The Hacker Is Back

Stiff: Is It really you?

Night Shadows: It's me.

Stiff: Where have you been?

Night Shadows: Would you believe hell?

Stiff: No net in hell?

Night Shadows: Not for me, no.

Stiff: Remind me to pray more.

Night Shadows: Any work?

I needed money—clean money where I could access it without worrying about King. I owed too many people, and I needed a way to pay them back.

Stiff: Always.

Night Shadows: Specs?

Stiff: On the way.

I closed out the conversation and scrubbed my history.

My phone vibrated. It had to be Bea. No one else knew my number. But she was supposed to email me. Something was wrong.

I scanned the area from my seat on the public library floor. I'd picked a quiet corner near the ancient history section. The fire exit was mere steps away. I didn't expect to need an escape plan, but it didn't hurt to have one. Besides, I couldn't shake the feeling I was being followed ever since that day at the ATM.

Seeing no one within earshot, I picked up the phone.

"You should come home now."

Not Bea. King.

"I don't think so. Is Bea okay?"

"She's here with me."

"May I speak to her?"

King must have handed Bea the phone.

"Teela, I'm sorry. Your asshole husband took my phone."

"It's not your fault. Are you okay?"

"I'm fine. Homeless, but fine."

"Homeless? Bea, what happened?"

"King bought my apartment building. He's evicting me."

"Let me speak to him."

"Come home, Teela." King sounded bored.

"I can't do that. Leave Bea alone. She hasn't done anything wrong."

"We were okay until she came into the picture."

"No, King, we weren't. We've never been on the same page. I compromised a lot because you're my husband, and I wanted to make you happy, but nothing I did made you happy. It certainly wasn't making me happy."

"And leaving me makes you happy?"

I thought about it for a second. I wasn't exactly happy. It was too soon, and I'd known King would pull something like that. He was a strong businessman who demanded a certain amount of deference from the people around him. He'd learned from Lettie how to react quickly. I'd hoped he'd limit his acting out to me, though. After all, he had a reputation as a fair businessman.

"Not yet, but it's growing on me. At least when I cook breakfast now, someone says thank you."

I shouldn't have said that.

"Who are you living with, Teela? Are you cheating on me? Is it that guy you kissed at Well Water?"

"The kiss wasn't my idea. I'd never cheat on you, King. As soon as I get my act together, I'll file for a divorce, so you don't have to worry about me embarrassing you again."

"Teela, who said anything about a divorce? Come home. We'll work out something."

"Did you ask your mom about that?"

"About what?"

"About me coming home. The last I heard, I wasn't welcome back if I left the house."

"I'll take care of my mom."

"Before or after she puts me in that torture chamber again?"

"Damn it, Teela, I'm not doing this with you. You come home, or your friend Bea pays the price. Today, I took her home. Tomorrow, I'll take her business. For every day you refuse to come home, I'll take something else from her until she has nothing left, including her life."

The call ended.

Motherfuckingsonofabitchasshole. He thought he had me backed into a corner? Fine. Let him see what I could do when cornered.

I opened the laptop back up. First, I emailed Bea the door code to my apartment. She could live there temporarily. Then, I accessed the Heavenly website. My skills might be rusty, but even rusty, I could give King something else to think about other than destroying my friend.

With ease, I breached firewalls and slipped in through security safeguards that would stop most people. I finagled my way through unknown passwords and just plain stupid programming until I found what I was looking for.

Bea deserved compensation for what King was putting her through. I was going to make sure she got it. It was easy, and it could take years before anyone realized what I'd done. I set rounding differences in each and every payroll and accounts transaction to accumulate and transfer into an outside account that I'd set up for another project.

Later, I would work with Bea to set up a new offshore bank account. The overages would automatically transfer in small increments from my working account to hers. In a company the size of Heavenly Enterprises, those minor rounding differences could add up to a lot of cash that most companies wrote off their books anyway.

But wait. That's not all. King obviously didn't have enough to do if he had time to bully my friend. He needed something to think about. I had a unique little piece of Hades stashed away, especially for annoying jerks.

I'd worked with Stiff on a hack when I was still in high school. We'd created it after a fellow student named Amber came to us with a story too heinous to ignore. One of the school administrators had been sexually harassing her since middle school. Now, the harassment had turned into something more. And even though Amber had given in to the man's demands, he had started hitting on her little sister. The sister was eleven years old and had special needs.

Amber's parents refused to believe her. The police wouldn't even consider her accusations. Other adults at the school knew about it but ignored it even when they must have heard her begging for help from his office.

So Stiff and I did what we did best. We made his life hell, beginning with a little bug that infiltrated the school's computer system and went to work, creating chaos by merging, splitting, and reorganizing files at random.

In essence, the recipes from the cafeteria merged with the test scores from the last aptitude test. Then, the files would split and merge with attendance records. The process would repeat on a randomized schedule, making none of the school records reliable or comprehensible. As quickly as they corrected a file, the bug would attack it and Frankenstein it into something else.

After every fifth rendition, we left behind a calling card, naming the administrator as an abusive pedophile.

It didn't take long for people to take notice. As soon as he was arrested, Stiff and I killed the bug. No muss. No fuss.

The success of that attack was heady. For days, we lived off the success and dreamed for hacking as a career. Then Mom fell ill and all I worried about was keeping her alive projects that helped pay the medical bills.

It didn't take me long to adapt the program from manipulating school documents into something that would attack the Heavenly company files, only I wasn't a totally heartless bitch. I wasn't looking to destroy King's company. At least not yet. I narrowed down the focus of the bug to attack only files that included King's name and to only run for twenty-four hours.

I was particularly proud of the tag I left behind. I quoted King Solomon. Kindness and faithfulness keep a king safe, through kindness his throne is made secure.

Maybe he would understand the warning.

By the time I was done, Stiff's email with the job specifics hit my inbox. I downloaded it and shut down my laptop. I'd stayed too long.

If King wasn't looking for my online signature before, odds were he would now.

Nervous energy coursed through me. I fought the urge to run out of the library and through the streets. However, running willy nilly through a public building tended to draw attention. I liked this library. I wanted to come back sometime. So I kept it together long enough to return to the church.

I knocked on the door and waited. Father DiMarco must have been nearby because I didn't have to wait long.

"Teela, come in."

I didn't.

"I've left my husband. He is a leader in the business world. He really could financially destroy you and your family. He just bought my best friend's building and evicted her on the spot."

"I don't think that is legal."

"The threat of a civil lawsuit doesn't phase men at his level. He would bury the case under a pile of corporate lawyers without blinking an eye."

"And I'm a hacker. Well, I was a hacker before I married King. Now, I'm doing it again. But I'm selective about what work I take. I like to think I'm a virtual Batman, only I'm not rich, so I take money for what I do. I need the money to accomplish my goals.

"If you let me stay here, keeping you safe and provided for is one of those goals, so what do you say. Do you still want to take me in?"

"Your friend, does she need a place to stay as well?"