Plush Book 3: A Billionaire Romance Read Online Free Page B

logged into a forum, using my alias, and without giving specifics, typed out what was happening.
    A reply came back that sent a chill over my entire body.
    It’s a wormhole.
    “Oh, shit!” I scrambled to type a reply back, begging for help. Once my SOS was posted, I grabbed the phone and dialed Cooper’s cell phone. I didn’t want to go through his assistant, and this was too important to wait another second.
    “Hello?”
    “Cooper, it’s Allie. I need you to get down to my office, now!”
    “What’s wrong?” he asked.
    “There’s been an attack,” I said. A reply to my forum post popped up and cradled the tiny phone against my shoulder, craning my neck so I could use both hands. “Just come down here!”
    The phone slipped and hit the desk. I could hear Cooper’s voice coming from the speaker, but couldn’t make out anything he was saying. I clicked off the call and hoped he would take me seriously enough to get down here. Not that he could help with the techy stuff…but this was his company…his network…and although I didn’t know that much about wormholes, I knew that if this hack continued, he could lose everything.
    I was typing frantically, setting trackers and taking screen shots, to capture everything that was happening while waiting for further advice to come in from my friends on the forum.
    “Allie, what the fuck?” Cooper appeared in my doorway. He looked breathless and scared out of his mind. “An attack?” He looked around as if expecting to see chunks of the walls missing.
    “A viral attack,” I said, turning my attention back to the computer screen in front of me. “A wormhole, to be more specific. If we can’t get it stopped, the entire system could go down.”
    “What?” He rushed around and stared over my shoulder. His cologne engulfed me and it took all my concentration to not turn and look at him. His face was inches from mine and I could hear his breath as it returned to an even pace. “What is all this?”
    “I just found it,” I said. I was a little embarrassed that it had taken me so long. From what I could tell, the data mining had been going on for some time. It was hard not to be mad at myself for not catching it sooner. If I hadn’t spent so much time procrastinating and working on that stupid spreadsheet, things might be different now.
    Not that I was going to tell Cooper that part…
    “Whoever set this up has been taking information from the Brighton Enterprises database and is sending it to another database.”
    “What kind of information?”
    “Emails, sales data, personnel information,” I listed.
    “Holy shit.”
    I nodded. “Yes, holy shit.”
    “Can you stop it?” I felt his gaze on me and turned my head, our faces inches apart. My mind drifted back to his office and the feel of his kiss. He was like a magnetic force, and I felt myself getting sucked in.
    “Allie? Can you stop it?” he repeated.
    I jolted back to focus on the screen. “I’ll try, but, I’ve never seen this before. Is there anyone else you can call to help?”
    I hated admitting that it might be above my head, but this danger was too real to let something like my ego stop me from asking for help.
    “Everyone’s gone home. I’ll call and see who can get back here.”
    I nodded.
    “But Allison, please, do what you can,” he said.
    “I will.”
    He left the office, already on his phone before he rounded the corner out of my line of sight.
    While he was gone, I continued working, trying to figure out what—and more importantly— who was taking the information.
    “Anything?” Cooper asked, striding back into the office twenty minutes later.
    “It looks like whoever is taking information is gathering the most data from Plush. So, that must be what they’re after.”
    Cooper pulled a chair around the desk and sat next to me, staring at the computer screens, but I could tell he was completely out of his league as his eyes frantically watched the activity on my two