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My blood boiled. “He’s not my boss. He’s our marketing guy. I’m the one doing the actual work, providing the deliverables. I’m DarkLord Triple Six, not him.”
“Angela, that’s not my concern. When the contract was signed with your company, Bevin Kader—excuse me Kevin Bader—was designated as the administrative contact. It’s up to you to sort that out. Now I have to go.”
I seethed with anger as the line went silent.
Kevin was such an asshole. He had to have done this yesterday after I sent the message saying I was leaving. But this was my money. I was the coder, the brains, the worker bee, all of that. He was only the flashy marketing guy.
Right now, if it had been physically possible, I would have kicked myself in the ass for being so stupid. I’d given into the temptation and gone for the quick rush of telling him off before I’d collected my money.
Now I was royally screwed. I didn’t have the rest of the rent money I’d said I’d pay Boone today. Checking my wallet, I found less than sixty dollars. The R8 looked great and was bat-out-of-hell fast, but the gas mileage sucked. Even ignoring the complication of Grace’s dogs, I couldn’t afford the gas to get me to Mom’s house in Florida.
I was going to have to pull money from one of my credit cards just to be able to pay Boone the rest of the rent money I owed him. It would leave a trail Kevin could find, but that couldn’t be helped. With some luck, I’d have left here by the time he traced me.
I brought up my credit card’s website and typed the login.
It failed.
I tried again with the same result.
After dialing the number on the back of the card, I learned it had been reported stolen and disabled. Yes, a new card was being issued and sent to my address on file—Kevin’s address. Ten minutes of arguing on the phone got me nowhere. Since the security code had been changed, and I didn’t know the new one, I’d have to provide two forms of ID to get a new access code. At the moment, I didn’t have those.
Kevin was really pissing me off.
But every problem had a solution, and this one meant I’d have to rustle up a coding gig right away. What I could do behind the keyboard was worth good money to a lot of companies out there.
Kevin had been the marketing face for me and found the clients, but I was DarkLord666, and that name had credibility.
Companies didn’t hire coders with long hair and boobs, Kevin always said. I’d agreed with him, because somehow chauvinist executives seemed to equate computer skills to playing football—something girls couldn’t do.
If I approached people as the new marketing face for the dark lord, I’d surely find some work. The dark lord’s rep would guarantee a job.
Kevin had even uploaded a list of leads to the cloud account, complete with contact names and numbers. Piece of cake—I’d explain that I was replacing Kevin for the purposes of booking new work and get something moving. The laptop I’d brought with me didn’t have the power of the work computer I’d left behind, or the big monitor, but it would do.
I was fucking DarkLord666. There was nothing the dark lord couldn’t accomplish in the digital world.
First step, log into the cloud account and get those leads.
I pressed enter.
The login failed.
It was a password I knew by heart, but I double checked it against my password manager and tried it again. Even I had typing glitches now and then.
It failed a second time, and it wasn’t because I’d mistyped.
That shithead Kevin. He’d changed the password on me.
Now I was really pissed. It took me a full minute of my structured-breathing exercise to calm back down.
I penned in a new entry at the bottom of my checklist.
Get cloud back
Given some time, I’d regain control. The account had all the work I’d done, and all my tools. My laptop had only what I’d used most recently, which wasn’t much. My plan had been to buy a new desktop setup with the CLP payment.
This problem could wait. First I had to get some work, something with a quick payday. Hacking Kevin’s new password for the cloud account would take time, a lot of it.
I knew my email had a series of messages from companies with small jobs I’d rejected to make time for CLP’s Cleveland project. The dark lord was in high demand, and any one of those would get me started.
