Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
Jorja glared after Gunnar as he strode from the room, slamming the door behind him. “Jerk.”
“Yeah, he can be at times.”
She turned toward the other brother. “You’re Remi, right?”
“You already know I am.” Remi scooted forward on his chair, positioning himself in front of a computer system she’d kill to have. “He’s not always a jerk.” Remi moved the mouse and used his thumbprint to open the screen.
“Could have fooled me.” She didn’t remember the last time someone had pissed her off quite so much as Gunnar had. “He didn’t need to kidnap me.”
“It’s not kidnapping if you aren’t in chains and you’re sitting in here,” Remi told her. “Gunnar doesn’t allow just anyone in this part of the house.”
She wouldn’t let just anyone into this part of the house if she owned a computer setup like this one either.
Especially not if they did the kind of work she suspected they did.
She watched as Remi did a search on the names on her list. He scooted his chair to the other side of his desk and fired up another computer.
“There’s no way I’m going where someone might track back on the main computer.”
“I figured as much.” Wasn’t that why she hadn’t wanted to attempt to go back in on either her phone or her laptop? “If I had my computer, it would be a lot faster.” She couldn’t resist the allure of the keyboard and got up to peer closer at Remi’s. “This is such a sweet setup.”
“Right?” Remi grinned at her over his shoulder for a second before he went back to the screen. “Damn.”
“They moved the page?”
“Yeah.”
“Lemme see?” She leaned across him with her arms and hovered her fingers over the keys, but didn’t touch them until he grumbled something under his breath. She pulled back. “I get it, I don’t like people touching my stuff either.”
“I can set you up with a login on this one,” Remi said finally. “It’s ringfenced from everything else.”
She wasn’t sure if that was a warning not to try stupid shit, or if he was just giving her relevant information. “Smart. I have a profile I can use down there, as long as you have VPNs and security protocols in place which will make it difficult to track?”
“Yeah, I do.” He pointed to the cubical next to him. “There’s a computer chair you can use there, just pull it around.”
“Thanks.” She did as he asked. It wasn’t the fancy leather one like he was sitting in, but it would do.
She sat down and used the lever to adjust the height.
Short girl problems meant her feet wouldn’t quite touch the floor unless she perched on the edge of the seat, which she did to scoot in close to the desk when Remi made room for her. “You logged out, yeah?”
“Yup, she’s all yours.” Remi paused then added on, “I should warn you, there is a tracker on there. It will log your keystrokes. If you attempt to infiltrate my systems here, it will scream so loud both our ears will hurt.”
“And it will bring your brother back in here bitching and grumbling.”
“Right.” Remi grinned at her, and went back to the databases he was searching, leaving her to the other computer.
Jorja flexed her fingers and got to work.
Maybe if she could lose herself in the routine of work then she could move past how angry she was.
Remi McKinley was more trusting than she’d expected him to be.
She scanned the desk and grabbed a pen and legal pad, pulling them toward her.
She set them on the right-hand side of the keyboard and moved the mouse to the left.
Not that she used it much, as she preferred to use keyboard shortcuts, but having things in the correct places settled something inside her.
“Remi, what the hell?” Gunnar’s snarl made her jump. Thankfully, it was just a pen in her hand, not wine, or she’d have spilled it all over the screen for sure.
“Shut it, I’m head of Intel and Comms, not you.” Remi didn’t turn to look at his brother. “You get to decide shit in the field. In here, I rule. Get the fuck out if you don’t like it.”
“You are the nicer brother for sure.”
“Hah, fuck with my systems and see how nice I am not.” Remi grabbed a can of mango Monster from a small fridge under his desk and popped the tab. “You want a Monster?”
They were just going to ignore the growling bear at the door. Understood. “No, thank you. If I drink a full one of those, I’m going to be all jittery. You do not want me to be jittery while I’m hunting through the Russian black sites.”
“Yeah, let’s not do that,” Remi agreed. “How long did it take you to find that site in the first place?”
“Days,” she admitted. “And another couple to get accepted into the chats side of things. Then I had to find a password for the listings.”
“Do you have the password?”
“It changes every six hours.” She figured he wouldn’t find that abnormal.
Criminals who didn’t want to get caught tended to be careful, anal even, when it came to security.
“If you are dyslexic, you’d be screwed, as take an authenticator app password and multiply it by four and throw in a bunch of extra symbols you have to twist and change, then you’ve got an idea of what we’re looking at. ”
“Dayum. And you broke it?” Remi sounded impressed.
“Not quite, I have a bot I built from some open-source code. It does the job for me.” She was under no illusions that she was the best computer tech out there.
But she was damn proud of the fact that she could hold her own when it came to computers.
Behind the screen she was comfortable. With people, not so much.
Yet, despite how weird it was to be working alongside Remi, Jorja was able to lose herself in her work.
It was almost enough to allow her to forget the elephant in the room, Remi’s older brother, Gunnar.
Almost, but not quite. Maybe if she could get back into the damn list, then they could take it from here and she could go home.
But somehow, she had a feeling that she was the beggar and the going home was a horse the beggar didn’t own and couldn’t ride.
But she would get herself out of his jam.
She’d learned how to be pretty self-sufficient over the years.
This was just another hairpin bend in a twisty bumpy road that she had to navigate… right?