Lannister McBride sat on his bed holding his head in his hands, wondering how much this was going to affect his life. Wishing he hadn’t been so stupid.
He’d never had trouble before, with each woman he’d slept with seeming to like his overt attempt to turn the contract arrangement into a full-on date night. In his heart, he knew it was a chimera, but it helped him sleep at night. He wasn’t hiring whores. He was just going on a date. Or so he told himself.
And now this had happened.
He had no earthly idea what the story was with the girl the woman was seeking, but knew it couldn’t be good. First, the man had called at his private love nest, and now the woman had showed up here. That wasn’t because they were lucky. It was because they knew. They had somehow found him based on his contact with Beth, and Beth had some contact with the girl. They weren’t fucking around, and he feared for his future.
He was the quality control for some of the most classified instructions of the United States Navy. He was entrusted with the deepest secrets the navy held. Being exposed as sleeping with a whore at every port—because he’d slept with Beth in Norfolk once before—would end his life. He would lose his security clearance, and with it his ability to make a living.
And then he thought of his wife. She would leave him for sure, taking their kids with her. He’d been caught sleeping around twice before, and she’d left him on the last one. It had taken months to rebuild the relationship, and if this got out, she would leave for sure, ripping apart his navy pension and crushing him into oblivion. Because there was no doubt she would win.
He put his head in his hands and sobbed, then, after a moment, he began to rationalize. Both the man on the phone and the woman had said they didn’t care what he was doing. They only wanted to talk to the girl. He’d deleted his profile on the sex site and was due to go to work tomorrow like a normal day. Maybe it would just go away. He’d given them what they wanted.
He sniffled, thinking that the worst may have already happened. He wasn’t the target, his date was. Let them do their work. It didn’t involve him.
But it did. He didn’t realize his world was about to get exponentially worse until his phone pinged with a text.
He pulled it up and saw:
Lannister McBride, you had a date with a female today, and we need to talk. We have pictures. I will call. You will answer.
He felt his heart about to explode as it pumped adrenaline into his system. He sat catatonic for a moment, and then his cell phone rang.
He watched the buzzing phone, not wanting to touch it. Finally, he swiped right and brought the cell to his ear.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Lannister McBride. My name is Slaven, and you ditched a girl of mine tonight. I need payment.”
Trying to bluster, Lannister said, “Hey, wait a minute, we didn’t do anything. She said she had to leave.”
“No, she didn’t.”
Lannister paused, then said, “Okay, okay, I’ll pay. I’ll pay for the entire night.”
“Thank you for being amenable. That is good news. I hate to fight for payment.”
Sweating, Lannister said, “How do we do this? How much do you want?”
“Well, there we’re in a bit of a sticky wicket. I don’t want money. I want what you can get from the nuclear propulsion school.”
Shocked, Lannister said nothing. Slaven said, “You still there?”
“I . . . I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Yes, you do. You shouldn’t have had so much pillow talk with my girl in Norfolk. She told me why you’re here. You’re a contractor for the nuclear school, responsible for the safety of the two test submarines they use for training. You have access to a lot of valuable data. I’m not asking for anything super-secret. Just the maintenance records.”
Lannister knew that those records were in fact top secret and could expose vulnerabilities in the United States nuclear fleet. He said, “I can’t do that.”
“Yes, you can. In fact, you’re the only one who can. And you can learn a lesson about bragging to a whore.”
Instead of reverting to a sense of patriotism, Lannister deflected to pragmatism. “No, I mean I can’t do it because it’s all locked down. I can’t get access without them knowing I did so. I can’t remove anything.”
Slaven said, “Well, unless you want your world destroyed, you’ll find a way. Do you understand?”
Lannister stalled for a moment, then said, “I can’t do that. Don’t ask me for that. I can pay. I’ll pay you for the girl.”
His voice soothing over the phone, Slaven said, “It’s too late for that now. Pay attention to what I’m saying. Get me something from the maintenance records. Do as I ask, or I’ll crush your life with the information I have.”
Lannister dropped the phone like it was molten rock, then began pulling out his thinning hair and rocking back and forth. He heard something from the speaker and ignored it. He heard it again, and picked the phone back up, hearing, “. . . you there?”
“I’m here.”
“Good. Listen, this is just a one-time thing. For a one-time payment. You do this and I’ll go my way, and you go yours. Understand?”
Lannister heard the words and began to rationalize again, seeing a way out of his predicament. It would be damn near impossible to get the data this man wanted, as all of the computers were tracked by login and extraction, but it might be able to be done. Just last year there had been a teacher/student scandal at this very post where the instructors were selling the tests to the students for a passing grade—and those tests were under the same top secret classification he was going to have to penetrate. If they could do it, more than likely, so could he.
He said, “You’ll never mention the girl? You’ll leave me alone?”
“Yes. I promise.”
Lannister squeezed his eyes shut, thinking. Begging for a solution. He heard, “Are we agreed?”
And he committed, like so many traitors before him. “Yes. Just this one time.”
“Good. I’ll text you the link-up information. Expect it to be tomorrow.”
“Wait! That can’t happen. I have to go to work tomorrow, and it’s going to take me some time to figure out how to extract the data. I can’t do it in a day.”
He heard a breath, then, “Okay, two days. Look for a text from the same number you got before.”
The phone went dead and Lannister dropped his hand, then sagged back onto his bed, wondering how his life had turned into a quagmire.