Wireless

by Elev

Chapter 1

Andrea Wilson's loft apartment was tiny, modern, and spotless, like it'd been clipped right out of a home magazine and dropped into the ninth floor of a building uptown. I closed the front door behind me as quietly as I could before I crept into the living room. I didn't make a single sound until I had checked the adjacent bedroom and miniature bathroom to make sure that our latest Number was really at work and not hanging around waiting to confront strangers in her apartment.

"Okay," I whispered once I was satisfied that no one else was home. "Place is clear."

Shaw's voice crackled in my earpiece. "Good," she said. She sounded bored, but I heard the tiniest note of approval in her voice. "You're getting faster at picking locks. Anything interesting?"

"Not yet," I said, looking around the bedroom. It was very sparse and airy, with few pieces of furniture. A twin sized bed sat against one wall beneath the window, which looked out onto the street. The sheets looked like they had been folded by a machine; the bed was made that well. There was a little bookcase next to the bed, but the selection of books wasn't very interesting; there were a few murder-mystery paperbacks, the kind you'd pick up at the airport waiting for a flight, and that was about it. Across the room was a small desk with a sleek desktop computer, one of those ultra-low-power jobs with just enough processing power to render a web browser without falling over. I sat down in front of the keyboard and powered the computer on.

"Hah!" I said quietly. "No password. This should be easy."

"Porn," Shaw said.

"Come again?" I said as I dug around in my purse for my flash drive.

"Maybe later," Shaw said. "I'm still recovering from last night." I snickered. Shaw clarified: "I said, 'Porn'. I'm betting Andrea has porn on her computer."

I scoffed and plugged the flash drive into the computer. A few seconds later, my analysis application popped up on the screen. "You're kidding me, right? Andrea Wilson? You saw her FriendZone page. She's like the straightest arrow ever."

"The quiet ones have the best porn stashes," Shaw said.

"Yeah, right," I said, instructing the analysis app to scan the computer for interesting files—images, audio files, documents, emails, saved passwords, encrypted partitions, usable temporary files, file fragments left in the swap area, recently deleted files in unallocated space, whatever I could gather. "There's no way Andrea has anything risque on here."

For a few seconds, Shaw didn't say anything. When she spoke again, her voice had a conspiratorial tone to it. "Let's make a bet," she said.

My fingers stumbled on the keyboard. Alarm bells went off in my mind, but before I could listen too closely to the voices in my head warning me to change the subject, fast, I found myself saying, "Oh? A bet? What'd you have in mind?"

"I dunno," Shaw said, and now red flags were waving like crazy. "Something harmless. Not money. We both have infinite money."

I laughed at that. Leaning back in Andrea's computer chair—which, despite its utilitarian appearance, was actually pretty comfortable—I said, "Loser has to bring hot chocolate and donuts on the next stakeout?"

"I was thinking more 'winner gets to pick what the loser wears for a day'," Shaw said idly.

I thought about that for a moment, eying the analysis application as it ran. The pie chart describing the contents of the computer's solid state drive did show a decent number of images and videos...but Andrea had Photoshack and FilmDirector Pro installed on the computer, so that wasn't too surprising.

There's no way it's porn, I thought. There's just no way. I saw her this morning. She looks even more like a schoolgirl than I do when I wear knee socks. Totally conservative.

"Nothing that'd get us fired from our cover jobs?" I said tentatively. "Or get us arrested? Or make our friends disown us?"

"'Course not," Shaw said. "Just a little harmless fun."

"You're on," I said. "I hope you like Mary Janes. I'll get to call you schoolgirl for a change."

Shaw didn't respond to that.

The mental image of Shaw wearing a skirt and shiny leather shoes was enough to make me grin as I explored some of the most image-heavy directories revealed by my analysis app. Sure, I felt just a little bit nervous opening up the first directory full of images, but the nervousness vanished as soon as the thumbnails started rendering. The folder had stock operating system images in it—icons, desktop backgrounds, and the like.

I can't wait to see her face, I thought to myself. The grin widened when the next directory revealed itself to contain nothing more than hazardous than pictures of Central Park.

"I'm not seeing any porn yet," I said with glee. "Just lots of pictures of oak trees and ugly stock background images."

"I know she has porn on there," Shaw said, but now she sounded less confident.

"Uh-huh," I said as I double-clicked a directory named "anthropology report". "You know, I was thinking, you'd look great in tights and—oh. Oh, boy."

For several seconds, all I could do was stare at the monitor. I couldn't even move my fingers to close the window. My face felt incredibly warm.

Aww, shit, I thought. I'm in for it now. That thought was quickly followed by, Eww! Gross!

"What'd you find?" Shaw said, sounding very eager. "I want descriptions."

"Uh..." I sighed. "Andrea seems to be into Asian dudes with really long—"

"Hah!" Shaw said. For once, she sounded excited. "I win."

My curiosity got the better of me. I couldn't help but scroll down. My God, there were a lot of images, and they seemed to get worse the further down I scrolled in the list.

"Ugh," I groaned.

"What is it?" Shaw said.

"Penises," I said. "Lots of penises. It's the creepy cheesy kind of porn where the guy has an arm for a dick and the girl is a bimbo with inflataboobs. Super unrealistic and kinda offensive."

"You sound like a porn snob," Shaw pointed out playfully.

I finally had enough presence of mind to close the window.

"I like good erotica," I said, leaning back again and crossing my arms. "I have standards."

"Same," Shaw said. "Andrea deserves better pornography. Maybe after we save her life, you can make some bookmarks mysteriously appear on her computer."

"Maybe," I mumbled. "I'll just clone her drive for now..."

"Okay," Shaw said. "In the meantime, I'll just be plotting your future outfit. I've always liked sombreros. And cowboy boots."

I'm a moron, I thought to myself. Why did I agree to a bet?

The clone process took only five minutes—there wasn't very much data on the drive, and since it was solid-state, the files copied very fast. I spent a few minutes exploring the rest of the apartment, peeking into some of the kitchen cabinets and the bedroom closet. I saved her dresser drawers for last. There was nothing particularly outrageous anywhere in the apartment—not that I was fit to judge.

Pot and kettle, all that.

I didn't find a weapon of any sort. There was no evidence that pointed to Andrea becoming a future victim or perpetrator. When I finally slipped back out the front door, I took only the data on my flash drive to analyze later.

I headed down the stairs and out the side entrance of the apartment building. Shaw was waiting in the car, which she had parked across the street. She wasn't exactly grinning when I got into the passenger's seat, but she definitely seemed more cheerful than usual and I was pretty sure I saw a tiny smile, even if it was just for a second.

"I'm never making a bet with you again," I said as soon as I had pulled the door shut.

"You haven't even seen what I'm going to have you wear," Shaw said.

"And just what are you gonna have me wear?" I said, shuffling my shoes against the floorboards. I wasn't really sure I wanted to hear the answer.

"I haven't decided yet."

"I swear, if it's Hello Kitty again—"

"Now you're just giving me ideas," Shaw said. She started the engine.

I pouted all the way back to my apartment.

The rest of the afternoon went by quickly. At my apartment, I picked through some of the files on the disk image of Andrea's computer—discovering three more poorly-hidden stashes of sub-par and degrading pornography in the process—until I found an angry email from one of her co-workers at the call center. Andrea had deleted it, but the operating system hadn't overwritten the file; it'd just marked it as not in use. Shaw called John and they went out and did their thing, somehow getting the guy arrested on drug charges, and an hour later, Andrea was safe, if not a little shaken from her near-death experience with the hit woman the guy had paid to kill her.

There wasn't much time to think about the little bet at Andrea's apartment until later that evening.

Oh my God, I thought to myself as I changed into my favorite green cotton pajamas and fixed myself my nighttime tea. I can't believe I made a bet with Shaw. I was nervous, but at the same time, I was kinda curious to see what kind of hilariously awful outfit Shaw would come up with for me.

Combat boots? I thought. Hmm, she loves hinting at me wearing leather. A jacket? Leather pants? Ugh. And she mentioned a sombrero—maybe she'll find some kind of crazy hat.

I crawled into bed, turned out the lights, and considered the possibilities, coming up with more and more absurd permutations until I finally fell asleep.

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Author's note: I have severe writer's block on Feature Creep. This story idea was a suggestion from carolinagirl919. M'dear, you have created a monster...

Also, to my dear reviewers: this is my first smut. Please be nice. D:

Thanks to SWWoman for beta!