Love and Wargames: A Bad Boy Hacker Romance Read Online Free Page A

dozen more exploits that are just as easy to break into and don’t require nearly as much effort. Anyone with even the slightest knowledge of radio frequencies and mechanical engineering could figure it out.”
    “Really?”
    “Yup.”
    He pauses and chews on his lip for a moment. “You’re in some trouble.”
    “You have a real problem with repeating yourself, man…”
    “But I can get you out of it.”
    I raise a brow. “How?”
    He turns and grabs the second chair from the corner and sets it down in front of me. “How old are you?”
    I straighten up a little taller as he sits down, listening to the familiar jingle of cuffs. “Twenty.”
    “As it stands right now, you’re looking at about twice that in prison,” he says.
    “Oh, please ,” I say, rolling my eyes. “I sent out an S.O.S.”
    “And you put the lives of myself and four of my men at risk in the process.”
    “That’s not very P.C. of you, Serg,” I point out. “I believe one of the soldiers that dug me out was a woman— ”
    “Kid...” He leans forward. “I’m serious. Now, I can ship you back to the United States today where you won’t see the outside of a cell until you’re sixty or … you can wise up and work for us.”
    I wait for his stare to break but he never flinches. “What?”
    He eases back in his chair. “You say our equipment is subpar. ”
    “Your equipment blows , actually.”
    “Then fix it,” he says. “I’m sure you have a few ideas in that head of yours, right?”
    “I might.”
    He shrugs and stands up. “You work for us, tighten our security, keep me and my men safe, and you won’t see a day behind bars.”
    “For how long?”
    His chin juts to the side. “You got somewhere else to be?”
    “Don’t you?”
    “Quite…” He reaches into his pocket and withdraws a key. “Let’s just say long enough for me to forget to ever ask you what the hell you’re doing out in the middle of the damn Afghani desert alone in the first place. Does that sound fair?”
    My eyes scrape the floor. “Yeah, that’s fair.”
    “Smart kid.” He gestures for my hands and I raise them as high as the chain will allow. The cuffs drop off my wrists and he lets them fall to the floor. “Come on,” he says. “Let’s go meet my team.”
    He leads me outside and I immediately hold up a hand to shield the sun from melting the fucking eyes out of my skull. I don’t know how they do it. Here I am in a white shirt and its done nothing to keep me cool since I got here while these guys walk around in outfits made of who-knows-what. Looks thick, whatever it is. I can’t imagine what these guys must smell like after a single day…
    The camp is small, surrounded by nothing but desert on all sides. A large tent sits in the center with communications equipment stacked on tables and large generators to power them. There are three jeeps parked in a line on the far side next to a pair of very cringe-worthy porta-potties. On the opposite side, some soldiers sit around a long table with prepackaged food, enjoying a shade that I would very much like to get into.
    We finally walk into a small barracks with about a dozen cots — two rows of six with an aisle between them and a tent overhead that’s been torn in several places and crudely repaired with duct tape. It must be downtime as most of the cots have body-shaped lumps in them. I guess you catch whatever sleep you can out here.
    The air grows tense as we pass the occupied mattresses. Some soldiers stand to attention but the sergeant waves them down. All of them stare at me as I pass by them and their faces tell me all I need to know about their thoughts.
    Who’s this asshole?
    Rhys stops at the back of the tent and my eyes instantly fall on the girl that helped dig me out.
    She lies on her back with her neck propped up on a really uncomfortable-looking pillow with a very tempting bottle of water in her small hand.
    “Team, this is Carson,” Rhys announces, his eyes scanning