She heard his keys clatter on the counter and then the bedroom door shut. Cara frowned. She’d been expecting a little bit more of a response. She took another bite of broccoli and made a face at her phone.
Wes emerged from his room and brought the plate to the chair across from where she was sitting. “Thanks again for the food.”
She nodded, still glaring at the phone. “Is something wrong?” he asked between bites.
“No, just stuck on what to write.” She looked up and for a second was caught by his warm eyes. His driver’s license said brown, but now up close, with only a few feet separating them, she could see the light caramel only had tiny flecks of brown sprinkled with gold across the iris. His hair was wet, hanging in waves over his forehead, and his clean scent reached across the table. Tingles started low in her stomach, and she dropped her eyes back to the phone.This is Amara’s fault.
“What are you writing?”
When she didn’t answer right away, he lifted up to peek over the top of her phone. The dating app’s logo was prominently displayed at the top.
“Mingle?” He shook his head disapprovingly.
Cara gritted her teeth and closed her phone. She picked up her plate to return it to the kitchen.
“You need to be careful with those apps.”
She met his gaze. “Thousands of people use them.”
“And they get hacked all the time because of it.”
Cara blinked. That wasn’t what she expected him to say. “Hacked?” Of all the problems associated with meeting people on the apps, hacking wasn’t one she’d thought about.
His shoulders lifted. “You could be hacked any time. Why make it easy for them? Hackers set up a fake profile with a phishing virus attached, and the second you click on ‘Jake’ your phone is infected.”
“You seem to know a suspicious amount about it.”
“It’s what I do?”
“Hack people’s phones through Mingle?”
“No.” He smiled. “Cybersecurity. I help peoplenotget hacked. Businesses primarily—movie studios, record labels.”
“How?” Cara didn’t have much experience with computers, but after her pictures were leaked, she wasveryinterested in how someone could invade her privacy again.
“By hackingthem.”
“Excuse me?” Cara coughed a laugh, and he grinned.
“Best way to find out if a system is vulnerable is to hack it. Then I identify the vulnerabilities and build something better to protect them.”
“You’re a hacker?” Something she couldn’t identify flashed in his eyes, and he pushed to his feet with his plate. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you. It’s just you said…”
“I’m not offended.” He set his plate down on the kitchen counter. “Iama hacker. A very good one, but I don’t break in anywhere I haven’t been invited.”
“A white hat.”
His eyes widened at her use of terminology.
“I read an article,” she lied. Cara wasn’t about to explain that she knew what a white-hat hacker was because Declan hired one to scrub the images of her off the internet. Even though the tabloid had taken down the photos of her, others had snagged screen shots and shared them to other sites.
Her stomach turned over at the memory. She had no idea how many people had seen the pictures, and she dreaded the day she met someone new, and they recognized her.
“People pay me to do it. I’m helping them.” His voice was defensive.
Cara realized he had misinterpreted her silence. “I agree. It’s actually kind of noble.”
He pushed his wet hair back off his forehead. “I wouldn’t go that far. My clients are mainly corporations trying to protect their profits. Pirating is a huge problem in the entertainment industries. Streaming services, movie and music executives are all desperate to protect their products from being leaked early. And I’m making money from it.”
