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

Though her hands are on her hips, she looks upset enough to cry, so I try harder to rein it in.

"They wanted to find me so they could arrest me.  I ran away that night, so Dear Old Dad used the opportunity to point the finger at me so
he
could get away.  He left me to twist in the wind, Sarah.  Do you get that?  The asshole that my father was... and your dad still came after
me
."

"I was sixteen fucking years old, Zach!  What the hell did you want me to do?  I wanted you to come home and be safe and be with me."  Her whole body moves as she heaves air into her lungs.  "I sent my dad to the one place I thought you might be because I loved you, not so he could arrest you."

"If you wanted me to come back to you, how come it was your dad who answered the phone when I called?"

"What are you talking about?  What call?"

"You said you sent your dad to our spot.  Out by the lake, right?"  I watch her face, but she seems truly confused.

"Yeah, he said he looked but you weren't there."

"He never gave you the note?"

"What note?"

I run my hands through my hair and pull slightly at the roots in frustration.

"I left a note for you.  I was going to call the payphone downtown one week later at midnight.  I wanted to tell you what happened.  I wanted to tell you where I was.  I didn't find out until that night about Dad's crime spree."

With a defeated sigh, Sarah slumps into the couch behind her.

"He said he didn't find anything."  Her lip trembles.

"And he answered the phone when I called."

"He did?"

I rub at my nose, not sure how to say this.  I don't want to hurt her.  I have
never
intended to hurt her.

"He did.  He said you asked me not to contact you again.  He said you had so much potential and if I really loved you, I'd let you become the woman you were meant to be.  He offered to come get me so I could turn myself in, but I got him to admit there was a warrant out for my arrest and I refused."

Through the door, I hear the end of the song and know it will only be a minute or two more until the guys come busting in to see what's going on.

"You have to go, Sarah.  I don't know if Zach Coffield is still a wanted man, but I wouldn't let you get involved then and I won't let you get involved now."

Sarah stands, a little shaky on her feet, and turns toward the door that funnels out behind the crowd.  With her hand on the door, she looks over her shoulder and says, "It's a little late for that, Zach.  I'm a professional hacker.  I've broken more laws than I can count trying to find you.  And to think," she snorts.  "All I had to do was give up.  I finally decided to give up the ghost and move to New York for a fresh start...and here you are."

She opens the door and the crowd swallows her before I can say anything in response.

Zach

I drop my head into my hands and the door opens from the stage, my three best friends plowing through, their eyes sweeping the room for Sarah.

Last to enter is Will Martin, our guy at Stellar Services, where they manage everything from PR to production to agents.  Basically, he's the guy who runs Dark Fire for us, along with Cy.

"You just missed her," I quip.

"From the looks of it though, you didn't," Cy says, pointing at my face and then his lips.

I wipe the remains of Sarah's lipstick from my mouth with my fingers, but I hesitate.  I don't want to get rid of any evidence I have that she'd been here.  I resist the need to taste the tang of her pleasure on my fingers.

Cy hands me a tissue.  I wipe the lipstick off my fingers but don't throw it away.  I pocket it instead, disregarding the funny look he gives me.

"Did you get her knocked up?" he asks, all business.

"The fuck?  No."  I want to hit him for talking about Sarah that way, but Will stops me.

"Don't get mad at him," he says.  "If he didn't ask it, then I was going to."

"She's not pregnant," I growl.  "It's got nothing to do with that."

"Do I need to be worried about any blowback?"  Will produces a note pad with an attached pen from his suit jacket pocket and gestures with it.

"No."  Am I being too naive?  Sarah knows who I am.  She's obviously upset.  One word to the media and the whole thing could turn into a shitstorm of epic proportions.

But then, she'd been looking for me for a reason.  She even admitted that she loved me then.  I have to hope that she still has some feelings for me that aren't of the
I want to kill him
kind.

Will gives me a look as if to ask, "Are you sure?" and gestures to his notepad once more.

"No," I say, this time more firmly.  "Not from her." 
Maybe from me, though.

The special knock that Dark Fire uses plays at the door and everyone turns to watch as Cy gets up to let Nicki and Andy in.

Nicki quietly explains to Andy who Will Martin is and when she's done I see Will's mouth open as if he's about to ask me another question.

I head him off.  It's time to come clean and, with everyone here, I'll only have to tell the story once.  Should an epic shitstorm come to pass, at least he'll have a heads-up.

"My name isn't Zachary Moore.  It's Zachary Miles Coffield.  I grew up in Lakemont, Pennsylvania.  I came to New York City to disappear."

There is silence in the room.  From beyond the doors, I can hear the vague noises of shuffling chairs and tables.

"That was my girl from
The Night of Dreams
.  But I never got a chance to go back for her like I wrote in the song."

Will doesn't look happy.  I just got done telling him that he didn't have to worry about fallout from Sarah.  I suppose I have his disapproval coming.

"You knew," Andy says, pointing her finger at Griffin.

Six sets of eyes flash from me to Griffin.

"We were drunk.  We got to talking about how this celebrity life doesn't seem real..."  Griffin begins, explaining about the night we got toasted and confessed our biggest secrets to each other in what I only recall as a vague moment I wish had never happened.  For one thing, I'd managed to keep my secret from everyone until then- I blame the booze and the fact that I'd just found out my father had been shot and killed.  For another, I had to hear about how Griffin had been in love with Nicki for-fucking-ever.  And the dude just went on and on.  I was ready to drunk dial her for him.

"He mentioned that his life
never
seemed real and then he's telling me all this shit about how everyone thought he stole a bunch of money from his hometown, so he got ghost.  Shit, I don't know, guys.  I was pretty hammered.  I never really gave it much thought."

I notice he casually left out the part about the two girls having sex on the couch in the same room when this conversation took place.  Griffin
convinced
them to come up to our hotel suite and because I wasn't interested in participating, he then convinced the girls to put on a little show for us.

"Seriously?"  Nicki gets all up in his face and I wonder if he's secretly thrilled to have her attention.  "You don't think maybe it was important enough to tell us that our friend might be in trouble?"

"Look.  Some shit was said
in confidence
that had
NO
bearing on how the band would function.  And it wasn't gonna change who my friends are or who I care about."

Damn straight, it was said in confidence.  The one bright spot from that night was the fact that my secret was as safe with him as his was with me.  Meaning, I was ready to take his secret to the grave.

"So, you don't care that the cops could have hauled him away from us at any time over the last few years?"  I watch as Nicki tries to inflict bodily harm with her fingernail.  Griffin doesn't seem upset by her touching him that way.

Dude is royally fucked if he'll take her abuse just to get her to touch him.

"I care, Nicki.  Don’t fucking accuse me of being that big of an asshole.  The only reason I didn’t say anything was because it wasn't my secret to tell.  And secrets go both ways.  We both had things to get off our chest.  I'll finish arguing about this with you later, Nicki.  But right now, we have some other shit to deal with."

Oh yeah, they'll be finishing that conversation.  And from the look on Griffin's face, he really wants to finish the conversation with his tongue in her mouth.  I don't need to see that, so I interrupt their thoughts.

"I didn’t do it, but the statute of limitations has expired on the theft I was wanted for anyway.  So if you decide to turn me in, you should know that there's no point."  I shrug.  It's complete BS.  I have no idea if the warrant is still valid, but my online research indicated that I'd stayed invisible past the statute of limitations.  "Everything else you know about me is the truth.  So I'm hoping it means something now when I tell you guys that I need your help."

Sarah

"Fucking asshole!" I scream again.  Poor Lucy tries to cover her ears in advance of my screaming, but I keep surprising her.

"Tourette's," she explains to a random group of passing people.

One of the women smiles sadly and nods as if she can relate.

"You know, sweetie..."  She slings her arm around me while I pound angry steps into the pavement on our way back to our apartment.  "You left Lakemont so you could get away from Zach's ghost there, and you found him here.  Maybe you need to leave him
for real
here to get the closure you need."

"Why should
I
leave?  Huh?  It's a huge city.  There's a very good chance I'll never see him again."  I kick at the crumbling cement of the stairs as we make our way to the main door of our apartment building.

"It was just a suggestion, Sare."

I let Lucy unlock the door and stomp inside, slamming it shut behind me.  Looking around, I take a deep breath.  I can understand his hesitance to "come out" as it were.  He would have to admit the truth to his friends, not to mention dealing with the fallout from the night when he'd disappeared- which might include jail time.

No one
wants
to go to jail.  Really, I've been damn lucky I hadn't been arrested myself in the time since Zach had disappeared.  I've broken so many laws trying to hack into his life; I must have pretended to be him hundreds of times, tracking his social security number, personal records, trying to find aliases.  I've checked hospitals, morgues and the DMV.

I glance at the corner of my bedroom, where my desk
would have gone
if I had one.  Where my
computers
would have gone, if I brought them.  But I didn't.

Starting over, giving up on Zach, had meant giving up on that part of my life.

The knowledge was still there...  All those years in school taught me lots of tools to aid in my search for Zach.  I've always had a knack for computers, but a degree in computer science with a focus in network security pushed my search in new directions.  I spent less time on the phone pretending to be his sister and more time online, pretending to be
him.

A job working as a bank teller taught me how to track money through the internet, trying to find something that would point me in his direction.

Nothing ever did.

With his new identity, it occurs to me that nothing ever would have.  Zachary Miles Coffield was dead and gone, permanently replaced with his new, super-famous alter-ego, Zachary Moore of Dark Fire.  Buying that identity would have been nothing at all.

At some point, he would have needed to purchase a new social security number, but enough money would have done that.  And enough money on top of that would have kept the entire thing anonymous.  The hacker in me wonders what kind of money it would take to do that, but in a big city full of all kinds of illegal activity, I'm guessing it wasn't toughing finding someone to supply a new identity.

I skim my finger over the edge of my e-reader, the only computer I allowed myself on my move, other than my iphone.  My past is past, I want to assure myself, but I know that's not completely true.

My new job is a testament to all the hours I put in trying to find Zach.  As a "network security analyst" for Dewar Data, all the work I did to find the love of my life is finally paying off, just...as a career instead of success in my search.  Basically?  I am a hacker for hire, going legit.  Companies would much rather have me on payroll, keeping my peers
out
, than have me on the outside, trying to get in.

I fall down onto my bed, curling my hands under my pillow.  Like my mattress and sheets, the pillow smells new.  My new start has ended abruptly less than forty-eight hours after it began.  Late as it is, I flip off the light beside my bed, kick my shoes off, pull the blanket over my body, and curl into a ball.  I just don't want to think about it anymore.

The world is cruel.

Lucy tries her best to make me feel better.  We spend lunch on Sunday drinking margaritas and eating bottomless chips at the Mexican place a few blocks from our apartment.  After posing the question to Lucy, I learn that, in New York City, everything you're looking for is within a few blocks.

Which is a good thing since one: I don't have a car.  And two: there isn't any place to put a car unless I want to pay major bucks.  Our apartment doesn't even have a place to put a car.  It's not nice enough to warrant that.  Consequently, Lucy shows me how to ride the subway train to work.  We buy a pass and weave our way home, still tipsy on tequila and triple-sec.

By the time the booze is wearing off, Lucy and I are crashing on the couch in our minuscule living room in front of mindless TV until we doze off.  My iPhone in my pocket wakes me the next morning and I start my life.

Granted, it's a few days later than I intended, the whole episode with finding Zach delaying it a little bit, but hey...  I'm a new girl with a new life.  Which I am
not
going to sully with the memory of a guy who broke my heart not once, but twice now.  Nor am I going to risk my new job with my old habit of hacking.

I don't need to anyway.

I've found him.

Bastard.

I get into a rhythm quickly.  My job is a whole lot of boring, but after a life of living on the edge, I'm all right with the change.  Logging into my computer each morning doesn't bring the adrenaline rush of wondering if this is the time I'll hear sirens in my driveway.  I'm actually sick of that rush.  I usually ended up feeling sick to my stomach for an hour when I was hacking, and then... depression as I went yet another day without finding anything.

Of course, I also honed my skills in my off-hours doing contract work.  I raked in extra cash checking surveillance footage for companies who didn't want to wade through weeks of data to find someone who may or may not have been scooping change from the Pepsi machine.  I pocketed more than a few paychecks looking for hidden credit cards or savings accounts opened by cheating spouses.  And I spent time scouring and embedding code to send pings to my machine if anyone ran a search for one of my clients...  The money helped pay for better bandwidth in the college apartment I shared with two tech-stupid cheerleaders, faster processor upgrades, and a lot of coffee.

So corporate "security analysis" is a nice change.  I sip a lot of really good - yet free - office coffee while fielding assignments in my inbox.  I spend lunches meeting up with Lucy, who works a few blocks away.  We generally meet at one of the thousands of little places between her office and mine, spend an hour rehashing the middle school drama that seems to play out in each of our offices, and then return to said drama to finish out the day.

Our evenings become routine, too, in their lack of routine.  Lucy seems fixed on showing me everything New York City has to offer each evening.  As we are well into November, the sky is getting darker earlier and earlier.  The City compensates by lighting up earlier and earlier, the Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations replacing those from Halloween.  It's never actually dark outside and I have to spend some of my yet-to-come paycheck on room-darkening curtains.   Small town living does not lend itself well to the change in environment I've taken on.

By my first Thursday in the City, I've gotten my first good night's rest with the black-out curtains, but Lucy starts acting odd around lunch.  By Friday, she's downright weird.  When I call her on it, she just says it was something she saw at work and she doesn't want to bring me into it.

After putting up with me and my crazy through four years of college, I figure I owe it to her not to make a big deal about it, so I let it go.  I knew her well enough to know that she'll give me a heads-up when she's ready to talk.

On Saturday, we go to celebrate my first full week of employment with dinner at a Greek place one of my co-workers recommended.  We're walking outside when a group of six women nearly mows us down trying to get into the club down the street.  One of them is hopping up and down like a crazy person, her youthful looks nearly obscured by all the makeup she has caked on her face.  She has to be in high school, but the makeup doesn't make her look any older- just more like a streetwalker.

I wonder about the large group of women gathering at the door when I hear a whisper and feel the breath leave me. 
Dark Fire
.  They are playing inside, at a place called Kermit's.  The women are going insane, pushing at the door where a bouncer has stationed himself, checking IDs.

I watched as the girl and her friends make it through, the bouncer tagging their hands with black marker Xs.  Bingo- just kids.  I'm in line when the bouncer asks me for my ID.  Without a word, I hand it over, wait patiently until he puts it back in my hand, and then slide it back into my wallet where I pull out cash for cover.

I'm inside, pressed tight against the back wall, Lucy standing next to me, before I realize where I am.

How did I get here?

I watch the band come out from behind the curtains to deafening cheers.  They play through a set and I'm actually enjoying myself until a pair of ridiculously tiny red panties catch on the edge of Zach's keyboard stand.

Fans throwing panties on the stage is nothing new to him and I'm not going to be the thing in his life that changes that.  I remember what he said:
"I wouldn't let you get involved then and I won't let you get involved now."

Why am I even here?

He didn't want me involved.  Panty-throwing fans are a dime a dozen.  Why would he even
want
me?

I was so sure it would be easy to avoid him in a city this big.  But in the end, fate wanted to fuck with me again, it seems.

Well, fuck you, Fate.
  I snag Lucy's hand as Griffin stuffs the panties in his pocket.  I pull and the crowd parts enough to let us pass through.  We finally make it out the door, the cold air smacking us in the face, and I let out the breath I've been holding.

"I'm sorry," Lucy says, pulling her phone out of her back pocket.  "There's something I need to show you."

As we begin to walk back to our apartment in silence - a distance I would later learn is best traversed in a cab - I watch her fiddle with her phone until she manages to get a YouTube video playing, at which point she pulls us against a brick building to stop, removing us from foot traffic.

My jaw drops when I see the screen.  Someone recorded the show at The Tap, editing it to the time when I called Zach a lying son of a bitch.  My march to the stage
and our kiss
is posted on YouTube for everyone to see.  Luckily, it was pretty dark in The Tap- no one could possibly know it was me.

When the scene ends, Lucy scrolls down to the comments section, bypassing so many that it becomes obvious she's looking for something specific.  Finally, she stops, holding the screen out to me.  It's a comment string, beginning with someone hypothesizing on who the redhead in the video is.  I keep reading until I get to a comment posted by MoreZMan.

"If it was serious, we would have seen her again. Since we haven't, it's pretty much proof that she's nobody special."

"This is what I was upset about on Thursday.  My friend, Alice, emailed me the link because she knows I went to that show.  She asked if I knew who it was.  I said I had no idea, then I checked the YouTube user info for MoreZMan.  It's registered to a gmail account, but the account was set up to forward emails to an address at Zach's PR firm."  Lucy isn't quite the
security analyst
that I am, but she's picked up a few tricks from me.  She would know.