Page 26 of The Fixer

Jet spoke of secrets without saying a word. This other life he’d lived, before we ever met, was intangible, yet very, very real. I could feel it in the grip of his hands, of the rough bite of his fingers as they smoothed over my skin. I could see it in the way he carried himself, in his utter confidence in every move he made.

Yet the fear that had lived inside of me for so long lay dormant and fallow at his feet.

I was doing this. I was following his lead.

“I’d gone over to check on her,” Jet soothed, “and she was a mess.”

“I don’t know what I would have done without him.” My head tipped back, and those narrow silver eyes glistened like coins shining in the moonlight. Jet lowered his face to mine, and for a moment, my heart stopped.

His lips pressed gently to my forehead, lingering for a moment as my head spun. When I opened my eyes, his were following the line his thumb was drawing on my right cheek.

Niles cleared his throat, but it was a fly buzzing in my ear, distracting me from the scrape of Jet’s fingers on my neck. It wasn’t until Jet straightened, chin jerking toward the open door, that I was able to brush away the haze of desire that engulfed me enough to sit up.

Noises from the hall trickled in, and Jet strode with squared shoulders toward the door.

“Mr. Jet,” Vera’s voice rang, light and airy like someone half her age, “your friend, Mr. Mathieu, is here.”

“Thank you, sweetheart,” came a voice from the hall. “I can’t tell you how much it means to me, a beautiful young lady such as yourself helping me out.”

Something close to a girlish giggle bubbled up from the old woman, and I peeked around Jet’s shoulder in time to catch Vera’s red-faced smile. She patted the man’s bicep before loosening her grip on his arm. “You’re very sweet. You let me know if you need anything else.”

“Will do, sweetheart. Will do.”

Jet’s face held as much emotion as a stone wall as Mathieu stepped into the room. The men shook hands without a word, then Jet turned his narrowed eyes toward me. “This is the friend I mentioned. He’ll be able to help.”

“Help with what, exactly?” Niles asked behind me as Mathieu reached out to take my hand.

Mathieu raised my hand to his lips, looking up at me over the top of his thick, black-rimmed glasses, and winked a dark blue eye. “To help with the computers, of course,” he said as he turned to Niles, extending a hand. “You must be the minority owner.”

Jet backhanded his friend so fast he let out a whoomph.

“Really?” Mathieu turned to him, clutching his chest. “That’s how you’re going to play it? Beat up the cripple who came to save the day?” When Jet gave him nothing but a glare, Mathieu pushed his glasses up his nose and turned back to Niles. “Mr. Murphy, pleasure to meet you. I’m Mathieu Valera, computer guy to the stars.”

“Computer guy to the—?” Niles stuttered, glancing at me and Jet before looking back at Mathieu. “We have a computer guy.”

“Not like me, you don’t.” Mathieu pushed his glasses up again, then scratched at the thin beard covering his face. “Yeah, it's a great look.”

The man reached forward and tugged on the bent collar of Niles’s light denim shirt, then smoothed a hand over the shoulder of his orange pullover. “Looks good on you. You’ve got this sophisticated professor vibe going on, even with the curly gray hair. I’m here to hack into old Charlie Boy’s computer,” he said without taking a breath. “All legal, of course. We’ll put this strictly in the range of white hat hacking. Not even a hint of gray. Don’t even talk to me about black hat. That’s some shady shit. We don’t need to go there. Now, where can I set this so we can get started?”

Mathieu lifted the bag hanging from his shoulder, smiling as he waited for a response.

“Over here,” Jet said, and Mathieu followed him to Dad’s desk with Niles hot on their heels.

“You can’t just hack into Charlie’s computer. There’s confidential information on there. We’d be at risk of a lawsuit if anyone found out.”

“Well. I can, actually. It’s really pretty simple. I could probably do it in my sleep. And as to all that confidential lawsuit mumbo jumbo,” he said waving his fingers in the air over his bag like he was doing a magic trick, “I brought this.”

He pulled a thick stack of papers from the bag, thumbing through it before pushing his glasses up and looking at Niles. He gave him a once-over, then handed the stack to me.

“It’s an NDA. It protects Westbrook and Murphy from harm and gives them full recourse if Mathieu Valera were to copy, share, or reproduce any of the information I might find while in there. I’ve already signed, but feel free to do the same. No need to give me a copy, I know what’s expected of me.”

Niles grabbed the stack from my hand and skimmed the first page before looking up at me. “Eliza—”

“It’s okay, Niles,” I assured him, giving his arm a squeeze. “He’s just going to get me into Dad’s computer. We can even change the password so we can get back on. I’m sure there are things you’ll need to access.”

“Eliza, we need to discuss this with a lawyer.”

“Y’all go right ahead,” Mathieu said as he stretched his arms over his head, then slid his fingers into his messy brown locks. “But I’m sure you’ll find it’s tighter than a nun’s… Well. You know what they say.”