I glanced at my cell. “A little over an hour?”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

I leaned back in my chair, stretching out of my stiff position. “I’d never break your rhythm.”

He pursed his lips, nodding. “Nice.” He glanced back at his gear. “I didn’t expect anyone to show up. After fixing some things on the school site, I launched right into a password cracking algorithm I’ve been working on.”

“Tanner has you maintaining the site?” I chuckled. “That sounds thrilling.”

“Riveting stuff,” he said.

“I just owned in capture the flag. A pwn challenge. I had to locally exploit the server and then use it against itself. Found the flag after switching up the language.”

Dean whistled, sitting in the chair right next to mine. He placed his elbows on his knees, putting him eye level with me. “Clever.”

I shrugged. “It happens sometimes.”

“Which site? CTFtime?”

“Pwnable. You know it?”

“I haven’t done one in a few months, but yeah. They’ve got some good challenges.”

The earbuds buzzed on my desk as my playlist switched to a new song, and I shifted to end it on my cell.

“Is that deadmau5?”

“Yeah,” I said, watching him. “You know him?”

“Hell yes,” he said. “‘Animal Rights’ is on almost every one of my lists.”

“Are you messing with me?” I asked, suddenly wary he’d snuck into my system and snagged all my info. That wasn’t his style, but still. How was it possible we loved the same DJ and he’d just named my favorite song?

“If I was going to mess with you,” he said, smirking like he could read my mind, “it would be infinitely more involved than stealing a playlist.”

A warm shiver danced down my spine as he licked his lips, that damn smirk both inviting and a warning sign.

“True,” I said, hating the crack in my voice. It was hard to focus with him so close, his eyes on mine. He smelled like Red Bull and cedar and I was hard pressed to remember what exactly we were talking about. “You do WebWars?” I asked, noticing a patch on his messenger bag.

“I did last year,” he said, rubbing his palms together where they hung between his knees. “And I’ve just earned my ticket to the Tournament of Champions this year.”

My eyebrows rose. Damn, he was even better than I thought. The TOC, or Tournament of Champions, was a prestigious cyber intelligence competition held every year. The winner not only received major bragging rights, but a trophy, a ticket to next year’s tourney, and an all-expenses-paid boot camp of their choice. Add to that all the connections to VIPs employed by top corporations, it was the competition to enter.