Misunderstood Hacker Read online

  I grabbed a bag of licorice and my laptop to work on figuring out who could be behind the car accident.

  Betsy made a frustrated sound. “Fine. Stay here. She won’t be happy when she wakes up and finds out you didn’t take care of yourself.” Once she finished checking Jessica’s vitals, she left without saying another word.

  I pulled up the security camera feed of the path Jessica took. Over the next couple hours, I worked on going through the video footage I could pull. But the “scenic route” Jessica had taken didn’t have many traffic cameras.

  The next morning, everyone was back in Jessica’s room waiting to hear from the doctor.

  Sam and Patty had brought me breakfast when they came back this morning. They looked like they had gotten some rest.

  “You should head ho—” Patty tried to get out.

  Sam knew I would lose my temper at Patty if she asked me to head home one more time. He put his hand over Patty’s mouth before she could finish her thought.

  “Pixie, Brock will head home when Jessica wakes up.”

  The worry in Patty’s eyes almost made me cave. “You will run yourself down. I care about you, Brock.”

  “How about we make a deal? Once Jessica wakes and we know she is okay, I will run home, take a shower, and nap.”

  “Okay.” Patty pouted, obviously overwhelmed by everything going on. “But if the doctor keeps her in a coma for a few more days, I expect you to leave and take a nap. I will send Sam’s whole team to drag your ass out of here. Or I will take your computer hostage until you go home, shower, and sleep.”

  I took a gulp of the Mountain Dew Sam had brought me this morning, wishing I had vodka to go with it. The thought of Jessica in a coma for a few more days made my stomach turn. She had had another CT this morning. We were waiting for the doctor to tell us if the swelling had gone down.

  “We need to stop being so negative and start thinking positively,” I said.

  “Seriously?” Patty asked.

  “Yes, seriously.”

  “She was run off the road. Her body is pieced back together. How can I not—?” Patty was crying so hard she couldn’t get the rest of her sentence out.

  Sam must have blamed me for upsetting Patty because the stare he sent my way was intense enough to peel paint off the wall.

  “Pixie, why don’t you go for a walk with John for a few minutes.” Hearing his name, John popped his head into the room.

  Patty was about to protest when John walked in and pulled her from Sam’s lap. I was not in the mood for one of Sam’s lectures. Needing to escape the room before Sam started, I placed my laptop on the table next to me and started to stand.

  “Brock, sit down.” When I hesitated, he pointed to the chair. “Now. We need to talk.”

  Once John and Patty had left the room, Sam continued. “You need to understand that what happened to Jessica was not your fault. You couldn’t have stopped it.”

  On second thought, I wished he would yell at me for upsetting Patty. This conversation was heading down a path I didn’t like. I knew Sam was about to bring up a part of my past that needed to stay there.

  “If I had been paying closer attention, I would have seen her sneak out the door.”

  Sam ran his hand down his face, a sound of frustration coming from his throat. “Do you blame me for her accident?”

  “Why would I blame you?”

  “I was there too and didn’t see her leave. Jessica is a grown woman and made this decision herself, just like your CO did all those years ago. You need to stop blaming yourself for something you didn’t have control over. I see you holding on to the guilt for your team members.”

  This was the exact conversation I didn’t want to have, how my team had been killed because I gave them lousy information. A half dozen people would still be alive if I had had the time to double-check the intel my CO had received. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t my fault. I had told him I wanted to check out the source more thoroughly before we acted.

  “You know I don’t talk about that part of my life. Drop it,” I demanded.

  Sam ran his hand down his face again and sighed. “I will not drop it. Neither of these accidents were your fault. If you keep letting them fester, you will drive yourself crazy. Jessica will be fine, and you can spend the rest of your life doting over her.”

  Was it that obvious that I had a thing for Jessica? Ever since the first day I laid eyes on her in Sam’s office, I knew she was special. But she had been going through a divorce, so I kept my distance. Once she was released from the hospital, I wouldn’t let her out of my sight until we found her attacker. I couldn’t fathom the thought of losing her.

  “First, I will find out who did this. I won’t rest until then. And you shouldn’t expect me to drop the case. I was there to help you protect Patty. Stand with me now to protect Jessica.”

  Luckily, Patty and John came back with Dr. Greyson, and the conversation that made my stomach turn upside down stopped. I needed good news to pull me away from the thoughts of what happened to my team and Jessica potentially having brain damage from the accident.

  Dr. Greyson was a younger doctor. His presence filled the room. He had to be around six feet five inches and two hundred fifty pounds of muscle. He reminded me of a linebacker. From his expression, I thought I might finally get that good news.

  The small room was crowded. Patty and Sam were sitting to the left of Jessica’s bed. I was sitting on the other side, and John stood in the back corner.

  Dr. Greyson glanced at the clipboard in his hands one more time before addressing the room. “The swelling around Jessica’s brain has gone down. We are stopping the IV of phenobarbital, and in about eight to twelve hours, she should start to wake.” The doctor turned toward me. “You need to go home, shower, and take a quick nap. She needs you at one hundred percent when she wakes.” Dr. Greyson didn’t leave any room to argue.

  Once he finished double-checking her vitals, he and the nurse left.

  “You heard the doctor. Go home,” Sam demanded. “We’ll call if anything happens.”

  Knowing I wouldn’t win the battle, I grabbed my laptop and licorice and headed for the door. I looked over my shoulder one more time before I left. Jessica looked so weak, lying on the bed alone.

  When I walked into Jessica’s room six hours later, Sam was sleeping in the chair. Patty had pulled up another chair, and her fingers were flying across the keyboard.

  “Who are you hacking, Patty?” I asked, hoping she had found a lead.

  Her head flew up in surprise. “I didn’t hear you come in,” she said loudly, waking Sam. “As for your question, NASA has cool satellites.” When Patty flipped her laptop around, her screen showed a satellite map of the nature preserve where Jessica’s car was hit.

  I grabbed my laptop out of my bag. “Can you send me what you find?”

  “That’s the thing. It seems someone deleted the satellite imagery during the time we need.”

  It was risky to tamper with data when you hacked in somewhere. Thinking of another way we could find the data, I asked, “Have you looked at the backups? NASA’s servers should back up immediately.”

  I heard movement coming from the bed. When I glanced up from my laptop to check on Jessica, her pretty gray eyes opened.

  I hurried to her side and grabbed her hand. “Jessica,” I whispered.

  “W-Who are you?”

  Those three words made my world topple over.

  3

  Jessica

  Patty and Brock had not been happy with the joke I had played on them in the hospital. I knew who they were the second I woke up. Both of them had been grumpy with me for the rest of my stay in the hospital.

  “I don’t need a babysitter in my apartment, Brock. You haven’t gone home in a week. I can go upstairs myself, and you can check on me tomorrow.”

  I was sitting in Brock’s SUV outside my condominium. I had just been released from the hospital, and Brock had driven me home. He was grab
bing an overnight bag from the back, thinking he would stay with me. The man hadn’t left my side since the accident.

  Instead of listening, he jumped out of the SUV, grabbed his bags, walked over to my door, and opened it. The man wore a black fitted dress shirt and a pair of tight jeans that accented his tight ass. His black laptop bag was slung over one shoulder, and a duffle bag was over the other.

  Brock held out his hand so I had something to grab onto as I got out of his vehicle. “We are not arguing about this, Jessica. Your arm is still in a cast, and your leg is in a boot. I’m staying with you until we find out who ran you off the road and your casts come off.”

  I winced inwardly at Brock’s comments. He had spent hours on his laptop trying to figure who had been behind the wheel of the Escalade. The man’s fingers flew over his laptop every spare moment. He was working on pulling any camera footage he could find.

  Patty had assisted with the footage the first few days, but she and Sam had left for Shialia three days ago. From the conversations I overheard, Patty had worked her way into some of NASA’s satellites. Brock and Patty had run into a problem with the data being deleted from the servers. They were trying to find the backup server data.

  The main thing I worried about was my apartment. With everything leading up to the accident, I hadn’t told anyone about my security footage being deleted. I was hoping if I didn’t mention it, they would consider the accident simple road rage. I wanted to drop the bodyguard, but not because I didn’t like Brock around. That was the problem. I liked having him around too much.

  Brock had grabbed Patty away from Doug so Sam was able to take the shot that killed him. I had no hard feelings toward Brock for helping Sam kill my ex. Rescuing my sister had made me fall even harder for the man.

  For the past week, Brock had been helping me with anything I needed. I had to sic Sam on him to make him go home for one night. The only way Brock would leave was if Sam agreed to stay until he returned. I worried that Brock thought the accident was his fault, and I wondered if he felt guilty for killing Doug. I had no qualms about him killing Doug. My family always came first. I had never really loved Doug. It was a marriage of convenience.

  I was the only one to blame for my accident, other than the crazy person who hit me. I wasn’t sure if I was losing my mind before the accident or if someone was after me. I thought the fear was starting to get to me. It seemed as if strange things had happened ever since Doug’s death. I thought it might be a ghost. I needed to ditch Brock and get an exorcism done on my house.

  I started for the double doors that led into the lobby. I could hear Brock’s footsteps behind me. I had been around him long enough to know that, no matter what I said, he wouldn’t leave me alone.

  Tommy, the bellhop, was behind the desk next to the double doors. When he saw me, his face lit up. Tommy had to be in his early seventies and had been working at the condo’s front desk for the past thirty years. Patty and I always stopped to talk to him and brought him gifts for the holidays.

  “It’s so good to see you, Jessica. This place hasn’t felt the same without you here,” Tommy wheezed between breaths. His years of smoking had taken a toll on his lungs.

  I couldn’t help but smile at his greeting. “I’m delighted to be out of the hospital. Luckily, I made it out of the crash with only some scrapes and bruises. One point three million people die in road crashes each year. On average, that’s over three thousand a day.”

  Brock grumbled something about it not being luck and about me being stupid for leaving unescorted. I chose to ignore him. “You remember Brock, Tommy? Brock is going to be my babysitter for the next couple weeks.”

  A low growl came from Brock’s throat. I knew he didn’t like being called my babysitter. Tough. I didn’t want one, either.

  “It’s good to see you, Tommy,” Brock said. “If you see anything out of the ordinary, let me or someone at Blackwood Security know immediately. Jessica has someone after her. You still have my number?”

  Tommy put on his reading glasses and flipped through an old, ragged notebook. Once he found what he was looking for, he responded. “Yes, I have it. You, young lady, take the protection and stop complaining.”

  We said our goodbyes as Brock pulled me toward the elevator. The day had been exhausting, and I was ready to climb into bed. I leaned against Brock for support. The little bit of exertion was making me tired.

  He wrapped his arms around my waist, keeping me steady. It made the butterflies turn in my stomach. Every time Brock put his arms around me, it made my world spin.

  I pointed at the mirror in the elevator. “Did you know they put mirrors in elevators to distract you? People felt like an elevator ride was slow, so companies installed mirrors to trick people’s minds.”

  “I think you being in the elevator with me is all the distraction I need.”

  The elevator doors opened, and Brock pulled me toward my penthouse. There were two penthouses on the top floor—mine and Patty’s, which was right across from mine. Since being engaged to Sam, they had chosen to stay at his apartment more than the penthouse. That had felt like a big change.

  When Brock unlocked the door and the alarm didn’t sound, I knew he was about to lecture me about safety. I hoped there wasn’t anything else wrong in the apartment. How much drama was one person supposed to endure?

  “Why is your alarm not set?” Brock demanded in his gruff voice.

  “Something’s wrong with the security system. I keep meaning to ask Patty to take a look. It’s been shutting itself off for the last few months, and the cameras have been deleting footage.” I couldn’t look at Brock as I confessed what had been going wrong. I knew I would see the disappointment on his face if I looked at him.

  “Why have you not told anyone? Stay here. Let me check around before you come in. Someone could be here.”

  I waited in the entryway of my penthouse for Brock to say everything was all clear.

  “Jessica,” Brock yelled. “I need you to go to Patty’s place and lock the door.”

  From the worry in his voice, I could tell he’d found something wrong inside my condo. The need to know what he’d found was overwhelming. There was no way I would tuck tail and run. So I walked into the living room.

  But I should have done as he said. The words scrawled across my lavender walls made me shake. Someone had written “Next time I get close, you will be mine” in red paint on the wall above my white couch.

  Brock’s voice faded to the background, and my mind drifted back to ten years ago.

  The cell I had been in for the last week was starting to feel like my safe house. Gray stone walls rose to the ceiling. The dead-rodent smell was getting easier to cope with. There were no windows in my cell, which made it hard to tell what time it was. Once a day, someone would slip a piece of stale bread through the door slit. I didn’t know what information they wanted from me, and the torture was getting worse. I just wanted to curl up and die.

  The beating I had received a couple days ago had been so violent that they hadn’t touched me since. There were still open sores on my back from the whip. The desire for this to end was strong.

  The door to my cell opened, and in walked one of the men that had been torturing me. I was hoping it wouldn’t turn to rape soon.

  I needed to make a run for it. I waited for him to get close, then I stepped back to get leverage and kicked him in the balls. He dropped to the ground, and I headed toward the door. He grabbed me from behind and threw me to the floor. I thought for sure this was the minute my life would cease to exist.

  “The next time you try something like that, you will die.”

  Before I had time to figure out what the man who had tortured me for days planned to do, he brought the butt of the gun down on my head, and the lights went out.

  Brock

  “Jessica, come back. Wake up.”

  Jessica had gone into shock when she saw the words on the wall. Her face had gone stark white, and she dropped t
o the ground and rocked. I knew that, in her mind, she was back to being locked in a cell. The misery showed on her face.

  She was shaking in my arms and had tears running down her face. I pulled her into my lap and tried to talk to her. Nothing seemed to help. I grabbed my cell phone out of my pocket to get Neal up to the apartment.

  Neal, a longtime friend of Jessica and Patty’s, lived one floor down from them. I had also known Neal for years. He helped out on some of our cases when I needed it. He was the CEO of Patty’s network security company, Black Hat.

  I didn’t wait for Neal to say anything when he answered the phone. “Neal, I need you at Jessica’s apartment urgently.” When he said okay, I disconnected the line. I needed to take care of Jessica.

  I picked her up and carried her down the hall to her bedroom. Once inside, I set her down on the bed. I went to get a cold washcloth to wipe her face. I hated seeing her in this much pain. I knew once I had her safe, I would eliminate the men who had touched her. I had never understood why her father had just put them in jail instead of executing them.

  Sam and Patty had left for Shialia a few days ago. Sam and I would discuss what was needed to eliminate the men in prison. If Sam had been here to see how Jessica was acting, he would have been on board with the plan.

  I was running the cold washcloth across Jessica’s forehead when Neal walked in. He had obviously seen the wall in the living room.

  “What the fuck is going on?” Neal asked, running to Jessica’s side.

  “The alarm was off. I told Jessica to go to Patty’s place when I saw the saw the writing. Instead, she walked in, saw it, and went into shock.”

  Jessica eventually calmed down and fell asleep. I pulled the pink fleece blanket up over her and pointed toward the door.

  Neal and I went back to the living room to discuss our plan of action.

  Neal pinched the bridge of his nose before talking. “I think what she saw sent her back to her kidnapping. She’s having a flashback.”