Free Cutting Loose by Tara Janzen Page B

encryption sequences, and a million interlocking highways into cyberspace. She, and Kid, and Skeeter had made it so—but it was mostly hers. She was its creator. She’d had the vision of what it could be, and she’d made it hers. The once-infamous chop shop, home of a wily crew of teenage car thieves, had been transformed into a world-class computer-geek playground, with a BCH-designed state-of-the-art firing range. BCH, an acronym affectionately referred to as “Bitch,” stood for Bang, Chaos, and Hacker. There were a lot of Bitches in the building, and more security goodies than Fort Knox.
    At the front entry, she keyed a ten-digit personal identification number into the lock, and a massive set of mahogany doors opened in near silence. As she passed through to the marble-tiled foyer, she noted the extravagant bouquet of fresh flowers on a delicately proportioned console set against the wall.
    The flowers were always fresh. If they weren’t, she was supposed to step back outside, key a lockdown code into the door, and disappear off the street. Those orders were straight from Dylan, the big boss. In the eight years that she’d been doing contract work for him, the flowers had always been fresh.
    The elevator on the ground floor only went to the offices on the seventh floor, and she rode up with the familiar winding clacks and clangs, trying not to think about Cabo. She was due a little downtime, a little fun, instead of facing Saturday night alone.
    Again. Hell.
She let out a sigh and then took another long drag off her cigarette.
    She needed a new habit.
    Sex would be nice.
    She leaned back against the elevator and thought that idea over a bit—then wished she hadn’t.
    Damn.
Cabo had looked promising. She’d been getting along pretty well with this guy from one of the big law firms up on Seventeeth, a guy named Henry Stiner. He’d been cute and blond, a little pudgy, but with that whole surfer-boy thing working for him, except surfer boy in a Burberry suit. He was also on his way to Cabo San Lucas for the weekend with everybody else from Toussi’s, including Suzi Toussi’s new gallery girl, Wanda.
    Cherie swore under her breath, watching the floor numbers light up, one after another. Wanda and Henry—oh, yeah, she could see where that was all going to end up.
    She swore again, and sucked another long drag off her cigarette.
    Dylan owed her.
    The elevator came to a grinding stop on the seventh floor, and the doors opened to a familiar scene: Red Dog prowling, pacing a stretch of turf in front of a bank of television screens, each turned to a different news channel, half of them foreign.
    The auburn-haired woman gave her a laser-sharp glance when the elevator opened, a look capable of unnerving even the hardened guys who worked with her.
    Cherie wasn’t fazed.
    She exhaled and entered the office in a cloud of smoke. To her credit, it did cross her mind to spend a little more time at the gym.
    Yeah, like that was going to happen. One totally ripped redhead in the office was probably enough.
    â€œHey, babe,” she said, heading for a desk she’d long claimed as her own. It was off in a corner, all by itself, and had a fabulous view of the mountains through one of the floor-to-ceiling double-hung windows lining the north wall. It was also the only place in the office where a girl had a chance of sneaking a smoke.
    â€œHey, Hacker.” Red Dog’s amber-eyed gaze softened for a moment, and a brief smile curved her mouth, before she went back to monitoring the news.
    A smile,
Cherie thought.
Good.
Red Dog didn’t always smile, but she was damn good at saving people’s asses, not that Cherie ever ended up in those my-ass-needs-saving situations. She was definitely of the office-support-staff, part-time-contract-employee variety, not the save-the-world-or-die-trying operator-type employee.
    â€œHack, over here,” a tall blonde working on a