Chosen for Power (Women of Power, #1) by Kathleen Brooks Page A

storming out of the office.
    Mallory smiled sweetly, “Girls’ night?”
    “Sounds perfect. The day can only get better, right? I’ll send a message to Allegra and Bree and meet y’all at Maggie’s at seven.” Elle felt the weight on her shoulders lift. She hated this part of her job, but it was made better by having her sisters and her best friend supporting her.
     
    *     *     *
     
    Drake whistled as he walked down the hall toward the computer lab. He had found himself doing that since he met Elle a little over a week ago. They had spent Christmas, New Year’s, and every day in between together. He had thought himself in love after only one night together . . . and that was nothing compared to what he felt now. Every day he fell more and more in love with Elle.
    “Drake!” Drake stopped walking and turned to see his assistant running toward him.
    “What is it, Phillip?”
    “Miss Simpson called. She said she tried your cell, but I told her you turned it off when you went to the lab.”
    “Did she tell you what she wanted?”
    “Yes. Miss Simpson said she was sorry, but she had to cancel tonight. Something about girls’ night at Maggie’s and she hoped you’d understand.”
    “Actually, that works pretty well. The guys said they were having some problem with the new program we’re working on. It looks like I’ll be here late tonight anyway. Thanks, Phillip. See you tomorrow.” Drake gave a single wave of his hand before placing it against the scanner and speaking into the microphone. The door opened and he stepped inside the lobby of the secure lab.
    “How you doing, Jonas?” he asked the security guard as he took his phone out of his pocket and handed it to Jonas who placed it in the container with Drake’s name, located behind his desk. Drake had a rule that no personal belongings were allowed in the lab. His employees were loyal, but he didn’t want to tempt them to take a picture to post on social media or worse, steal any of the material they were working on.
    “I’m well, Mr. Charles. Thank you. You going to be long today?”
    “Probably.”
    “Then I’ll see you tomorrow. Ray will be here in an hour to take over the night shift.”
    “Sounds good. Have a good night, Jonas,” Drake said before entering the secure lab.
    Five heads popped up from behind computers, and Drake saw the strain on their faces. They had landed a top-secret contract with the government to develop a program and subsequent smartphone application to trace IP addresses through an IP generator to the actual address of origin within minutes. Subsequently, in order to challenge the new software, Drake and his team had developed a new way to make IP addresses impossible to trace.
    “What’s the problem?” Drake asked as he stood behind his team looking at the monitors.
    “We seem to be stuck. We’ve mastered the IP generator. However, we can’t beat it. Our own application won’t work against it. Wouldn’t that make the program flawed? We’ve tried everything we can think of and it seems we’ve only done more harm than good,” Gregg, the senior technician, told him.
    Drake ran his hand over his face. “So, while we are trying to help the good guys, we just developed a weapon that could defeat them?”
     
    Drake leaned back in his chair and glanced at the clock. It was almost nine-thirty. His employees had gone home hours ago and he’d been working on the programming since then. He had an idea on how to fix the problem in the system, but he needed to run it by Gregg tomorrow to get his thoughts before doing anything permanent.
    “Good evening, Mr. Charles,” Ray said as he reached for the container holding his cell phone.
    “How are you doing, Ray?” Drake asked while he pulled his cell phone out and turned it on.
    “Doing right well, thank ya.” Ray smiled and Drake returned it. Ray was a good ole country boy from just outside Atlanta. His mother had gotten sick and he’d picked up this