The Ghost and The Hacker (Dark Fire Book 3) (18 page)

When I've finished typing in all the information for Sarah and myself and picked a car, and realize I've spent more on tickets and a car rental in five minutes than that two thousand, five hundred that caused all this trouble to begin with.

I'm in the shower and back out again as fast as possible.  We need to be at the airport in less than an hour and a half.

Sarah hands me a cup of coffee when I enter the kitchen.

"Are we good?"

"Quick shower.  Then pack for an overnight.  We can get a hotel in Pittsburgh if we have to," I say, sipping my coffee as I follow her back to the bedroom.

She's loading an open duffel with clothing but she stops to give me a look like I'm stupid.

"Really?" she asks, stuffing a bra and some panties in.

"What?"

"You know my mom still lives there, right?"

I think about this.  The thought of ever seeing Sarah's parents had always filled me with terror.  Despite having left under the impression that Sarah had broken things off between us, I know now that I hurt her. Seeing her parents again will be tough; I broke their baby girl's heart.  That hasn't changed, but I wonder if their impression of me is any different now that I'm not wanted.

"I guess we can stay with your parents," I say, shrugging.  If they say no, we can always use Pittsburgh as Plan B.

"Just mom," Sarah says sadly.

"Did they get divorced?"  I'm flabbergasted.  Being the wife of a cop couldn't have been easy, but her mom always pulled it off so well.  I never would have seen that coming.

"Dad had a heart attack less than a year after Roger died."  She takes a sip of coffee.  "You know, I talked to mom a few weeks ago.  That's when she told me about dad solving your case.  But it was like a code."

She gives me a sad look and wanders into the bathroom.  I follow.

"I'm sorry about your dad.  Despite the whole warrant thing, he was a really nice guy."

She laughs, but it's sad.  "Yeah.  He was."

"We'll visit him, too."

"Okay.  Thanks, Zach."

I head upstairs, throw some clothes in a bag, toss in my toiletries and return Cy's computer.  I leave a note telling him, vaguely, where we're going.  Then I'm back downstairs, fully dressed and carrying my coat, waiting for Sarah.

She comes out of her bathroom carrying a toiletries bag.  On a whim, I wander into her bathroom and take a moment to read her shampoo bottle.

Pear.

About an hour later, we're at the airport, waiting to board, and I catch another hint of her shampoo.  I bring her face to mine and kiss her.  I need the connection, the reminder that I'm awake and this is all real, and I'm about to get on a plane and fly an hour and a half to another state so I can make peace with my past.

Maybe that's why Sarah's with me- she needs to make peace, too.  Her father lied to her and now that she knows the truth, he's dead.  It's only been a couple of years, but I could have come home a week after my father died.

I'm still not entirely sure what we'll do when we get there, but I know that with Sarah at my side, I'll get through it.  We'll make our way back to where all of this started, finish out that chapter of our lives and move on.  I know there's closure to be found.  I'm just not sure how.

We're sitting in first class, ten minutes into the flight, and Sarah twines her fingers with mine.

"What do we do after this?" she asks quietly.  We've both been quiet, caught up in our own heads.

"I move in with you.  I report Teddy and get him fired.  We find a new place for Lucy.  We live happily ever after, just like everyone at school always said."

She smiles, but it's tense.

I turn her face, forcing her to meet my eyes.  I ask, without words if she's okay, and she answers me with a peck on the lips, and then dips her head to rest on my shoulder.

We haven't had our closure yet.  I'm not going to push because there's no point.  We're both quiet until we land and I find our rental car.  Then it's another quiet twenty-plus minutes to downtown Lakemont.  We drive past the
mountain
of Lakemont - really just a high hill that overlooks the lake - and I drive the route to Sarah's home by memory.  Or, I guess it's just her mom's house now.  It's not Sarah's home...  Sarah lives with me.  She's home at her apartment in New York.  She's home with
me
.

I hope.

Because I'm home when I'm with her.

Her mom's car is in the driveway and I pull in next to it.  We never called to warn her we were coming, so it's good that she's home.  I have a feeling we're about to shock the hell out of her.

Sarah asks me to wait outside for a minute and then goes in.  I can hear her mom, excited, surprised, and then quiet.  The door opens and Sarah beckons me in.

"Oh dear god in heaven.  You found him, Sarah."  Her mom drops to the couch when she sees me, her hand over her mouth.

The gesture reminds me of Sarah.  She may look like her dad, but she's so much like her mom, it's jarring to see.  They both use their left hand to cover their mouths when they're surprised.  They both sit on a couch the same way, and they both smile with the same smile- bright, like the sun is coming out.

"You knew I was looking for him?" Sarah asks, her mouth open.

"Of course, Sare-bear.  I may not know anything about computers, but I'm not stupid," she chides.  "It's good to see you again, Zachary."  She finally gets her wits gathered and stands.

She surprises me with a hug.  "Good to see you again, too, Mrs. Jennings.  I'm sorry to hear about Chief Jennings."

She sighs.  "Thank you, Zachary."

"Zach is fine, ma'am," I correct.

She gives me the same look her daughter does, lifting her right eyebrow the tiniest bit and tilting her head.

"Always so polite.  It always made me wonder if you were really Roger's son."  She blushes and pats at her perfect hair, then turns and walks to the kitchen.  "Will you be staying for dinner?"

Sarah follows her mom, and I follow Sarah.

"Can we take you out to dinner, mom?"  I'm surprised to hear Sarah ask that.  It will mean going out in public, in Lakemont, with
me
at the same table.

"Are you sure?" I ask under my breath.

"Are you mine?" she asks in return, doing the same eyebrow thing her mom just did a moment ago.  I'll have to point that out to her some time.

"Always," I tell her, kissing her hair and squeezing her against my side.

"Then let's go make a statement."

Downtown Lakemont has two really nice restaurants:  Clary's Inn and The Bicycle Club- a surf and turf kind of place.  When I ask, Mrs. Jennings waves me off and tells me to pick one.  She eats out a lot with her friends, has done so a lot since her husband passed, she explains, so it's my call.

Clary's is a little less snobby, Sarah tells me.  The Bicycle Club wasn't around eight years ago, so I have nothing to compare it to.  I pick Clary's and we go inside.  It's the first time in a long time that I don't have people staring at me when I enter a public place.  I haven't really left the City except to go to my house upstate.

We make it through the whole meal uninterrupted.  When the waitress brings the bill and I go to take it, she finally looks at me.

"Zach Moore?"

I look up and see a familiar face.  I can't remember her name.

"Hi," she says.  I see Sarah smiling as the waitress continues to prattle.  "I'm Sophie Lemieux.  I went to high school with Sarah.  How do you know her?"

I put out my hand to shake hers and she blushes like crazy.  "Hi.  Zach Coffield.  We've met.  You took a picture of me and Sarah in high school, at a football game.  For yearbook."

She drops her hand and her eyes get buggy.  "But you're...  You are..."

"Zach Moore.  Dark Fire," I fill in.  "Yup."

She goes pale and then red and I ready my legs in case I have to catch her.  Justin's had to catch Andy when she passed out; he said it was easy because they were next to a couch.  If Sophie goes down, she's going to end up hitting the table.

She manages to get herself together and I slump back in my seat.

"Would you sign this?"  She holds out her order pad.  "I never knew..."

I smile and look around.  Mrs. Jennings is smiling, taking all this in.  Sarah's beaming- with pride?  Happiness that the secret is out?  I'm not sure.

I sign Sophie's notepad and hand her my credit card.  "Maybe hold off on telling everyone until we leave, okay?"

She nods, biting her lower lip like she's trying to hold it in, and turns to Sarah.  "It's good to see you again."  She wins points for including Sarah and I watch her scurry off to run my card.

When she returns, she hands the receipt to me and spends a minute talking to Sarah.  "It was good to see you both again," she says as we leave.

I saw a cellphone in her back pocket.  My money says she's tweeting or posting to Facebook the minute the door closes behind us.

It's too dark to go anywhere by the time we get back to the house.

Mrs. Jennings puts sheets on the couch for me.  Sarah has a twin bed in her bedroom and I would have preferred to be cramped in it with her, but I won't push the issue.  At dinner, Mrs. Jennings explained that she'd just gotten home from a church social before we showed up, so I'm not going to ask if I can sleep in the same bed as her daughter while we're in her house.

The point is moot.  An hour after we're all in bed, Sarah slips her body under the covers, spooning against me, her ass against my crotch so she doesn't fall off.  Her mom finds us like that in the morning and I have to cover my erection on the way into the bathroom.

After breakfast - a full buffet spread that takes her mom about an hour to put together - her mom shocks the hell out of us by pulling out a laptop.

"You own a computer?" Sarah says, her eyes wide.

"I had to learn eventually," she chides.  "Use it to find out where his father ended up."

She doesn't have to hack anything.  It's public information.  It just takes time to find out where the coroner sent the body after the robbery.  I learn that his ashes went into a common site, location unknown.  But there is a small plaque at one of the two cemeteries in Lakemont.  It's all that's left of the man, besides his bar, and that sold at public auction.

I want to be sad, but all I feel is relief.

Sarah

Zach drives me to my dad's grave first.

I stand there, staring at the headstone.  I was away when he died, but I came home for the funeral.  In the days that followed, I realized how hard it would be on my mom if I hung around a lot.  I went back to my college apartment less than a week after the burial.

"Hi dad."  I'm not religious like my mom.  I have no opinion about the afterlife or heaven, but as I stand at the foot of my father's grave, mentally tracing the words
Called To Serve, Passed in Grace
which are etched onto the stone, I wonder if maybe he's aware that it's finally over.

"So, I found him, Dad."  A tear rolls down my cheek and Zach wraps his arms around me from behind.

There's a place next to my dad's grave, waiting for my mom.  I don't want to lose her, but I want to hope someday they're together again.  I look back at the dark engraved marble.

"I love him, Daddy.  I always have.  Thank you for everything.  I get why you didn't tell me about the warrant, but he's safe now.  You can finally sleep."

Zach doesn't know what that means, but he squeezes me tight.  The daisies I brought for his grave are bright against the muddy ground.  They'll die quickly; it's too cold outside for fresh flowers, but I place them gently down.

My mother loves daisies.  Whenever he brought her flowers, it was daisies.  She would always take one and put it in the pocket of his uniform the next morning on his way out the door.  I don't know if he wore them once he got in the car or into the station, but it was special.

We walk to the other side of the cemetery, where Roger Coffield's bronze plaque clings to a tall slab of marble at the edge of the property.  It's not luck that the two men are in the same cemetery.  One of them was a city employee.  The other became property of the city when there was no one to take possession of the body.

It would be sad, but I have a hard time dredging up that emotion for the death of the man who fingered his own son for his crimes.  His wife may have died from a bad case of the flu, but if she hadn't taken so many hits in her life, maybe she would have been strong enough to fight.  To live.  Maybe Roger Coffield isn't directly responsible, but a part of me wants to blame him for every bad thing that happened to Zach.

I watch Zach stare at the words:  Roger's name, the date he was born, and the date he died.  That's it.  So different from the man on the other end of the gently-sloping expanse with those parting words of love.

Zach stares at the bronze plate and then at his feet.

"You finally did something right, even if it was by accident," he mumbles.  Then he turns, takes my hand, and leads me back to the parked car.

We spend the afternoon on the couch watching
Say Anything
while wrapped around one another.  My mom brings us popcorn and drinks and when the movie is over, we repack our bags and hug goodbye.

As we're heading out the door, Zach's phone rings.

"Yeah?"

He tosses our bags in the back of the rental car and closes the hatch, holding the phone to his ear with a shoulder.

He starts laughing.  "Bro, you're just gonna have to tell her to deal with it."

He hangs up, still laughing, and holds the door open for me.  We wave to my mom as he pulls away.

"What was that all about?" I ask.

"That was Cy.  Apparently, Juliana just got word that my real identity is out.  It's blowing up the internet."

"Is this bad?"  I have no idea what this means for Dark Fire.

"Nope.  It's the best free PR
ever
.  We have a release coming up in a few months, and one more I Heart NYC show coming up.  This is going to push sales through the roof.  Juliana's just freaking because it was a surprise.  She hates surprises."

I think about Andy's kidnapping, how Griffin and Nicki eloped, and how Zach had to admit to being wanted by the police.  I start laughing hard.  "She must really hate having to work with you guys, then."

He looks over at me and chuckles.  "Everyone but Cy, I think."

I'm not expecting much when we get home, but when we enter Zach's apartment, there are more people than normal.  Juliana stands in the living room looking irked.  Andy and Justin (and Norm) hang around the kitchen.  Cy holds up a cellphone and all at once we hear, "Welcome home!"

"What is all this?" Zach says, dropping our bags.

"It's a welcome home party," Cy says, hugging Zach.  It's not just a bro-hug, either.  Cy wraps his arms around his best friend and squeezes.

Cy hands the phone to Zach as he lets go.

"Hello?"  He smiles.  "Aren't you guys supposed to be fucking like rabbits right now?  You're on your honeymoon!"  He laughs and says, "I know, man.  I swear.  Now go back to bed.  We'll party in your honor."  He ends the call and hands it back to Cy who pockets it.

Justin's walking around with glasses of something bubbly, handing them out.  He hands a bottle of water to Andy, so I know it's alcoholic.  When he gets to me, I take it, darting a glance at Zach.  He winces and his gaze finds Juliana.

"She's gonna be pissed," he says into my ear, smiling.

"Justin, I...  I can't drink this.  I hand the glass back.  "Can I just get some of Zach's rootbeer?"

Justin looks confused but takes the glass and walks to the kitchen.  I can see him reach into the fridge, but he freezes once inside.  His face lifts over the top of the fridge door and he stares.

Cy explodes in laughter.  "Oh Jesus!  You never told them?  Oh god, I should be paying to watch this shit!"

Juliana's right up in front of Zach now, hands on her hips.  "Are you fucking kidding me?"

"We'll know soon," he says smirking.  His arm wraps around my waist, pulling me tight, and I take the rootbeer Justin hands me.

Andy's jumping around like a kid.  "This is so awesome!  Are you happy?  Tell me you're happy.  The sex is amazing, and once you get the magic pills, you don't even notice the morning sickness!"

She looks so excited but I'm not sure if it's because I'm potentially going to be pregnant right along with her, or because she thinks of me like a friend and she's happy that I'm going to have a baby.  I nod and admit it.  "Yeah, I'm sort of excited.  I'm trying to be cautiously optimistic though.  We won't know for another day or two."

"Oh," Zach says, his eyebrows high.  "You all need to go now," he says, opening his arms to begin herding Andy and Justin and Juliana to the door.  They look confused at his sudden need for privacy.  Cy and are laughing quietly.

"He's totally gonna take advantage of these next couple of days, isn't he."  He takes a sip from his glass while we watch Zach help Andy get her coat on.

"I sure hope so," I pant, already needy and achy just thinking about it.  It's been too long, but Cy's still standing beside me.

I look in his direction.  I need to know if he's catching the waves of lust rolling off me.  But he's already walking away toward his room, shaking his head and chuckling quietly.

The front door closes and Zach takes my hand, pulling me toward the bedroom.

"I have to work in the morning," I remind him.

"Is six hours of sleep enough?" he asks, staring at me.  He's panting and I can see his tented jeans from beneath lust-heavy lids.

"Six and a half?  I might be pregnant," I point out.

"Deal," he says, grabbing me.  I'm on the bed a moment later and we're both naked.

"Before I forget," he says, stopping.  His hands curl around my breasts and his mouth is on my belly.

My eyes are wide from the shock of his sudden halt.  "Yeah?"

"Show this weekend.  You need to be there."

"Okay," I mumble.  His mouth goes further south and any other conversation is lost.