The glareof her laptop taunted her. The cursor blinked in asteady cadence that matched the pounding in her head. Caitlin couldn’t sleep, so she tossed and turned. Travis tried to trap her body underneath his so she’d quit moving, but she was too strung out to have her body encumbered by warm, hard, ridges of muscle. So she slipped away. Travis protested sleepily, but she told him she was thirsty.
The minute she stepped into the kitchen though, she picked up her glass of water and padded straight to the TV room. That had been two hours ago. She’d been frustrated ever since.
“Hey . . .”
It was Nate.
He and Sam slept over tonight. Going forward, Sam would be occupying one of the guest rooms until all the threats against her were eliminated.
“Can’t sleep either?”
“Yeah. Any progress?” Nate nodded to her laptop.
“Nope.”
He sat down beside her. “That’s some fucked up shit.”
“That’s just hex code.”
“Tell me you don’t read that.”
“Not really. But I can identify patterns and headers to identify encryption.”
“Then what do you do?”
“Try to guess the password or figure out the cipher?”
“That simple?”
Caitlin giggled, “Not really. Sometimes I try to write an algorithm to guess the passwords.”
“Fascinating.” Nate yawned.
There was a movement by the door. Travis walked in, an unreadable expression on his face. “I didn’t know there was a party.”
“Caitlin was educating me on hacking. Turns out it’s just a guessing game.”
Caitlin rolled her eyes. “No, it’s not. It’s more of an educated guess.”
“Exactly, a guessing game.”
“If it were that simple, no one would keep their money in banks.”
Nate shrugged. “Show me your magic, sweetie.”
Caitlin was about to retort when she caught Travis’s eyes observing the exchange between her and Nate. He was not pleased.
She cleared her throat. “So, have I told you guys . . . about the words Hephaestus and Carpathian?”
Travis insinuated himself on the opposite side of Caitlin, forcing her to nudge Nate over to make room. Warm bodies on both sides; she never felt more secure.
“What about them?” Travis stretched his arm across the back of the couch and touched his lips to the side of her head.
“Hephaestus is the God of smithing, metal works etc. So this is telling me we’re dealing with some kind of metal,” Caitlin shrugged. “Maybe even precious metal.”
Nate sat up straight. “Gold?”
“Probably.”
