-phone ringing, apparently.

Though she’d talked with Morse a few times since, all their conversations had been dry and factual. Who wanted the house, and all that. Now, she was forced to hire network admins who couldn’t find their butts with both hands and a flashlight. And she had to resort to dildos and vibrators for satisfaction. And it was all her own goddamned fault.

Running a hand through her hair in frustration, she called the house’s landline – the granny phone, as she referred to it. Morse had insisted on installing the old-fashioned thing, citing the fact that cell networks usually overloaded during public emergencies. He had stressed the safety factor. She’d countered that a landline was easily defeated with a pair of wire cutters, but he’d stuck to his point of view.

She smiled. That was Morse – unmovable as a pit bull’s clenched jaw, when he thought he was right.

Like I’m not the same way.

She called Security again. The shift had changed, and she recognized the voice of the man who answered.

“Tom ever return, Dirk?” she asked.

“No, ma’am. Want me to call you when he does?”

“Just send him straight to me for firing. I’ll cut him a check for a month’s wages and you can escort him out of the building.”

Morse woke up, aching all over, halogen lights blinding his eyes. A boot kicked him in the thigh. “Get up.”

He struggled to a sitting position, his hands still cuffed behind him. His wrists, cut by the harsh metal, stung. The numbness in his middle back was wearing off, and he could feel the pull of stitches.

Stitches? What the hell is this, an organ theft operation?

“Okay, asshole, here’s how it’s going to be.”

Morse opened his mouth to speak, but suddenly couldn’t breathe. As he struggled for air, nauseous from the punch in the stomach he’d received, the guy said, “Don’t say a fuckin’ word. Next time, I’ll use my foot, not my fist.”

Swallowing bile, Morse nodded. The thug who’d smacked him was the concrete-pillar-in-black guy. The double-barreled-firearm-guy was only of average size. Him, Morse could take. If the guy weren’t pointing the weapon at him, that is. He had no idea who either of them was.

The big man spoke. “You’re going to work as the new network admin for SixDegreez. The guy that used to do that job left town.” With a smirk, he continued. “In the trunk of a car. Not breathing.”

Morse remained silent, considering his chances. He was tall and strong, but no superhero. With his arms cuffed behind him, he was certainly no match against two men with loaded firearms.

Concrete Pillar flicked his piece up, gesturing. “First, you’re gonna get our guys in through a back door in SixDegreez’s system, so we can intercept all traffic on their network. Then, you’re gonna upload the mother of all viruses and corrupt everything.”

“Technically, it’s a worm,” Double-Barrel Man said. He seemed to shrink when the big man glared at him.

“Shut the fuck up.” The man swiveled his head back to Morse. “We’re bringing that fucking bitch’s company down. In more ways than one. After you upload the virus – ” the big man paused, staring at Double-Barrel Man, who Morse thought was wise to keep his lip zipped “ – you’ll have two minutes to clear out. You’re not gone by then, you’re toast. Actually, you’ll be pink mist. We’ve got the whole thing set to blow. The guy cooling in the trunk gave us all the access we needed to rig the place with explosives. The bitch doesn’t get out alive. You feel me? In case you don’t, we got snipers set up covering all four sides of the building. Either of you tries to leave – ” He pantomimed firing a rifle.

After Morse nodded, the man said, “We got you set, too. Implanted one of those real-time locator doohickeys, so we’ll know where you are at all times, along with nanotech sensors that will relay all your vital signs to us. You’re probably feeling the stitches in your back by now. Good old guy-in-the-trunk blanketed SixDegreez with micro-monitor cams that also transmit sound. You tip anyone off, especially the bitch, we blow up the place ahead of schedule – and you with it. Got it?”

Working hard to keep his expression neutral, Morse chanced a question. “If all you want to do is do in KC, why not blow it up now? Or have a sniper take her down when she leaves?”

The big man nodded. “You mean, why fuck around with a virus and you and the real-time locator thingie we stuck inside you and all that shit?”

“Yeah.”

The big man hunkered down, sticking his face in Morse’s. The stench of coffee and long-overdue dental hygiene assaulted his nose, but Morse didn’t move when the man said, “Because we want to break her before she dies.”

Concrete Pillar was working a vendetta against KC. Why, Morse had no idea, but something about the explanation stunk worse than the man’s putrid breath. Who was really behind the plot? No way this guy had thought it up, and he didn’t believe that the man was in charge of the sophisticated crackers who would infiltrate Six Degreez’s network. Concrete Pillar was hired muscle, nothing more.

Someone else was behind it all. And Morse intended to find out who the bastard was.

KC’s mouth was filled with club sandwich when Dirk from Security buzzed her. After chasing the dry turkey with a slug of bottled iced tea, she put him on speaker. “If Tom’s back, send his ass on up. I plan to chew on it for a while.”

“No sign of Tom. But you’ve got a visitor.”

She could hear the guard’s hesitation. “Well, who is it?” she snapped.

“Morse.”

She choked on her swallow of tea, coughing.

“Uh, KC?”

She coughed twice more before saying, “Send him up.” Just knowing the man was about to step into her office started the flush that rushed from her head to her thighs.

The door opened, and it was as if he’d sucked out all the oxygen in the room. She leaned back in her chair to watch him approach her desk, crossing her legs to hide their trembling. Oh, how she longed to bend over the desk and invite him to give her a long-overdue hiding. “You always did have good timing, you son of a bitch.” KC drank more Arizona tea before tossing her awful sandwich in the trash.

Morse stopped six inches from her desk, leaning over to flatten his palms on it. His lips twitched. “I see you haven’t lost your knack for charming words. Hello, and it’s good to see you, too.”

“What do you want?” She winced when she heard the unintended harshness in her tone. “I mean, yeah, it’s good to see you as well.”

“What’s wrong? I know that look on your face.”

“Ahhh.” She waved her hand in dismissal. “My network guru’s missing, and someone phoned in a threat. Hell of a time for him to vanish on me. Last I heard, he was getting takeout.”

Morse pulled one of her visitors’ chairs around the desk so that he was sitting next to her. “Tell me.”

Jesus, she could swear she felt heat radiating from him, the way you could feel the heat of the sand on the beach at midday. In July. “Somebody called me saying, quote, ‘Prepare to be owned. Eat dirt and die, bitch.’ The call didn’t last long enough to track or triangulate.”

The casual way he lounged in the chair should have annoyed her, because it always annoyed her when Morse acted nonchalant about any threat to SixDegreez, even though he was a minority stakeholder and had something to lose as well. However, all she felt was the keen desire to jump his bones – and boner. His tight jeans hid no secrets.

He smiled. “Classic cracker words. Any ideas who might have called?”

“Only the many thousands of black-hatters in the world who’d like to see me crucified. Other than that, no, I don’t know.” She picked up a ballpoint pen, toying with it, willing him to read the X-rated thoughts of discipline and lust in her mind.

“Well, that’s what you get for making a vendetta out of catching crackers when you should be running your company.”

“Bite me, Morse.”

He laughed. “Same old KC. But it’s true, isn’t it? Though I understand the reasons behind your anti-cracker crusade.”

“You wouldn’t laugh if it’d been you who’d had her identity stolen and her personal life reamed up the ass.” She tossed the pen at him. He caught it with one hand while grabbing her wrist with the other. The shock of his skin on hers made her jerk away from his grasp.

Just as quickly as she removed her wrist from his hand, he caught her chin with gentle fingers. “KC, let me help.”

Her mouth had turned as dry as Death Valley. She struggled to talk, her tongue thick and parched, while averting her gaze from his. “Why do you want to?”

“Don’t be stupid. And don’t make me say the words. You know I hate to say the words.” He slid his fingers from her chin down to the pulse in her neck, stroking.

“Okay. I won’t make you say the ‘L’ word if you don’t make me say the ‘A’ word.” If he doesn’t stop touching my neck right now, ohmigod.

“Deal. Your apologies are never worth a damn, anyway.”

“Neither are your professions of – ”

He pushed her chin up, stopping her speech. “I don’t even want to hear the ‘L’ word. And let’s not fight. We both know where we always end up when we fight.”

Not where I’d like to end up – across your lap.

She gasped as he brought his lips to her ear to whisper, “Not that I’d mind.” When he sucked her earlobe, she couldn’t help it – she moaned. The damned man had barely touched her, and already she was melting.

“Morse, you play dirty, you son of a – ”

Again he stopped her words, this time with his mouth. His silky tongue teased its way between her lips. The pit of her stomach shivered as if she rode a roller coaster.

Breaking away, muttering, “Damn it all,” she cupped him through the denim, unable to resist her urges one more moment.

“Be careful you don’t start something you can’t finish.” His chuckle irritated her, so she pulled down his zipper. Before she could grasp his cock, however, his hands were pushing down her jeans, tearing down her panties. When his middle finger slipped inside her, she surrendered. She shook as one velvety stroke after another opened her wide, a delicious rhythm in which he alternated interior caresses with teasing her clit. His free hand grasped a breast, tugging her nipple to erection through layers of clothing. Morse had a way of playing with her fully-clothed breasts that beat other men’s mouths.

The fingers between her thighs grew more insistent. She’d given up trying to reciprocate, instead lying back as far as her chair permitted, legs as wide as if she were executing a gymnast’s vault, lapping up his attentions.

Then he placed her legs on his shoulders and took her, fast. She’d always been partial to fast when she was about to come. Slapping her hands on his ass, she had no time to figure out when he’d removed his jeans, because the steel in his cock was pounding her in precisely the right spot. When he slid a finger between the two of them to touch her aching nub, she slipped into a luscious world where nothing existed but sensation, her legs shaking as she drowned in hot, liquid pleasure.

Eons later, after she’d heard his moans, he put his lips to her ear once more, saying, “I’m glad that’s out of the way. Otherwise, I’d never be able to concentrate on work.”

“Morse,” she breathed, “how’d you like your old job back?”

Morse didn’t like to say the “L” word, didn’t even like thinking it, but he knew it was love that was making his chest feel hollow. And, while strong emotions tumbled through him, all KC seemed to want was for him to work for her again. Had she ever really loved him?

Maybe if I’d spanked her like she’d wanted, she would have loved me, ran through his mind.

No matter – by the time dawn broke, she’d hate his guts, thinking he’d gone over to the dark side. Assuming they both got out of this mess alive. At least the plan was working – she’d offered him the dead network admin’s job. All he had to do now was figure out how to save all the employees of SixDegreez without getting blown up along with them, and keep acting as if the sex between them was a lark, nothing more.

His despicable past had led the unknown evil person to him, and it was a past he’d carefully kept hidden from KC. If she found out what he’d done years ago, she’d probably try to beat him up. Or have him arrested at the least – her moral code could be harsh and unforgiving. She wouldn’t care that he’d only been fifteen and stupid and full of himself.

Because of the micro-cameras that blanketed SixDegreez, he realized that the creeps who’d implanted the tracking device in his back had seen KC naked and vulnerable while they’d had sex. He despised that fact – and them – but at the moment, it was the least of their problems, as was the throbbing in his back where they’d cut him to insert the tracking device. Brushing a tendril of her chestnut hair from her cheek, he recalled how KC thought of her brown hair – boring. The glints of red and gold in it as it shone under the lights never failed to fascinate him, though. Fuck, he must still be in “L”.

He asked, “So, you want me to work for you again?”

Her eyes narrowed a tiny bit. “Will you?”

Disentangling himself from her, he pretended to think it over while dressing. “I know I’m going to regret this, but all right.”

The furrows in her forehead relaxed, and she smiled. “You’re the best, Morse. I always said that.”

“You can keep on adoring me for my mind, as long as you keep my body happy.” He tried for a light tone, forcing his expression to remain smooth and unruffled as he sat down in the guest chair, while the back of his mind considered what it would feel like to spank her ass. She’d always wanted it, so why hadn’t he done it? “Tell me the network’s vulnerabilities. You fixed the zero-day flaw, right?”

KC, in the middle of pulling up her panties, stared at him. “How stupid do you think I am? Of course we fixed it. We rewrote the code to minimize browser flaws. We can’t anticipate every Microsoft, Firefox, and Chrome glitch, but we try.”

He chanced it, reaching out to smack one still-bare globe. “I hate it when you call yourself stupid and imply that’s what I meant. Stop it this instant. So,” he continued casually with a racing heart, “no one can inject malicious code into any SixDegreez web page?”

She gasped, her hand flying to the pinkened area, her eyes looking a question at him. Her words, however, were pure, unchastened KC. “Really, you insult me, Morse. No cross-site scripting problems, I promise you. For today, at least. Who knows what holes someone will find tomorrow.”

“Wrong answer, KC. You’ve got security holes today, because it’s impossible to write perfect software. You just haven’t found them yet. I can guarantee the hackers and crackers already have. Now, who do you think is threatening you?”

To Be Continued...

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