BLIND: A Mastermind Novel Read Online Free Page B

spent the next few hours staring into dark silence. Maybe she should go on a vacation, someplace exotic and far away. The idea of traveling alone frightened her and if she went anywhere close to the equator she’d turn into a lobster.
    On the other hand, she might gain something uniquely empowering by doing something so brave and completely for herself. Her little fishbowl was getting cramped, and she was bored with her surroundings. Sure, she could travel alone.
    Mental note…see doctor about sedative for air travel.
    But nothing too potent. Don’t want to be so drugged you get robbed oversleeping on the tarmac.
    Maybe she should visit Europe. She had roughly six months to learn a foreign language. Spanish terms kicked around her head, but she was rusty and out of practice. Mmmm…maybe she’d find a nice cabana boy to distract her for a while.
    No! This is about you ! You don’t need a man to enjoy life.
    Just as she fell asleep she decided that was what she’d do. She’d choose a country, study the culture, and learn a language. Maybe if she did that, sh e’ d find someone to actually talk to. Not necessarily a man, but maybe a single girlfriend who filled shoes similar to hers. No matter what she decided, she was set on one thing. From now on, she would make herself more available and start taking advantage of life’s little spontaneous opportunities. She might not find exactly what she wanted, but she needed a change.
    Monday morning, she awoke feeling refreshed and focused. Her new attitude was quite carpe diem and all that good Latin stuff that filled a person with optimistic possibility. As Thor fluffed his long white tail around her ankles, she poured a glass of orange juice and settled in at the table with the paper like she did every morning before work.
    Her cat let out a masculine meow as she slipped him a piece of buttery toast and she turned the page. “Here you go, you big cry baby. ” He nibbled the morsel from her fingers and purred happily.
    After wiping her hands on the napkin, she sipped her juice and—
    Juice sprayed everywhere. Holy crap! Was that her letter?
    “Noooooo. No, no, no, no, no, no, no !”
    Blindly blotting up the juice, her wide eyes scanned the article. They’d titled it Where Are All The Real Men?
    “Oh, my God! ” Her finger rushed to the bottom of the page. Shoot, it was a long letter. Turning the page she found the ending. Oh, thank goodness! She hadn’t signed it Scarlet. A sound of disgust left her throat. Wow. She must have been really tanked. L.R. Riding Hood ? As in Lettie Red Riding Hood? She hadn’t heard that name since high school.
    Talk about pulling the next Jerry McGuire. What the hell had she been thinking? She hadn’t been thinking. She’d been drinking! That was it. The camel’s back was officially broken—the last straw had struck— whatever —She was never drinking again. Ever.
    Her head flopped on the table as she groaned. Thor jumped on the chair next to her and nudged her hand. Moaning, she petted his ear. “From now on, I only talk to my students and you. I’m such an idiot.”

 
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Two
     
    “Some people thin k desig n means how it looks. But of course if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works.”
    ~Steve Jobs                             
    Co-founder of Apple Inc.             
     
     
    Asher Roan sat on the leather couch across from his partners Jet, Elliot, and Hunter as they reviewed the preliminaries for the next upgrade to GeekPeek. GeekPeek was the social media network they created after graduating high school, the revenue now keeping all of them quite comfortable. Their business was a natural outcome of their similar interests, which took off once MySpace fell off the map. They also fabricated interactive gaming systems like the state of the art Nexus64.
    Some days more than others, it struck Asher as surreal, just how far they’d come. True, they were the same