Free Fascination by Samantha Hunter

laughing with EJ as if they were old friends.
    Line after line of code swam before him on the monitor. He could make some sense of it, but programming wasn’t his strong suit.
    “So what does it mean? Is this our virus?”
    EJ seemed a little struck by Ian’s harshness, as well, and looked up, narrowing his eyes at his friend. “Since it’s her code, Sage can fill you in.”
    “So what does it mean?”
    “I have a name, you know. It wouldn’t kill you to use it and to be even slightly aware that I am a human being, not some dog you can just kick when you feel like it.” She rose, whirling on him.
    Ian took in the high color in her cheeks, the furious breathing that caused her breasts to swell against the thin material of her shirt. He felt a small curl of admiration. He liked that she would stand up for herself, and it made him want her even more. Though he wasn’t about to give much ground, he gave some.
    “Sage. Tell me about your code.”
    “Figure it out yourself, you jerk.” She spun, still angry, ready to leave the room, and he crossed to her in a second, grabbing her arm none too gently.
    “And just where do you think you’re going?”
    She blinked but didn’t waver. “Away from you.”
    “We have a deal, Sage.” He said her name with more inflection this time, filling it with intention that was clear, and he saw the understanding in her eyes. “You help me, I don’t arrest you.”
    Because of EJ’s presence, he left out the other terms of their “deal,” but he knew she understood when he dragged his thumb along the sensitive inner skin of her arm and saw her catch a breath. Pulling her arm away, she rubbed the spot, though he knew he hadn’t been holding her hard enough to hurt her. He would never do that, no matter how much she pissed him off. And there was more in her eyes than anger now.
    “Okay. Fine. Jeez.”
    Ian turned back to find EJ watching them speculatively before he discreetly turned back to the monitor and cleared his throat.
    “Ian, this is an old piece of code, something Sage wrote long ago. Though it has some new notations in it.”
    “Notations?”
    “Programmers keep notes in their source code—it reminds them of problems, keeps their place. Some of Sage’s old programming notes are here, but there are new ones, things Locke wrote—to her, ostensibly, anyway.”
    Ian fixed his gaze on Sage again, directing his questions toward her. “What kind of notes?”
    “He fixed bugs, closed a back door I had built in—he thought that was funny. He kind of graded it, like a teacher would, showing me all my mistakes.”
    “Why would he do that?”
    “For fun. To show me how much better he is at this than I am, to assert his superiority. He always was kind of like a teacher.”
    Ian didn’t say anything, but a tight feeling took over his chest again as he blocked ideas of what Locke must have taught Sage—and not about computer code. Even though it was years ago, the knowledge chafed him.
    “So what is it?”
    “It’s an old bot.”
    “A bot is a small program that carries out some specific kind of function it’s told to do,” EJ explained.
    “Yeah, it’s distributed out on the Net and it finds a computer to hide away in and waits for instructions.”
    “What did your bot do, Sage?”
    She smirked. “Nothing. I couldn’t get it to work. But in theory it could do most anything you would want it to do—crash a computer, gather information—”
    “What information?”
    She shrugged. “Whatever you want. Credit card numbers, accounts, names and addresses, whatever payload you wanted.”
    “But the bot is only part of the program, right?”
    She nodded. “Yeah, you have the worm or the virus that delivers it and then the payload—what it is supposed to get, or do.”
    “So why would Locke have sent you this now?”
    Sage took a deep breath, meeting his eyes. “I’m not sure, but I guess it’s a clue. He said he’d finished the program, and he can’t just