Chapter 11
11
Christa
N athan is going to be mad when I don’t return to his office in fifteen minutes. It’s physically impossible for me to do that because I’m already halfway across town with a different address in my GPS navigator and a bear claw resting on a paper napkin on the passenger seat next to me.
My heart beats a thousand miles a minute while I work my way through the thickening Thursday morning traffic of Downtown Portland.
Pulling up outside a brownstone on 27 th Street, I take a moment to pull myself together. The letter is still in my pocket, the words screaming at me. I can’t sit on this. I have to figure out who wrote it.
“Deep breath,” I tell myself as I get out of my car and nervously look around.
Everyone is suspect now. Every passerby and cyclist. Every car that slows down, even though there’s a red light just twenty yards away. Everything is out of order. Wrong. Frightening. I didn’t miss this feeling, not one bit.
Slowly, I go into the building and head for the end of the narrow hallway.
Apartment 6B.
They know I’m coming. I knock. The door opens, and a familiar faces pops into my frame. I burst into tears.
“I wish I could say I’m happy to see you,” I say.
“Hey, hey, chill,” Spike replies as he gently pulls me into the apartment.
He closes the door behind me and puts his bony arm around my shoulders as he escorts me into his living room. I’m speechless as I look around the room. Dozens of computer screens, three different internet routers chirp while six desktop units run in exquisite tandem. Software windows run smoothly on half the screens. Chat windows fill three others. Two LCD screens are dedicated to surveillance cameras.
Spike’s desk is just a cornucopia of half-empty soda cans and snack bags. The smells alone are overwhelming.
“Holy hell,” I gasp as he guides me to the chair next to his and sits me down. “Holy frickin’ hell, Spike. What have you been up to?”
“I could ask you the same thing, showing up here like this.” He chuckles and measures me from head to toe. “You’re looking fabulous, by the way.”
“Oh, please. I’m a mess.”
“A hot mess. Emphasis on HOT,” he quips, then runs his slim fingers through the pale pink mop he probably calls hair.
“And you look as anti-everything as ever,” I mutter with a dry grin.
Spike offers a shrug in return. “Honey, I haven’t changed a bit. If anything, I’ve gotten worse.”
“Worse than getting expelled from high school for hacking into Mr. Flanagan’s computer to steal the math quiz questions?”
“Hell, yeah,” he replies and lifts the left leg of his jeans to show me an ankle monitor. “Technically speaking, I’m not allowed within fifty feet of a working computer,” he adds and points to an iPad currently gathering dust on the armrest of a grimy, dark green sofa. “Technically speaking, I’m only allowed to use that, which has federally encrypted protocols that stop me from accessing certain networks and websites. I’m only supposed to use it for my Social Security and banking stuff. And online shopping. Online shopping is okay.”
“I need a minute,” I say as I try to wrap my head around everything he’s just said.
Spike gives me that minute, affectionately watching me while I look around and try to remember the last time I was here.
“I’m sorry about your mom,” I tell him. “Teagan told me. Heart attack, was it?”
“Yeah, five years ago,” he says. “I got this, though,” he adds, pointing at everything around us. “The bank took everything else, but this was in my uncle’s name, so they couldn’t touch it.”
“I’d heard you’d run into trouble, but an ankle monitor and electronics interdiction? Dude, what did you do?”
“Plenty,” he laughs. “Broke into the federal government’s database more than once. Unfroze some SNAP funds for people I knew. I wreaked havoc for a long time before they picked up on it, but I promise you one thing, Christa. Everything I did was for the good of the people.”
“You’re a regular Robin Hood, eh?”
“Yes, but with a better sense of style,” he replies, then points to the ankle monitoring device again. “I wear this as a badge of honor.”
“You cut a deal, didn’t you?”
He nods once. “Yeah, I gave up the rest of my crew. Burned some bridges along the way. But I also gave the Feds some really good leads. It ended in major drug and IT equipment seizures. Entire operations burned to the ground. My current situation is really the best out of the worst possible outcomes. I could be rotting in jail with the others.”
“If they find you running these systems, that is precisely where you’ll end up,” I warn him.
“I know. But I haven’t given my PO reasons to doubt me. I do my part. I use better aliases. I’ve gotten way better at covering my tracks, too. You’d be impressed with my cloaking algorithms.”
“I’m sure.” I sigh deeply. “And I’m sorry I didn’t come see you sooner. I’m sorry I’m here for something other than catching up and visiting an old friend.”
Spike shrugs it off. He was always so good at shrugging everything off. He’s also one of the sharpest minds I’ve ever had the honor of dealing with, long before I ended up at CalTech. Before California and fintech, Spike and I were building software and selling them to rising startups for kicks.
“It’s fine, Christa. Life happened to both of us. I’m just glad to see you’re walking around like the queen you are.” He winks at me, then claps his hands together. “So! Hawthorne Corporation, huh? The one place I never hacked into in all of Portland.”
“Really? Why not?” I laugh.
“Come on, you know the Hawthorne brothers. Former US Marines. Total badasses. I don’t ever want to get on their bad side. They were a force to be reckoned when we were kids, and now, they’ve got billions at their fingertips. I’m not just older; I’m wiser.”
“You make a fair argument there,” I reply, one hand in my pocket, touching the letter. “Here’s the thing, Spike. I need to know if you have access to any of the underworld chatter here in Portland.”
“Underworld?”
“Mob-type underworld.”
“Mob type,” he repeats. “What did you get yourself into?”
I give him a strained smile. “For your safety, the less you know, the better. But the short and sweet version of it, and it’s for your ears only… do you remember Perry-Sage?”
“Holy shit,” he gasps, his green eyes as wide as saucers. “I knew it!”
“What did you know, kid genius?”
“I had a feeling. Don’t ask me how or why. Call it instinct. But I was sure you had something to do with it. The last time we spoke, you’d just landed in Los Angeles after CalTech. And you were working for a big fintech corporation whose name you couldn’t disclose. Very hush-hush and whatnot,” he says. “You slipped little bits and pieces into the conversation. Subliminal stuff. Details I remembered when the news broke. I couldn’t find you then. You’d changed your number.”
“I had to wipe everything.”
“I noticed. All of your socials, too.”
“Luckily, I never really stood out in high school, and I only had a handful of friends to begin with, so nobody actually noticed.”
“You were tight with me and the Hawthornes, and that’s pretty much it.”
I nod once, my cheeks burning. He’s right about that.
“Right. I was already an undisclosed employee at Perry-Sage, so when the shit hit the fan, all I needed to do was break into their HR systems and wipe everything. I used SpikeyWorm, by the way.”
“No-ho-ho,” he laughs copiously. “My password breaker. You kept a copy.”
“I most certainly did,” I reply with a warm smile. “I deleted everything about myself from their system.”
“What about the people who worked there with you?”
A knot thickens in my throat. “Most of them were killed. The ones who survived didn’t really know or remember me.”
“Wow, you were doing some pretty sensitive work for that company, then?”
“All the encryption for their payment systems. The fewer eyes on that, the safer for the company’s protocols. That was my luck, truth be told. Otherwise, I probably would’ve had to reach out to the Feds and ask for witness protection. But I couldn’t really trust them. I wasn’t sure how deeply the Mancinis were involved.”
“Oh, so they were in cahoots with Perry-Sage, then?”
“Two of their shot-callers were prosecuted,” I reply. “Perry-Sage was laundering billions for that family, among other things. When I decided to cut ties with them, my only option was to remove myself from the story altogether.”
“Before you sicced the Feds on them,” Spike adds.
I offer a slight nod. “My conscience wouldn’t let me do otherwise. Besides, I wanted the people who had the power to kill me in prison.”
“And in prison they are, right? For life.”
“Well…”
Spike’s enthusiasm fades as he begins to put two and two together. “Oh, no. Christa.”
“I came back to Portland to start over, knowing I had erased every trace of myself. I figured nobody would be able to track me here,” I say, then take out the letter and show it to him. “Someone found me.”
“Shit.”
“That’s why I came to you. But don’t worry. Nobody followed me. I made sure of it.”
Spike paces around the room as he reads the note, his brows furrowed with genuine concern. “It’s handwritten. No address. No return address. Where did you get this?”
“At the Hawthorne offices.”
“The person who wrote this hand-delivered it to your offices,” he says. “Why not your home address?”
“That is a very good question, Spike.”
“And why are they doing this now? Why didn’t they just show up at your house? Why are you still alive?”
The possible answers to each of these queries rattle me to my bones. I’m thinking psychopaths, sociopaths, an entire campaign designed to terrify me, to mentally destroy me before they dump me in the river with a pair of cement overshoes.
“It has to be the Mancinis,” I say. “No one else would have a beef with me at this point.”
“Hence why you want me to check with my mob connections.”
“You’ve got family there,” I say, and give him an innocent smile.
Spike shudders and shakes his head. “Reaching out to my cousin Charlie isn’t the greatest idea, but I can do something better; hold on.” He sits at his desk and starts typing into one of his computers.
I recognize the commands, the strings of code along with the key search words, and all I can do is express awe at his exceptional hacking skills. “Dude, you’ve got spyware attached to secret chat groups within the Portland mafia’s upper echelon?”
“I’ve got spyware pretty much everywhere,” he replies. “It’s how I keep the Feds at bay, too, and my PO happy. Everyone pretends I’m not doing this stuff while they get discreet leads here and there to follow. I stay out of jail. Officially, I’m under house arrest. Yadda, yadda.”
“But if they find you—”
“If they officially find me,” he corrects me with the appropriate nuance.
“Oh, okay. Eyes wide shut and all that.”
“Precisely.”
“I want to say congratulations, but I’m conflicted.”
He chuckles dryly. “I completely understand.” He pauses and looks through the search results pouring across three different screens. “Uh-oh. I think you’re right to worry that it might be the Mancinis.”
“How so?” I ask.
“There’s a lot of chatter, mostly in the enforcer circles. Someone came in from Los Angeles. A Mancini, to be specific. They’re asking questions about you. They don’t have your name, but they’ve been given a pretty accurate description of you. Physically and professionally.”
“Enforcer circles,” I mumble.
“Yeah, they’re paying muscle to track you down, apparently.”
“Shit,” I gasp. “Any luck so far?”
“Not really. According to their texts, anyway… the orders came through sometime last week,” Spike says. “When did your letter arrive?”
“I picked it up earlier this morning.”
He takes a few more minutes to read through the chat logs while I retrieve my letter and stare at the words again. The handwriting seems rather rough and blocky. Capital letters. Each pressed heavily into the paper. Written in anger. Likely by a man.
Shivers trickle down my spine.
“I’ve flagged a few keywords to keep track of these conversations going forward. It’s the best I can do for you right now,” Spike says. “So far, it doesn’t look like your name is on the mob wire. But it could only be a matter of time.”
“I suppose I should skedaddle, then.”
“You only just got here,” he sighs. “But it could be a safer option. Where would you go? If the Mancinis made it to Portland, then they must’ve heard something about you from somewhere. Someone told them you’re from around here.”
“I didn’t keep such an accurate track of all the people I interacted with at Perry-Sage, Spike. My guess is someone remembered something I might’ve mentioned in passing or by the water cooler at one point or another.”
Spike nods in agreement. “It’s fine, Christa. You’re human, not a CIA operative. Let’s chill for a second and think things through.”
“I have to get out of here,” I sadly conclude.
I don’t yet know where I’ll go or what I’ll do, but it breaks my heart either way. It means that my work with Hawthorne Corporation has come to a premature conclusion. It means I have to get away from Teagan. From River and Cassius and Nathan. Oh, God, I have to run away, to leave them.
At this hour, I’m almost certain I won’t find the Hawthornes in the building. It’s late at night, and they usually head out before eight pm. We were supposed to meet for drinks tonight, but I made myself unavailable. Technically speaking, I am unavailable, though I would’ve liked nothing more than to hide in their arms and pretend there’s not a past for me to run from.
But I’m busy packing the few things I brought to my office, and in about five minutes, I’ll be busy again, wiping my identity and my presence from the Hawthorne Corporation’s systems.
“It’s Perry-Sage all over again,” I grumble as I fill a duffel bag with my chargers, my portable hard drives, an armful of books and folders I got for my work, and the decorative paperweights River has bought me every other week since I started here.
Behind my eyes, tears threaten as I close the bag and stick a particularly nasty USB drive into the back of the computer unit. I built the program myself to trace every single piece of information about me and to wipe it clean from the entire system and the corporate network.
I keep checking the time.
It’s almost midnight.
The faster I’m out of here, the better.
“Come on, come on,” I whisper, my heart racing anxiously as I wait for the USB drive to load and open my program.
Then, I hear footsteps outside my door.
I hold my breath, assuming it’s security doing their rounds. The lights are off. I forgot to lock the door, but they know not to come in here after hours. I snuck past the reception desk earlier, using my access card to get around. The perks of being upper management, I suppose.
But the door does open and in comes Cassius.
“Shit,” I manage, frozen in my seat.
“Christa?” he asks, sounding understandably confused. “What are you doing here in the dark? At this hour…”
“Hey,” I nervously laugh. “I forgot to turn the light on. My bad.”
I feel it before I can see it on his face. The suspicion. It cuts through me like a dagger, and I deserve it. I hate lying in general, and I hate lying to the Hawthornes the most. Not to mention, I’m really bad at it.
He turns the light on but stands in the doorway, his hazel eyes drilling hot holes into my soul. “Christa, what’s going on?”
His tone is different when he says my name again. “Christa.”
I try to find a decent excuse, but my brain isn’t working. All Cassius has to do is come around and look at my screen. He’ll recognize the program’s name, now bright green at the top of a black window. I told him about it. He knows what it does.
My heart is already bleeding.
“I’m sorry. I just had something I really needed to do tonight,” I manage with a weak smile. He doesn’t buy it.
“Christa, you’re really pale,” he says.
And nauseated. And sweating bullets. Heart palpitations. WebMD might tell me I’m going to die sometime in the next ten minutes. Shame could kill me first.
“I’m okay; I promise.” I try to keep him away, but to no avail. “You can head out. I’ll join you in a minute, Cass.”
“Christa.”
“Dammit,” I hiss as he finally reaches my desk and looks at one of the computer screens.
Cassius stares at it for what feels like the longest second of my life. I’m getting ready for the fallout because there will be fallout. I was about to skip town without so much as a goodbye to anyone. I’ve been telling myself it’s for their safety, but truth be told, I simply cannot face them, not with my truth, not with my past.
“You’re wiping something out of our systems,” Cassius grimly concludes.
I can’t lie to him. Not anymore. Not without destroying absolutely everything there ever was between us. “I am,” I mumble, lowering my gaze.
“What are you wiping? What are you trying to make disappear, Christa?”
I can’t answer that. Not without having to explain everything.
The tension between us thickens to the point where I can barely breathe.
“Look at me,” he commands.
I am unable to disobey that stern, angry voice of his, so I look up. My gaze meets his. And a familiar heat of shame and anguish blows through me, making my cheeks burn red.
“Me.”
“What?” he asks, his brow slightly furrowed.
“I’m wiping myself out of your systems.”
“You’re running away.”
“You wouldn’t understand, Cassius.”
He leans forward, hands firmly pinning mine to the armrests of my chair. His warm breath tickles my face while his cologne short-circuits my senses altogether. His lips part as he glares into my soul.
“I think it’s time for us to talk,” he says.
I’m screwed, and not in a good way.