From Broke Technician to Luna novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: A Collision After Dark
A night call takes Stevie to the Regent Tower's top suite, where a giant takes her for a minor, she out-hacks a masked intruder, and a blond stranger finally speaks: Larkin isn't the name she was born with.
I was losing a fight with a sidewalk grate when my phone rang.
I had practiced in these heels for three weeks, and the grates still won.
My flip phone buzzed somewhere inside my coat.
I keep a flip phone because nobody can track one.
The number was unknown, but after dark, unknown numbers are usually customers.
"Night Owl Computer Care, this is J. Larkin," I said in my best professional voice. "How can I help?"
"A company computer is acting up," a man said, already irritated. "Can you come to the Regent Tower tonight?"
The Regent Tower was where my cab had dropped me ten minutes earlier.
By day I was an IT tech finishing a master's degree, with sixty-one thousand dollars in student loans.
Night calls paid the interest.
"I can be there in fifteen minutes. Text me the room number."
He said "Thank you" like it cost him money and hung up.
Roxy's birthday party would have to wait an hour.
The doorman was at his post by the entrance, and he lit up when he saw me.
"Stevie! Another job tonight?"
"Yes. You didn't hand out my card, did you?"
He winked, which answered that.
My coat pocket held a stack of those cards and the birthday card that had come that morning.
It had no return address and was signed A.R., with a hundred-dollar bill inside.
One came every year, three days early, and I had never spent one.
"The man who called is decent," the doorman said. "I asked."
I rode to the top floor and knocked on suite 4100.
The man who opened the door was in his mid-twenties and six foot five, with dark hair, dark eyes and a day of stubble.
He filled the doorway, and his face hardened when he saw me.
"Who are you? We didn't order an escort, and we aren't paying for a kid."
He started to shut the door and I stuck my foot in the gap.
That was a mistake.
"Ow! I'm J. Larkin, and you called me to fix a computer."
"You look sixteen."
"I'm twenty-two. I finished high school at fourteen and went straight to college."
"Your clothes aren't a technician's."
"I was on my way to a birthday party. Ask the front desk."
I turned for the elevator, and his hand closed on my arm.
"Wait. I'm sorry." He let go and wiped his forehead. "People are digging for anything on my boss. A girl who looks like a child walking into his suite would be the headline."
"I understand," I said. "But the door stays open. I never work behind a closed door, and I have mace in this pocket."
"Fair," Dane said, and stepped aside. "Dane Holloway."
"Stevie Larkin. The J. on the business is for men who get nervous or laugh when a woman fixes their computer."
The laptop sat on a desk at the back, buried under papers.
I reached my home computer through it and ran my own diagnostics.
Within minutes the virus theory was dead.
Somebody was inside the network right now, and he had hidden so well that I nearly missed him.
"Dane, how much confidential material is on this?"
"Everything the company has," he said. "Here, or linked to it."
"Then I need permission to open your private files."
"Handle it," he growled.
I put in my earbuds, started a playlist of angry nineties rock, and went to war.
Halfway through, my phone buzzed.
"Where are you?" Roxy wailed. "You promised! It's my birthday!"
"A job came up. Give me an hour."
I hung up and kept scrolling.
At last the defenses held. I had changed every password and built a firewall of my own.
Only the trace remained: find the attacker's machine and, with luck, his face.
Dane tapped the desk three times with one finger.
I looked up. We weren't alone.
A second man had come in, and I forgot the trace.
His dirty-blond hair was tied back, his jaw was sharp, and his eyes were a green so vivid I lost my sentence.
He was breathing hard and holding himself very still.
He didn't look at the screen. He looked at me.
"Tiernan, you're early," Dane said, and then to me, "Have you finished?"
I cleared my throat. "Actually, yes. There he is."
The hacker's webcam filled the display.
His skin was nearly colorless, and in the light his eyes looked red.
He saw that I'd caught him, and a hand slammed over the lens.
I printed the frame, cut his connection, and recorded the address and the name registered to the machine.
Ansel Roth.
My stomach dropped.
I knew exactly one other person with those initials, and he was a signature on a card in my pocket.
It had to be a coincidence.
I kept that to myself and logged out.
"That covers you if you press charges," I said.
"What do I owe you?" Dane asked.
"Three hundred and fifty dollars."
He gaped. "Most people would charge thousands, especially once they learned the client was Kincaid Sentinel."
My eyes widened. Kincaid Sentinel was one of the biggest security firms in the country.
"I didn't know whose computer it was," I said. "I charge everyone the same."
He counted out the bills. I took them, and the blond man still hadn't looked away.
I walked to the open door.
"Miss Larkin," Tiernan said, and his voice reached somewhere in my chest.
I stopped with my hand on the frame.
"Larkin isn't the name you were born with."
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