Let’s Go To Camp! (Camp Mountainville #1)

Chapter One

“And that is how you do it!” Maisie Cooper yelled.

She hit the ENTER button on the keyboard, spun around in her office chair to face the opposite direction, and leaned back while a satisfied grin spread across her pretty face.

Across the small office, her co-worker, Daniela Torres, swiveled in her chair to face her. “Stop another entry attempt?”

“Uh-huh,” Maisie answered with a nod. “Third one this week.”

Before Daniela could answer, a man’s voice said, “What are you ladies so excited about? Big sell at your favorite store or something?”

Maisie rolled her eyes at the sexist remark. But even if he had said something else, she probably still would have rolled her eyes.

Derek Preston just had that effect on her.

He was tall, handsome, and always dressed nicely.

He was also a world-class jerk. That arrogant attitude of his negated all those nice points, causing him to be quite unattractive in Maisie’s eyes. Apparently, she was in the minority on that, though. A lot of women around the office swooned over Derek. Sure, he was nice looking and made a crap ton of money. But when you walk around like you own the world, it sort of overshadows everything else.

At least in her mind.

To each their own, though, she supposed.

“This is work stuff,” she simply said.

“Stop another cyber-attack?” he asked as he walked in. He got closer than she would have liked, leaning on her desk with his right hip.

Gross, she thought. She’d have to disinfect anything he touched just to clean “the jerk” off her workstation.

“Sort of.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged. “It’s not really an attack like you’re thinking. They’re not trying to do damage to our system or anything. In fact, their whole goal is to not be noticed.”

“Then why did they break in?” he asked.

She smiled. “Correction. They tried to break in. I stopped them.”

She reached out and put her hand in the air. Across the narrow space, Daniela did the same. They weren’t close enough to actually high-five each other, but the sentiment was there.

“That’s nerdy,” Derek said. “But seriously, why did they try to break in?”

Maisie softened. Was Derek really interested? Usually he just came in there to make rude, misogynistic comments and imply that she and Daniela were nerds. And talk about himself. He loved doing that every chance he could, it seemed.

But perhaps he was turning over a new leaf.

“We call it passive reconnaissance. It’s when people park themselves in a system and just collect information. They might want it for themselves. But more than likely, they plan to sell it to others who will rip off people’s IDs, open fake accounts, and do all kinds of shady stuff. It’s really stinky.”

“Stinky?” he said with a laugh. “Watch your language!” He rolled his eyes and snorted. “Anyway, you thought I really cared. That’s cute. You two keep being nerdy so we can do the real work in there.” He jerked his head toward the wall that separated their office from his.

“Did you come in here just to be rude?” she asked him.

Used to, she remained quiet when he picked on them. Not now. She’d had enough.

“Gee, don’t be all…hormonal.” He shook his head in disgust. “Must be your time of the month.” He chuckled. “Just keep it down in here. I have a meeting with a client in ten minutes.”

With that, Derek Preston stood and walked out.

“I can’t stand that guy,” Daniela said.

“Same,” Maisie replied as she sank a little lower in her chair. She hated feeling that way about another human, but with Derek, there just didn’t seem a way around it. “You know, being away from him might be the best part of my vacation.”

Both women laughed.

The best part was actually that she was going to a camp for Littles and would be having the time of her life. But there was no way she’d tell Daniela that. They were “work friends,” and genuinely liked each other, but they weren’t very close outside of that. Certainly not close enough for Maisie to share her secret!

“I’ll miss you while you’re gone,” Daniela said. “Who will I commiserate with?”

“Aww. I’ll be back in just a little over a week,” Maisie said. Her eyebrows raised as a wide grin split her lips. “But until then, I have one last parting gift. And now that you-know-who has arrived, he should discover it any time.”

Sure enough, as if on cue, Derek’s enraged voice shouted from the other office. “What the hell? You’ve got to be kidding me!” A pained groan followed.

Maisie gave herself a moment to contain the laughter that was threatening to spill over before donning a serious face and calling out, “What is it, Derek? Are you okay?”

A moment later, the man stormed in, his cheeks red and nostrils flaring. “Look at this email!”

He’d obviously printed it off, because he thrust a piece of paper at Maisie.

Still wearing her mask of faux concern, she took the sheet and read it aloud.

“Dear Mr. Pine. I have some exciting new opportunities I would like to discuss with you. Would you be willing to drop by so we can review your…poop.” She gasped and lowered the sheet long enough to say, “Oh, my.”

“It gets worse,” Derek fumed. “Keep reading.”

Maisie chanced a side-glance at Daniela who was clearly trying not to smirk.

She cleared her throat and then continued reading the email.

“Your poops are doing great, but I think they could grow even bigger. Time is of the essence, so if you want to maximize your poops, then I suggest you call immediately…” She trailed off and shook her head in disgust. “Oh, Derek. I’m so sorry.”

“I sent that to a client!” Derek said. “But I didn’t type poop or anything! I typed investments ! I want to talk to Mr. Pine about his investments!”

Derek ran a hand through his thick dark hair as he started pacing. “How could this happen? Who would do something like this?”

“Did you run the software updates like I recommended last week?” Maisie asked.

“No. I was, uh, going to get to them,” the investment specialist said weakly.

“That explains it. Look, this has Russian hackers written all over it,” Maisie told him.

“It does?”

She nodded.

Daniela spoke up. “She’s right. The Russians are known for this sort of thing.”

Derek stopped pacing and leveled a serious gaze at the cyber-security experts. “How high up does this go?”

“My professional opinion?” Maisie said.

He nodded.

“All the way to the top. The Kremlin.”

“Oh, geez!” Derek cried, his eyes going wide.

“Tell you what, I’ll run that software on your computer before I leave for vacation today,” Maisie said. “That should clear everything up moving forward.”

“Thank you! I’ll go call Mr. Pine and apologize!”

He hurried toward the door.

“Oh, and Derek?” Maisie called.

“Yeah?” he said, turning around.

“You need to look online and find email addresses for the State Department and CIA. We’ve got to forward that email to them. This is the sort of thing they need to know about.”

Maisie noticed him swallow hard before a look of determination settled over his face. “I’m on it.”

She nodded. “Good. For America’s sake.”

The women watched him leave and waited until they heard his office door shut before they burst into uproarious laughter.

“Nice one!” Daniela said after wheeling her chair closer for an actual high-five.

“Thanks!” Maisie replied as their hands clapped together.

“So, did you just use our backdoor into his system?”

“Yep,” Maisie said. “Started threading the needle last week when I asked him to run security updates. ”

Both women laughed. As part of the firm’s tech team, they had the ability to remote into anyone’s computer. In reality, they were the ones who handled security updates. But Derek didn’t know that.

Maisie shrugged and continued. “I just set his autocorrect to automatically change the word investment—or investments—to poop and poops. I’ve already changed it back.”

Daniela laughed again. “Seriously. That’s a good one.”

Maisie stayed seated but gave a little bow. Pulling pranks was fun, and she aspired to be just like her hero—the famous Eli! At least, he was famous with Littles.

She swiveled her chair around to see the clock on her computer. Only one hour left until vacation officially started.

The job was fine. And having Daniela there made it better. But she couldn’t help but wish she was already at camp.

How could she not?

A camp just for Littles with loads of fun activities? Yes, please!

Soon, it wouldn’t just be a dream. It would be her reality. For a whole week!

The sound of Daniela pounding away on her keyboard meant she was already back at work. Maisie needed to do the same. But it was hard, with vacation quickly approaching.

Mentally, she was already at camp. She thoroughly expected to have the time of her life there.

And who knew?

Maybe, just maybe…she’d meet a Daddy.