Chapter 27
Andy sprawled on the couch with his laptop balanced across his thighs, the TV on low more for company than anything else.
Some reality show about flipping houses flickered on the screen, but he wasn’t really watching.
The beach house creaked and sighed around him the way it always seemed to do when the weather shifted.
A storm was moving in, and a strong wind blew off the water, rattling one of the back windows.
He checked the time at the top of his laptop screen for the third time in ten minutes.
Tess was late.
Not hours late. Just... later than usual.
She’d texted around four thirty to say she was leaving work and heading straight to the beach house. Without traffic, it would’ve taken her about forty-five minutes. With it, he could add an extra fifteen or so.
Still, it sat wrong in his gut.
Grabbing his phone, he called her, but it went to voicemail. So, he sent her a text.
Almost home?
After waiting for a few moments for a reply that never came, he tossed the phone on the couch beside his leg. Tess wouldn’t text and drive, even if she were sitting in traffic.
Half-convinced that she’d be home at any minute, he tried to focus on his laptop.
He flicked over to one of his favorite coding forums—usually a rabbit hole he could lose hours in.
A new thread on network tunneling lit up the screen, half the replies full of cocky one-liners and messy code snippets.
Normally, he’d be diving in, arguing in the comments, picking apart every line like candy.
Instead, the words slid right past him, all of it tasting too close to what Diego had asked him to do.
His inbox pinged with a new email—a confirmation from Cyberline about a preorder he’d put in. The sight of their logo twisted something in his stomach.
Diego’s smirk flashed in his head.
You’re smart. Really smart... Which is why I picked you...
His fingers tightened on the edge of the laptop. He’d blocked Diego’s number. Deleted the texts. Told himself it was over.
But the echo of “Everybody’s got a weak spot...” wouldn’t leave him.
“Arrgghh! What have I gotten myself into?”
He let out a heavy, exasperated sigh. The house felt too quiet, and it was getting on his nerves. No jangle of Tess’s keys at the door. No voice calling his name, no grocery bags dropping on the counter. Even the hum of the fridge sounded louder.
His phone buzzed on the cushion beside him, startling the crap out of him.
For a heartbeat, he hoped it was Tess.
Unknown Caller.
It was from the local area code, but wasn’t marked as a business or potential spam by the robocall app on his phone.
His throat tightened.
The last time he’d seen that, it had been Diego. Except he’d blocked that number. The guy could have others. Maybe it belonged to another gang member, or it was a burner phone.
He stared at the screen. The ringtone sounded loud in the quiet house.
Let it go, a voice in his head urged. Let it go to voicemail. If it’s important, they’ll leave a message.
The ringing cut off. He exhaled—too soon. It started right back up.
His thumb hovered over the red “Decline” button. But after two more rings, he swore under his breath and hit “Accept” before he could talk himself out of it.
“Hello?” His voice came out sharper than he meant, higher at the end.
For a second, there was only the hiss of air on the line.
“And—Andy?” Tess’s voice was thin and shaky, like it had been pulled through a tunnel. But it was hers.
Relief slammed into him so hard his knees actually went weak. He sat up fast, fumbling the laptop onto the coffee table.
“Tess? Where are you? Are you okay?”
“Listen to me.” The words tumbled out in a rush, jagged around the edges. “Do what they say. Don’t call the police.”
The room tilted.
“What? Tess, what are you talking about? Who—”
“Andy—” Her voice broke on his name. In the background, he thought he heard something—a deeper voice, a barked word he couldn’t make out, and the scrape of something heavy.
His heart jack-hammered.
“Tess, where are you? Tell me where you are!”
Static swallowed her reply. Or maybe there wasn’t one. The connection crackled, then went dead.
The call had been dropped.
“Shit.” He yanked the phone away from his ear and stared at the screen. The call log showed “Unknown” and a duration of twenty seconds.
He jabbed the redial button.
The call rang once, then cut off with an automated message that the number was unavailable.
He tried again.
Same thing.
His chest tightened too, like someone had wrapped a belt around his ribs and yanked it one notch too far.
Don’t call the police.
His hand trembled so hard he almost dropped the phone. Before he could figure out what to do, it rang once more.
Again, it was an Unknown Caller. A different number but the same area code. His stomach dropped straight through the floor.
He answered on the second ring. “Tess?”
A low, sleezy chuckle slid through the speaker. “Try again, Bing.”
Diego.
His breath snagged—of course it was that bastard.
His entire body went cold and hot all at once, and he lurched to his feet. “What did you do, Diego?” The words came out strangled. “Where’s my sister?”
“Relax,” the asshole said. No lazy drawl now—just a controlled, amused menace. “She’s alive. For the moment.”
His hand clamped so hard around the phone that his knuckles hurt. “If you hurt her—”
“Then what?” Diego cut in. “You gonna come after me? Drop a nuke on my house? You’re sixteen, man. You don’t even have a car.”
He swallowed back the combined roar of rage and dread trying to claw up his throat. Clenching his jaw until his teeth ached, he forced his voice steady. “What do you want?”
“Oh, now we’re talking. See? You’re good at this when you skip the drama.”
He paced to the sliding glass door and back again, the beach a smear of fading light beyond the glass. The living room walls were closing in, triggering a sense of claustrophobia he’d never experienced before.
“You leave her alone,” he demanded with more boldness than he felt. “Whatever you want—you come to me.”
Diego laughed. There was no humor in it. “Oh, I already did that, Bing. A couple of days ago. You remember. You did good work. Clean. Smart. Which is why when the next opportunity came up, I thought, ‘Why not give the kid another shot?’”
“I’m not doing anything else,” Andy snapped. “I told you that.”
“Yeah,” Diego said. “I heard you. Problem is, I don’t really care what you told me. I care what you’re gonna do to save your sister.”
He let the last word hang there.
A bead of sweat slid down Andy’s spine. He dragged his free hand through his hair, fingers catching in the strands.
“You have her,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. It was a rhetorical statement. He’d known before answering the call that the Devil’s Crew had her, and Diego had confirmed it already. But the fact was just starting to sink into Andy’s mind.
“That’s right,” Diego said calmly. “Let’s call her your... motivation.”
“You’re insane.”
“No,” Diego replied. “I’m practical. I know your weak spot. I used it. That’s not crazy, that’s just... effective.”
The word landed wrong, heavy with meaning he didn’t like.
His legs were unsteady, so he dropped back onto the couch before they could give out. The cushions dipped under his weight, the familiar sag somehow making everything worse.
“What do you want me to do?” Andy forced out, even though dread was already curling low in his stomach. He knew the answer. He just didn’t want to hear it.
Diego let out a loud breath, the kind that said he was getting impatient. “Don’t play dumb, Bing. We already went over this. That crypto account? The one on the exchange our people use to park funds before moving them? Yeah. That one needs some attention.”
Andy’s throat tightened. “You want me to mess with someone’s crypto—that’s not nothing.”
“I want you to do exactly what you already proved you can do,” Diego said, voice smooth and unbothered. “Get into the account, change where the funds go, and push a withdrawal. Simple. In and out. Done before anyone realizes what happened.”
“That’s not clean!” He jumped to his feet and paced the living room, running his free hand through his hair. “That’s—that’s theft! That’s federal crime stuff!” Again, he was preaching to the choir.
“Relax. You’re acting like I want you to rob a bank in person,” Diego said. “Crypto moves all night, every night. Nobody notices until it’s already gone. By then, it’s not their problem anymore.”
“And if I don’t do it?” he asked quietly. “What happens to Tess?”
A beat of silence stretched on the line—too long, too deliberate.
“You’re smart enough to understand how this works.”
The asshole was right. Andy understood that refusing wasn’t just saying no—it was choosing what would happen to Tess. And that choice would be his to live with.
He couldn’t lose her. Everyone else was already gone.
Their grandparents and one uncle had died years ago, and Andy barely remembered any of them.
Only one blood relative was left—an aunt in California who had never really been part of their lives.
When the accident took their parents, the world didn’t leave him much behind.
Just Tess. And if he lost her too, he didn’t know who he’d be anymore.
He knew enough to recognize how badly this could go—and that scared him more than knowing nothing at all. The gaps in his knowledge yawned open, impossible to ignore.
His thoughts spiraled through digital trails, security logs, IP tracing, transaction monitoring—systems designed to remember everything.
He could picture the alarms waiting to be tripped, the silent flags that wouldn’t show themselves until it was already too late.
This wasn’t rerouting an IP or blurring a connection.
This was cracking a vault and standing inside it, heart pounding, hoping the walls didn’t start closing before he figured out how to erase every trace of himself.