“I know the feeling.”
“You?” Tatum said, a giggle falling out of her. “Have you met yourself? Seen your pad, your car, or all of your toys?”
I felt irritated by her assumption. I walked away and sat down at one of the computers. “I didn’t always have all this. Enough with the chit chat, let’s get to business. You don’t get the F.B.I’s protection without giving something in return. Chop, chop, Fio!”
“Fio? I thought I was Tatum to you.”
“This is work. That was play.”
“That’s fair.”
“So you catch the predator by becoming the prey?” I asked her.
“Classic bait and switch. But they’re not going to buy you with that five-o-clock shadow. You have to look really young, innocent and fresh. Untouched.”
“So we need someone who looks like you. But you’ve already snagged them that way. What’s plan B?”
“We just have to change my look. Got any scissors and bleach lying around?”
Chapter 4
TATUM
I was consciously trying not to fall for him. That was already a bad sign. I’d known him for exactly three hours and I already trusted him with sharp objects by my neck.
“I’ve never cut anyone’s hair before. It might be a terrible job—like really bad, Tatum. It’s just a fair warning.”
“I trust you,” I said. I reddened inadvertently and brought my hand to my mouth. The cold of the scissors felt electrifying as they touched the nape of my neck. I felt weightless as huge swaths of hair fell to the floor covering the shiny hardwood floors of his computer room. It felt sexy to have him cut all my hair off. I was vulnerable in a way I’d never been before. Id’ always had long hair to hide behind. Hair to make me feel pretty-ish even when my eyes seemed too big and owl-like, I could have a curtain of hair to make me feel good.
“I might look terrible,” I warned him.
“Impossible, You couldn’t look terrible if you tried,” he told me.
When he’d cut off the bulk of it, he lifted pieces at the top, and the dulling scissors grated a bit as they gnawed through my locks.
There was barely any hair left when he was through. We parted ways as I went to the bathroom to bleach it and he went to the kitchen to make us more cheese toast.
When I came back to his office, I had a plastic bag on my head and a towel around my neck. He had a plate of beautifully arranged broiled open-faced cheese toast and grapes.
“Is that champagne?” I asked him, taking the glass he handed me.
“Sparkling apple juice,” he said as he toasted me.
“Maybe that goes better with me wearing a plastic bag,” I told him.
“We can have champagne when we snare a rat, how’s that? How long til you’re blonde?”
“Around forty-five minutes. Let’s run your code and I’ll see if I can find the problem.”
I liked having him sit next to me, I felt exhilarated every time our thighs or arms touched, like we were magnetic beings that drew together. I was afraid of when the click would come and we’d connect completely, perhaps becoming inseparable. I liked when he leaned into the screen to see code and I could feel the faint heat from his breath, I inhaled the grassy, soapy goodness. I longed to reach out and grab his thigh, feel his hard muscle in my hands.
“You’ve got multi-factor variable authentication, huh?”
“I run a tight ship.”
“Apparently, captain.”
I figured out his code glitch after looking at it once. I’d always been like that, able to pinpoint errors in coding with my eyes while others were running expensive machine learning programs to identify them.
“Found it!” I yelled. I shot to my feet in victory and Rafa did his own version of a victory dance with me. We shouted and high-fived like sports fans.
“We’re the same kind of cyber addict, you do realize, my dear Fio,” he said. He was smiling, but what he said was true. Sometimes, it was like gambling—that dopamine shot straight to your cerebellum. Win or lose, come back for more, keep on playing—feeling the need to settle the score. It was my whole life, what happened in those fields of zeros and ones.
“It’s like a nerd touchdown,” I said. He dipped his apple juice to mine.
“It’s time to rinse your hair,” he told me.
“Could you help me? I can keep my shirt on,” I told him. Then felt dumb for saying it.
“I’m completely and totally your personal stylist today, so I will help you achieve this look, no matter how long it takes,” he said, trying to keep a straight face.
He took me to the private bathroom off of his bedroom and ran water in the sink.
“Do you think we need a chair?”
“How about you lay up here?” he said, patting the counter. I hopped up and laid down after he removed his toiletries.