A Thousand Glittering Lights

Chapter 19

Ellie openedher eyes at the discordant beep, blinking slowly as she tried to work out where she was. The lights were bright, almost glaring, contrasting with the darkness at the windows, and other than the sporadic beeping, her office was silent. A cup of cold coffee sat half drunk beside a stack of papers that she still hadn’t read. She had fallen asleep with her head on her desk.

She pushed herself up, wiping the grit from her eyes. A quick glance at her laptop clock showed it was almost 2:00 a.m.

After Victoria left, she’d taken a minute to get herself together, and then gone to do the worst job of her entire career: speak to HR about how to handle Vic’s breach of confidence and start an investigation. When she got back to her office, she’d planned to spend some time working out what to do about the trouble her friend was in… and how far she should go when Vic had been clear she didn’t want help. But it had only been a minute before the first of her staff arrived and the floodgates opened.

Everyone needed her. Her accountant wanted her to go through month-end spreadsheets, the designers had reams of concept art, the story team wanted to share the improvements they’d made, marketing had ideas for a teaser campaign…. On and on and on until she was spinning.

It was after eight by the time the last person had left her office. Ellie had ordered Chinese food and gone back to her desk, planning to catch up on some of her own work before heading over to a local hotel to get some sleep. But her exhaustion had caught up with her first.

Her mouth was dry, lips cracked, and her eyes still felt as if they were still half glued together. She took a sip of the ancient coffee and winced. It was bitter, and the milk had started to separate.

She pushed it away and dragged her hands through her hair, pulling it back into a ponytail out of her face. There was no point in sitting there for the rest of the night. She needed a shower and a bed.

A cold bed. A bed without Josh in it. She rubbed the ache in her temples and sighed. The desire to speak to him, to hear his voice, was visceral. But it wasn’t as if he had a phone. Or an e-mail address. Assuming he was even still… there.

Ellie stood slowly, easing the kinks out of her back and shoulder, and began packing her things away. But then her laptop chimed again.

She glanced at the screen, and then looked again, properly. There was a string of security warnings.

She sank back into her seat, pulled her keyboard and mouse closer, and scrolled down. There were multiple alerts over the last twenty minutes. All coming from her firewall. Someone was making repeated attempts to get into her private system.

She was used to seeing hacking attempts on her IP address. That was just standard. But this was different. This was a relentless, coordinated attack.

Her fingers flew over the keyboard as she followed the digital signature of whoever was trying to get onto her system. It was weirdly easy. Too easy. They were making no attempt to hide themselves at all. They were…

Her body filled with ice. They were her.

Someone was trying to hack her system using her login. And if they got past her firewall, they would have everything they needed to steal the game design document for the new game—concept, characters, gameplay, easter eggs, even her own personal notes—everything.

All new staff signed an NDA when they joined, and it was to protect the GDD. If a thief got hold of it, they could sell it to anyone. Everyone. Her launch would be over. Hell. Her business might be over.

She’d invested too much already. She’d invested too much before Vic had sunk tens of thousands of pounds into a server room they didn’t need.

But where…? Her fingers flew over the keyboard. Searching. Tracing the person pretending to be her.

And… crap.

They were using her login from her own IP address. From her personal computer. She recoiled, heart thundering. They were inside her house.

And this was no ordinary robbery. This was someone who knew her name. Who knew her login. They were struggling to crack her twenty-character password—thank God for her insane levels of security—but they had everything else.

Where was Josh? Was he still in the house? Was he okay? God. What about Nissy?

She sucked in a ragged breath and pressed her fingers into her cheeks, forcing herself to think. If only she had bought those security cameras when she first thought of them….

She dropped her hands, eyes flying back to her laptop. There was a camera.

She hunched over the keyboard, typing as fast as she could, taking control of her computer remotely. And then she turned on the webcams and told them to record.

A man was sitting in her office. At her desk! He wore a black ski mask completely covering his head and mouth; only his eyes were vaguely visible in the dim room.

He flinched and then tilted his head, facing directly toward the camera. Dammit. The light must have come on and alerted him. He looked at her for a tense moment, clearly aware of her. His eyes were wide, pupils dilated in the dim light.

Then he jerked to his feet and hurriedly sprayed all the surfaces from a bottle spray he’d brought with him. Alcohol or vinegar maybe. He was clearly rushing, but still meticulous.

She reached for her phone to call 999 at the same moment that he scanned the room, perhaps checking that he hadn’t left anything, and then jogged away. But he didn’t run. He never panicked.

Almost as if he knew he still had time. As if he knew she was too far away to stop him.