CyberStorm Read Online Free

something she’s not telling me.
    Down the end of the hallway, I stopped and elbowed open the door to Chuck’s storage locker. With a grunt I lifted my two water jugs and stacked them on top of the pile he’d started.
    “Pack ‘em tight,” said Chuck, waddling up behind me with his own load. He stacked his in, and we turned to go back and get more.
    “Did you see that stuff online today?” asked Chuck. “Wikileaks publishing Pentagon plans for bombing Beijing?”
    I shrugged, still thinking about Lauren. I remembered the first time I saw her walking between the red-brick campus buildings of Harvard, laughing with her friends. I’d just gotten into the MBA program, using money I’d earned from selling my stake in a media start-up, and she’d just started the law program. We’d both been filled with dreams of making the world a better place.
    “They’re making a lot of noise about it in the media,” continued Chuck, still talking about the Pentagon leak, “but I don’t think it’s a big deal. Just role-playing exercises.”
    “Uh-huh,” I replied, my mind not able to move away from Lauren.
    Soon after we met, heated discussions in Harvard Square beer halls had led to passionate nights. I’d been the first of my family to attend university, never mind Harvard, and I’d known she was from some old-money family, but at the time it hadn’t seemed relevant. This was America, after all, and my star was rising. She’d wanted to escape from the confines of her family, and I’d wanted everything she represented.
    We’d married quickly after graduation, eloped, and moved to New York. Her father hadn’t been impressed. Almost as soon as we married, Luke had been conceived—an accident. A happy accident, but one that had dramatically changed the new world we’d barely settled ourselves into.
    “You haven’t heard a word I’ve said, have you?”
    By then Chuck and I were standing on the sidewalk of Twenty-Fourth Street after exiting the back entrance to our building. It was raining, and the icy gray skies matched my mood. Just a week ago it had been warm, but the temperature had sharply dropped.
    This section of Twenty-Fourth, less than two blocks from Chelsea Piers and the Hudson River, was more of a back alley. Parked cars lined both sides of the narrow street below windows covered in mesh grills, and the sound of cars honking floated down from Ninth Avenue in the distance.
    To one side of our building there was some kind of a taxi repair shop, and a small gang of men stood outside under the grimy awning, smoking cigarettes and laughing. Chuck had arranged for his delivery of water to be shipped to the garage.
    “Are you okay?” asked Chuck, gently clapping me on the back.
    We wound our way through the taxi drivers and mechanics to his pallet, off to one side of the garage, and picked up some more containers of water.
    “Sorry,” I replied after a pause, grunting as I picked up my load. “Lauren and I—”
    “Yeah, I heard from Susie. So she’s off for an interview in Boston?”
    I nodded. “We live in a million-dollar condo, but it’s not good enough. When I was growing up in Pittsburgh, I couldn’t even imagine living in a million-dollar home.” I worked as a junior partner in a venture capital fund specializing in social media, and affording the condo was a stretch on my salary, but at the same time I didn’t feel like I could afford anything less.
    “Neither could she, and by that I mean only a million-dollar home,” he laughed. “Hey, you knew what you were getting into.”
    “And she’s always off with Richard when I’m working.”
    Chuck stopped and put down his water containers.
    “Cut that short. I agree he’s a creep, but Lauren is totally not like that.”
    He swiped his badge past the security device on the back entrance. When it didn’t work after two tries, he rummaged around in his pockets for a key.
    “Stupid thing doesn’t work half the time,” he muttered under his