PROLOGUE (Paige)
“Could this thing run any slower?!”
Why is it that computers just seem to know when someone’s in a hurry and turn on their defiant chip that makes them go at a snail’s pace instead? Thank God Blair was at lunch and couldn’t hear my frustration with this damn machine.
This was the last thing I needed today, even if it is what I get for procrastinating. I should have built these reports already; I’d had plenty of time, despite the office switch. And Blair was going to kill me, or at least give me an earful, if I didn’t have them ready for today’s meeting with the pack. It’d be the third time this week I delivered something late to her.
God, like learning about werewolves hadn’t been weird enough, now we’re tracking how people talk about them in online spaces so we can appropriately build a PR campaign for them? It was crazy, but I couldn’t argue with the reasoning. Debunking the false information would be crucial to the campaign’s success.
I’d traced some of the popular questions online myself, trying to learn what people were finding, which was nothing truly good. There was a lot of talk about mates and mate-bonding and how viciously protective packs were and honestly, a lot of it harkened back to the way we used to think of wild wolves, back before we understood that they were family units.
But I couldn’t get lost in that research again. I had a report to rebuild.
“What do you mean ‘the file is corrupt and cannot be opened?!’ I just used it yesterday!” I clicked around on the computer, trying to think of another way to access the report template, but I’m not exactly the most tech-savvy person on the planet, and I kept running into the same error message. “Uuugh!”
A headache started to press at my temples as I stared blankly at the screen, my hands clasped behind my neck. The only thing to do now was completely rebuild the damn thing from scratch. Well, mostly from scratch. At least I had a copy of last week’s reports to look at. With a deep breath, I took a sip of my coffee, opened a new file, and got to work. I had just forty five minutes to get well over an hour’s worth of work done.
Dammit.
My phone rang, making my eyebrow twitch at its sudden sharpness.
Double dammit!
I picked up the handset and turned on my customer service voice. “Eclipse Media, this is Paige.”
A male voice answered me. “Hi Paige, Eric asked me to run some diagnostics on the PCs connected to the pack’s network. I’ll need to remotely access your PC for a few minutes.”
I didn’t recognize this guy, but I knew Eric was the one who ran IT for Jessica’s pack. I glanced at the clock. Forty-four minutes to get the report done.
“Seriously? Now?” I huffed. “I have a report to rebuild and nowhere near enough time to get it done!”
“I get that, but we need to make sure the network is secure. It’ll only take a couple of minutes.”
A couple of minutes? Nothing any tech guy ever did actually went as quick as a couple of minutes. I was going to lose nearly all of my time to this. I raked a hand through my hair, and then smoothed it back into place as I took a deep, slow breath. Murphy’s law. Of course they’d need to do this when I have forty-three minutes left to get this report done.
“I don’t have a couple of minutes.”
“If I can’t get your PC secured today,” he said, “I’m going to have to lock you out of the pack’s network until I can.”
Triple dammit!
I needed on the pack’s network, or I’d have to try to rebuild that report from memory. Another glance at the clock. Forty-two minutes.
“Fine,” I said with another exasperated huff. “But you’re gonna have to walk me through it. I know spreadsheets and presentations, not the technical stuff.”
The guy on the phone chuckled. “No problem. It’s super easy.”
A few clicks through menus later, and the pointer on my screen took on a life of its own as Eric’s assistant got to work. My screen flashed a couple of times before an installation progress bar popped up.
“What’s it installing?” I asked, like I’d have any clue what the heck the answer would mean.
“It’s just a new network support framework,” he said. “It’ll secure the firewall and ensure no intrusions on the network come from your PC.”
“Oh, okay.” Like I figured, technical mumbo-jumbo. Why the hell did I even ask?
The pointer moved around some more and a keyboard popped up on the screen. He typed out the word ‘test’ in the document I was working on.
“Perfect,” he said. “You’re all set. Thanks a bunch, Paige.”
“Sure. Great. Have a nice day.” I clicked the handset down a little harder than I meant to, not even waiting for a final reply from Eric’s assistant.
Twenty-eight minutes left to rebuild this damn report.
Blair was gonna kill me.
Prologue
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