The Ghost and The Hacker (Dark Fire Book 3) (8 page)

I cry out in ecstasy and he opens his eyes enough to watch my face, just in case.  It has to be obvious I'm euphoric, especially when I grip his ass and push him to move.  I need more.  I just came harder than I've ever come before, but I have his cock now, pumping hard and deep, and I need to come again.

I need it like I need air.  Like I need him.

Oh god, I'm desperate.

I can feel the climbing sensation, the coiling deep inside as his thick cock slides in and out.

"Harder!  More!  Oh god, Zach," I nearly cry.  "Please, please, please!"

His speed increases and his fingers move between our bodies gently flicking my clit.

Once more, I'm gone.  In the haze of orgasm, I feel Zach freeze up only moments later and go deep for a few more strokes.

I scream at a pitch so high I can't even hear myself.  I imagine it would have shattered the truck windows if he'd ever fucked me like this in high school.  Probably better that he hadn't then.  Would have been difficult to explain to our parents.

My brain makes these odd mental circuits while I float a few feet above my body.  Zach has collapsed over me, his body still twitching along with mine, his cock still deep and nearly hard.

I can't move.  I just lay there, my hand in his hair, taking in the bedroom we've ended up in.

Pretty standard for a guest room, I suppose.  At least I hope it's a guest room and not Cy's.  But no- there's a keyboard in the corner.  We're definitely in Zach's room.

In Zach's room.  At Cy's apartment, but in Zach's room.

"You live here?" I pant.

He doesn't answer at first.  Then he says, "It's Cy's.  But I have a room here."

My brain is engaging too slowly because my first thought is
We can see each other all the time now!  We live in the same building!

"You answered the door for that package.  Teddy must know you.  Are you here a lot then?"

We can have sex all the time if you're here a lot.  Oh god, I'm still twitching with aftershocks.  Touch me again...

"Yeah.  I'm here enough that I pay rent," he chuckles.

He realigns us so that my head is resting in the crook of his arm.  I absentmindedly hook my leg over his thighs.  I have my hand on his chest and I'm rubbing back and forth against the light covering of hair there.  He takes a deep breath, his nose in my hair, and lets it out slowly.

He's here.  He's here.  In my building.  I have a fabulous new apartment and my high school sweetheart - who has only gotten better in bed - lives just upstairs...

Then, the brain kicks in.

"I just moved in downstairs, Zach."  Would he be surprised?  Elated?  Ready to fuck like rabbits whenever the mood struck?  This guy who basically told the world via YouTube that I'm
nobody special
.

In response, he just says, "It's a nice place.  Hope you like it."

"Yeah," I say, probably sounding suspicious, but who cares.  "I'm wondering how a
nobody
like me can afford a place like this when it's clearly nice enough for two guys from Dark Fire."

I can feel his muscles tighten.  "You have a good job, right?"

I sit up and walk to the in-suite bathroom.  The light's still on from his shower earlier and I note the wet towel on the floor.  I close the door, use the toilet, and wash my hands.  When I open the door, it's to see him startle.  He had his head against the door waiting for me to be done, leaning his weight against it.  He has to right himself slightly or fall into me.

"Sarah," he starts.

I'm not sure what he's going to say.  I mean, really, what can he say?  I haven't even brought up the furniture, but I have a feeling he had a hand in that, too.

"Well, not that I had the same luxury for all those years, but you know where I am now.  I'd move, but Lucy would kill me.  I'm sorry I ended up in your fucked up life again, Zach."

He lets me put all my clothes on without saying a word, including my shirt, which I can't find initially, only to remember that it ended up on the floor by the front door.

"Sarah..."  He doesn't finish the thought.

"I don't even know what to say, Zach.  You wanted me to stay in your past.  Fine.  I was already there.  For such a huge city, it's amazing how small it is.  And even smaller when you can't keep the fuck out of my life."

"You lived in a ghetto, Sarah," he moans.  Then he seems to realize what he's admitted.

"You went looking for me," I gasp.

"Not specifically," he says, letting his head drop to the wall with a thunk.

"You got my address.  You knew my apartment was a dump so you set this-" I gesture to the apartment, "-up.  Jesus, Zach, I can't even...  And here I thought I was nobody special to you."

I turn to leave, but his hand on my arm stops me.  His hold is light, but the look in his eyes is deep and gripping.

"You've never been
nobody special.
"

"YouTube, Zach."

"Oh, fuck.  That was you?  Of course it was."  His head drops back and he presses his eyelids together tight.  "I was trying to convince everyone.  Even me."

"You had me convinced.  At least, until this," I gesture down the hall and he swallows.  I watch his Adam's apple move and it makes me horny all over again.  I put the brakes on that, right quick.  "Figure your shit out, Coffield.  Until then, leave me the hell out of it."

"It's Moore now, and please, don't move out, Sarah.  I swear I'll be out by next week.  But don't leave.  I don't want you back in that shithole you were in before."

"You haven't been a part of my life in a long time, Zach.  You're just a ghost.  What do you care?"

"I lived in places like that, Sarah.  When I first got here, that's all I could get.  It took me years to get out.  If you won't do it for me, do it for you and Lucy.  I know the shit that happens in those buildings.  You and your friend...you're safe here."  His fingers squeeze my arm ever so slightly.  "Please," he begs.

"I won't go back there.  Lucy would kill me if I made her move out of here now.  She thinks we got a haunted apartment for what we pay.  She's practically ready to marry the damn ghost.  Or maybe Teddy."

And that
is
true, but I don't want to go back to that nightmare of an apartment, either.  Zach is right; we're a million times safer here, even if I can't deal with saying "Zach is right" out loud right now.

"Teddy.  That's how you got up here," he says, figuring out how I found him.

"Yeah, but he was a pawn.  He never knew he was being played by a master."

Zach smiles down at me like I'm the master.  "Lucy," I correct, shaking my head.  "Lucy's plan.  Lucy is the master strategist."

"I seem to recall some amazing ideas from you, too, Sarah."

"And obviously, some horrible ones," I say, remembering why I'm standing by the front door.

Hurt, Zach takes a step back, letting go of my arm.

"Sarah," he chokes.

"Figure out your shit, whoever-the-hell-you-are.  I'm sick of living with a ghost in my head.  And I refuse to fuck one."

Sarah

I take the stairs down to my apartment, then past where Lucy is hanging out on the couch, clearly waiting for me.  I go directly into the bathroom and flip on the shower.  I can hear Lucy's footfalls in the hallway and I strip quickly, hopping into the shower as she pushes open the door.

"Cy lives on the tenth floor, then?" she says, sounding very nonchalant.

"And so does Mr. Europe," I bite out.

"Wait, what?"  She's not nonchalant now.

"Mr. Europe didn't die.  I might kill him, but he wasn't murdered in our apartment.  Zach set this whole dream apartment thing up.  I didn't ask, but I'll bet the furniture really is new.  Mr. 'I want you to stay in the past' is clearly having a hard time keeping his own damn rules."

"Wait. 
Your
Zach?  Zach Coffield is upstairs?  That explains a lot."

"Explains what?" I ask, finished soaping over the evidence of sex with Zach.

"You were gone a while."

"What are you implying?" I hiss.  I flip off the water and Lucy pushes a towel to me.  A towel that Zach had delivered to the apartment to further the illusion that some guy had bailed for Germany or France or something.  A wonderfully soft towel, much nicer than I probably would have gotten for myself.  But that's beside the point.

"Just saying.  You come back after over an hour and I find out you spent the time with Zach.  Then the first thing you do is take a shower...  It just seems like it would only take ten, maybe twenty minutes to call him a list of mean names, knee him in the jewels, and come back.  And you wouldn't need a shower after that."

I let the tears I've been holding in fall down my face.

When I slide the shower curtain aside, I see Lucy with her sad face on.  I'm crying into her shoulder, the towel wrapped around me, the damp ends of my hair and my tears soaking her sweater.

"And you have, like, three hickeys," she points out over my muffled crying.

"Shit, what?"  I pull away to look in the mirror.  I use my hand to wipe away the fog and, sure enough, there are two tiny hickeys on the tendon of my neck and a third huge one on my collarbone.

"Godammit.  This is not
the past
," I say, pointing at my hickeys while looking at Lucy over my shoulder in the mirror.

"Yeah, no.  Pretty sure he just said all that to keep you safe.  But obviously the guy doesn't want you
there
, in the
past.
  He wants you
here
."  She makes a random all-encompassing gesture that I take to mean
this apartment,
and
here in his life
.

When I whine and give her pleading look she adds, "And he clearly wants you
here
."  She grabs her crotch and laughs when I cry out to the ceiling.

"I don't see what the problem is, Sarah.  The love of your life lives four floors above you.  In the same building."

"Four floors and eight years ago," I add.

"That's bullshit.  You're just scared."

"You know what?" I cry, "Yeah.  I'm fucking terrified.  He broke my heart once in a big bad way, Lucy.  You weren't there.  The man I love was on the run, gone somewhere I couldn't follow, on his own and alone and not even an adult yet.  I was depressed for months.  And the only thing that snapped me out of it was finally
doing
something about it.  I went looking for him.  And when I finally find him, the douche-bag breaks my heart again, telling me I have to stay in the past."

I sit down on my bed and Lucy sits down beside me, putting her hand on my back before saying, "You know what I got out of all of that?"

I shiver and try not to cry again.  "What?" I ask.

"The first thing you said wasn't 'The boy I loved'.  The first thing you said was 'The man I love' and that tells me more than anything else.  He can't break your heart if you don't love him."

"I don't want him to break my heart again, Lucy," I whimper.

She lets me lean into her before kissing my head.  "Then let's put his past where it belongs and get you guys on the road to the future," she says.

"What are you talking about?"

"You're probably one of the only people I know who can find out whether Zach still has a warrant out for his arrest without anyone know you're looking."

I lift my head and stare.

She's right, but I can do one better.  If there
is
still a warrant out for his arrest, I can make it disappear.  I just need a computer.

"I need to get dressed.  Then we need to go shopping.  I'm going to need a computer."

I don't share my new plan with her.  They call it plausible deniability for a reason.  She knows I'll be hacking, but she doesn't need to know
what
I'm planning to hack.

It's late when we return after dinner and shopping.  It took longer than Lucy thought it would because buying a premade computer is a waste of time.  I searched through parts until I had everything I needed, bringing over mountains of clam cases and boxes and a new tower to where she waited with the cart.

I sit on the floor in my room, a clean bed sheet below me to keep dust to a minimum.  I'm putting the computer together as fast as I can, trying not to make any mistakes as I plug wires into the motherboard and load the CPU and fans into the tower.  I didn't even bother with a graphics card.  I'll use onboard because there's no point.  I'm not using this computer to surf the internet or watch movies or play videogames.  I just need speed and memory.

Since it's nearly Saturday morning when I'm finished loading software and getting everything working together, I wait until nine and then call to have high speed internet hooked up.  The apartment is wired for internet, but it isn't on.  Lucy and I have been mooching off a neighbors' unprotected wifi.

It's not even hacking.  You just turn your tablet on and it tells you if there's usable wifi in range.  Lucy did it for years before I met her in college, without realizing her laptop didn't come with free wifi.  She spent a considerable amount of time at coffee shops where they offered it to all their customers, so it never occurred to her that her campus apartment wouldn't have it, too.

I'm promised my high-speed internet by Monday afternoon, which feels like way too long, but I make due by searching for the Pennsylvania Statute of Limitations on thefts of less than five thousand dollars using my tablet.  The news is heartening, but not really.  Zach was seventeen when he left Lakemont.  Old enough to be tried as an adult.  And despite eight plus years going by, the Stature of Limitations only protects him if there
wasn't
a warrant out for his arrest.  But he'd told me there was.

My father lied to me.

Which is something else I need to deal with.

The phone rings once before Mom answers.

"Hello?"  She doesn't know it's me.  She's forever refused to get caller ID.  She still doesn't understand the No Call List, which I put her home number and cell number on, and keep updating.  Without that little gem, I have no doubt she'd have had Caller ID installed years ago.

"Hi, Mom," I sigh.

"Sweetheart.  How's New York City?"

How to answer that...

"It's like a dream." 
A nightmare, sometimes, too.
  "Lucy and I got lucky and found an apartment in a really nice part of town that's right in our price range, so we've moved."

"So soon?  I thought you needed rental history for that sort of thing," she says.  She's only repeating what I told her when I explained why I wouldn't have space to put her up for awhile because my apartment would be too tiny.  I'm really glad I did because it would have been a disaster once she saw the ghetto I was living in.

"A friend made a reference for us and our salaries were enough to get us the apartment."

"Lovely, sweetie.  Is there room for me if I want to visit, now?"

I smoosh up my face before answering; I know how hard it is for her to see me.  I'm a little female version of my dad, and after his death, there were times when she would look at me and I'd see sadness in her eyes.  My Mom, a product of a June Cleaver upbringing, loved my Dad so deeply that a part of her died right along with him.  And despite the fact that his schedule was insane and he really didn't care one way or the other, dinner was still on the table by five thirty, she still wore skirts and low pumps at all times, and she always made sure to touch up her makeup before he came home.

Her rebellion was in how she raised her child.  I learned self-defense, took Computer Science courses in high school and chose it as a major in college.  I wore jeans pretty much every day, and I spent about as much time with my dad as I did with my mom.  I had no interest in the June Cleaver life and they both respected that.

"Probably not for awhile," I say, skirting the truth.  "I'm pretty busy.  I wouldn't have a lot of time to spend with you if you came out."

I hear her let out a relieved breath.  It sends a pang through my chest.  It doesn't bother me that she's relieved not to see me.  What bothers me is that I remind her so much of my father that it hurts her to see me.

"Well, that's fair.  It's not a bad idea to make sure your bosses have a good impression of your work ethic.  You've always been responsible and made good financial choices."  I knew she's referring to that time between college and New York when I didn't have a real job.  Some might have called it Failure To Launch, but it was much simpler...  It's a hell of a lot easier to work at McDurmont's Bar, living in the same cheap off-campus apartment I'd lived in since freshman year, using all my extra cash to search for my long-lost boyfriend, than to hold down a normal nine-to-five.

At the time, I lied and told my mom I was saving up as much money as I could for the future.  In truth, I was funneling it all back into my search.

"So anyway, mom.  Something came up and I wanted to ask you about it."

"Well, alright."

"I was wondering if there was ever a warrant out for Zach's arrest."

Silence on the other end of the line, then a quiet, "Whatever made you wonder about that, Sarah?"

"I saw a guy who looked just like Zach.  I started wondering what would happen if Zach came back," I lie.

"Well, it's New York City, sweetie.  And they say everyone has a twin.  If you were going to meet Zach's twin, it might just be there, I suppose."