Chapter 2
2
I exit our gym complex on the ranch, sweeping my eyes across the horizon of California mountains and sunrise. I raise my arms in the air to stretch my lats after a brutal boxing session and breathe in what’s left of the cooler overnight air. It’s going to be a scorcher again today. I twist my spine to encourage my muscles already going stiff from sparring.
My trainer, who walked out of the gym before I did, beeps from his Subaru Outback and waves his arm out the window before pulling off and on to his next whipping session. The man trains me like I’m nineteen, not thirty-eight.
I set my feet in motion. Five days a week I train. Three days a week I run. Two days a week I ride. I have to keep this ass moving, because it spends a lot of time in a desk chair and I have no intention of getting old before my time. My dad can still wrestle a calf and lift bales, not with ease, even so, I aim to be just as strong by his age. I’ve been taught what it means to be a Mendez by that man.
You quit when you’re six feet under.
I hustle up the dirt track up the side of the hills to the eastern edge of our land. It’s already warm at six-thirty in the morning, and the ridges of the Diablo Range are a deep orange hue, reminding me the sun and its relentless heat is on its way. I never cooled down after sparring with my trainer. Sweat drips down the center of my chest and steams my glasses, so I take them off and shove them in my pocket.
My brothers and I have been living in Echo Valley for well over a decade, and yet, I’m still surprised that summer doesn’t stop until after September. Dad complained about the heat when he visited last time, his last visit before moving here and away from our childhood ranch in New Mexico. I said nothing about the heat then because I don’t bother using words on things I can’t change. Still, I do agree with the man. I love Echo Valley now and it’s become my home as much as my small town in New Mexico—maybe even more— but I will never stop missing those cold dry nights of my childhood that used to offer relief to days like the one that is melting me already before the midday sun even arrives.
At the top of the hill, I hitch a left along the pastures on the eastern perimeter of our land. The stallions are already waiting by their individual pasture gates to be brought in by the stable hands. I breeze past pristine fencing, not like the cobbled-together, bolted-on posts and rails back on my childhood ranch. Nothing but the best here for Santi’s prized horses. We all scoffed at the cost of it, but to be fair on him, his thoroughbred stud enterprise, Monarch Hills, is what bought our first parcel of land here and what kept the ranch expanding until GhostEye finally got a big investor.
His hard work funded mine.
I hook a left where the pastures end and a small woodland begins to join up the ring road we put in, allowing for ease of passage around our gated land. The shade of the trees offers two degrees of relief, but instead of relaxing into it, I pump harder, reciting mantras in my mind to get me working through the sweat. I pass one of our security patrol cars where two guards wearing Army fatigues sit on the hood having a chat. One lifts his coffee cup as a good morning. I salute him but don’t slow down.
Through the winding paths of our trees, I push hard. I’ve been running the loop around our land for years, and still, it never ceases to amaze me that it all started with four broke boys from a fledgling ranch in New Mexico. I never let a day pass where I don’t express extreme gratitude, thank God for it all, because I know how good things can be taken away. Monarch Hills and the rest of this ranch? It’s more than a good thing. It’s a dream. A place for all our family to call home. A safe place where nobody can ever hurt the people I love.
As I exit the woods and reach the far edges of the lawns and gardens around the back of my brother, Santiago’s, house, I wind through the paved roads that make up our small gated community. Here, on the ranch, our wider family has everything it needs. We built six houses for all five siblings and my father. We have stables, paddocks, arenas and gallops, a swimming pool and clubhouse, a gym… everything is here, behind these walls, in the arms of safety.
Maybe one day I’ll actually feel safe. More importantly, rest, knowing the ones I love are. No matter how hard I try, I’ve never felt that way. Maybe, no matter how many bad guys we catch at GhostEye, the scars of the past are just too deep. But I keep trying. And I always will.
By the time I reach my own front door, to a house I argued is way too big, sweat droplets drip down my neck. I open the door with my code, leaving steamy fingerprints on the pad. I’ll never get used to morning heat.
I’ll also never get used to living in this enormous house Rio insisted we build.
None of us boys have settled down. But Rio reminded us all these homes aren’t just about us. They’re about future generations, and hopefully, even though we’re getting past those years of children and wives, the Mendez line will keep going somehow.
Not that I’ve tried very hard to start a relationship; GhostEye is my child. It’s my creation and legacy. There might be hope for Santi. Or Gabriel, and at least my sister has one kid and another on the way. Someone has to placate my father and the spirit of my mother.
I make my way into the bathroom and turn the dial, the rushing spray of water a welcome sound. Bracing myself on the counter, I let my head fall, waiting for the shower to warm up. That trainer really is kicking my ass.
Just then, my cell rings in my shorts pocket. I slide my cell out, and the screen is lit up with my younger brother’s name: Santi.
All looked calm when I ran through the stable yard, but he mentioned one of his thoroughbred yearlings has colic. Not that he needs me to solve problems like that .
I answer. “You all right?”
“Yeah, all good here but…”
He lets out a rough breath, and I can tell whatever it is he’s about to say, he doesn’t want to.
“I forgot to tell you something.”
Big surprise.
I reach my hand in to feel the water is heating up.
“Do you remember that college kid who just won the hacking contest?”
It’s practically a rhetorical question because she won it only days ago, and all my brothers knew I’ve been simmering over it ever since sending her the congratulations email. It’s not uncommon for tech companies to hold open and on-going hacking competitions to test the security of their systems. We’ve had an open entry available to white hat hackers for just over six months now.
Not a single murmur, let alone a hack happened in all that time, and there were hundreds of entrants. I thought we were foolproof.
Until Ava Scott.
Hearing of her success was like being able to kiss and kill someone at the same time.
“Mmm,” is all I can respond, because thoughts of Ava and the hack are too complicated for words.
The sound of horseshoes clicking on pavement echoes behind Santi. “She’s coming today.”
I repeat the word like I misheard him. “Today?”
“Yeah, sorry I forgot to tell you yesterday. She called and asked if she could take the job early.”
I puff air out of my nostrils. “Today isn’t early, man, it’s…” Fuck.
Ava’s reward is ten thousand dollars, a contract, and accommodation for three months. But it’s September. I expected Ava here in May or June after graduation. What the hell is this request about? Instant employment? Call one day, expect to arrive the next?
And of course Santi said yes. I’m not sure no is in his vocabulary.
I scrub my hand down my face. “You already know I have one problem with my cybersecurity issues. You think I need two right now?”
“Hey,” his tone is dismissive, “I thought the hacker competition was supposed to be a good thing? Now the winner is a problem?”
I stop myself saying what really comes to mind. Nobody was meant to win. But I’m a man who considers all details, so I did tell my brothers when we launched our first contest like it that a winner presented a win-win scenario. It would expose a weakness in our system and give us a chance to have a talented cybersecurity engineer on board at GhostEye. All of that is true. None of it I wanted, despite us desperately needing better talent.
Even though it would be beneficial to have someone we could trust to help us, trust isn’t my strong suit.
I grit my teeth. “You didn’t think to talk to me about it yesterday? That maybe I’d need time to arrange a role specification for her?” I spit out my newest problems. “I need to decide who’s going to manage her and then change their remit. And there’s the relocation package compensation from the contest. This isn’t something I can sort at the drop of a hat.”
Santi could get it if he’d take one moment to think things through, but he doesn’t care about anything but his breeding and training business these days. He gets a paycheck from GhostEye, but it’s dividends, not for actual work. My younger brother doesn’t get how important this is, or how risky it is having someone like Ava working for us. It could be like opening the floodgates, and we’re already impossibly close to a big fucking problem.
We’ve been hacked seven times in the last eight months. We’ve been managing to hide that problem from public view. Only Rio and I understand how big that is. We could lose our investor if word got out. We could lose everything even if it didn’t. Who knows what a hacker might demand.
Especially in our line of business. Our software can decrypt the world’s most widely used masking software. It’s going to make the dark web an impossible place to hide; criminals are no longer able to do sordid business behind encrypted sites. Law enforcement love us. Criminals want to take us down. The stakes are higher than ever. Both Rio and myself have received death threats multiple times over the years.
But I’ll never tell Santi how bad it is. We scraped the surface of the issue with him so he’s not totally in the dark, but I want him to enjoy his own career, so Rio and I made it seem smaller than it is. There’s nothing to be gained from his worry, so here I am, dealing with Santi’s casual mic drop.
I turn off the shower and put him on speaker, switching over from our call to my schedule for the day which, as usual, is not only rammed but double-booked in some spots. “I don’t even have five minutes to deal with this…”
“Pull your panties up, Zo.”
I ignite almost instantly. “Excuse me?”
A one-syllable, easy laugh hums through my speaker, and I could seriously punch him through the phone.
He pulls his cell away from his mouth and tells a groom to get the farrier in today.
I growl into my end. “Santi…”
He comes back on the line. “Sorry… Listen, I know you th ink it’s just another one of my harebrained moments, but I actually thought this one through. Put Ava on those hacks you mentioned. It will free up time for you.”
I grit my teeth.
“See? I took lemons and made lemonade.”
Clearly, he can’t see how fucked his suggestion is.
I roll my eyes and damn do I wish he could see it. “Mexico is private business.” I can’t blame Santi for not fully understanding since we deliberately minimized what was going on.
“Why can’t you put her on it? The girl is good. Some might even say she’s better than you, since she hacked your software.”
I bet he’s wearing a shit-eating grin and is pleased with himself that he figured out a way to get me below the belt. Payback for years of older brother shit back in the day. I wasn’t even that bad, but in his mind he probably has confused me for Rio for some of it. Until I started wearing glasses, my twin constantly pawned his mischief off on me.
The telltale clunk of a large barn door opening reaches my ear. It’s more than annoying that Santi is out there playing cowboy while I’ll be chained to my desk fixing the problems he sends my way.
I protest again, but the minute I say the words, I know they’re wasted on him. “It’s too confidential.”
“Yeah, and everything else she’ll be working on at GhostEye isn’t? She’s going to need a nondisclosure agreement no matter what she does.”
It’s true.
The faint voice of a man saying good morning is the next to follow, and I know Santi needs to get to the gallops to watch his first horse train before it gets any hotter out there.
But he deserves more busting before he gets out to play. “ While you were making lemonade, did you think about where she will live?”
I’m not sure I’d like Ava working in Silicon Valley because Rio is a great CEO but he’s gone a lot. I want to keep an eye on her. She’s too goddamn clever to leave unattended, and I work from home more than half of the time these days. Fuck, I hope this doesn’t mean I need to go to the offices.
“She can live here,” he suggests, as though he thought about this, too.
“Here, as in on the ranch?”
“Yeah. Why not? Shay and Logan aren’t moving to the Valley anytime soon. We have an empty house. Tell you what? Since it’s my fuck up, I’ll ask the stable hands to move my guest room furniture into the empty so she at least has a bedroom to start.” He laughs lightly. “If she’s at the ranch you can keep an eye on her. I know you don’t trust anyone as smart as you.”
I scoff. “She’s a college kid.”
“Your eyes nearly fell out of your face when you found out she hacked the system, Zo. I know you’re a closed book, but that response was the goddamn title.”
“Mmm.” Instantly, his idea is a decent one. A person like Miss Scott needs to be handled with care. And it solves at least one of the problems for now. “Fine. Get the bedroom furniture moved.”
“Listen,” he pauses, probably looking at his watch, “you better get cracking. She’ll be here in two hours.”
“Two hours?”
He’s got to be fucking kidding me. This is so Santi—chaos personified.
Before I can say anything else, he gives me a quick “Gotta run,” followed by the triple beep of a dropped call .
I throw my phone down on the counter. Unlike Santi, going with the flow isn’t my forte. I can deal with the unknown but need some time to think it through.
I can’t make someone else manage her, not right away at least. A talented hacker needs to be under my supervision or Rio’s. We’re the only ones who work enough at GhostEye and understand the wreckage a woman with her abilities could cause. I need to make time to keep her under review. She might need a car… I need to pay her ten grand bonus and get her on payroll… Do background checks, and not just a rap sheet, my kind of background check.
I should have had months to execute this. Not hours.
I grip the edges of the cool travertine counter to stop myself spiraling and finding problems when I need solutions. It’s done. She’s coming. Santi agreed it, and the Mendez family honors its commitments.
As much as I loathe that this young woman has been able to crack our security, she’s proven just how valuable she could be as an employee at GhostEye. We need world-class white hat hackers here because every large criminal organization is hell-bent on stopping us. We need to protect what we have because it’s protecting more than just our financial wellbeing, we’re protecting innocent lives. We can change the world by making online crime a thing of the past. We can make it hard, if not impossible, for criminals to hide. It’s not just my life’s work.
It’s my life’s purpose.
But I’m not ready to hand access over to some kid. Even if she is talented.
I flip my phone back over and swipe my finger around until I get my schedule up again. Rio can handle this morning’s meetings without me dialing in. I text my assistant to draw up the nondisclosures and other documents I’ll need Miss Scott to sign, then place my phone down again and slip out of my shorts and boxers and turn the shower back on to fifty degrees. I’m going to need a cold one.
I slide in under the spray and brace myself against the wall behind the waterfall, muscles tightening instantly with the freezing cold water wetting my body. At first, the cold is all I can think about, but then, like it always does, it brings clarity.
Putting Miss Scott on a project beneath her would risk her becoming quickly bored, disgruntled, and likely leaving for something shinier. Her quitting would obliterate the whole reason we put that contest out in the first place. It was a recruitment mechanism but deep down, I also held on to a twisted idea we might be able to eventually trust the winner with our biggest challenge yet.
I can’t give her some low-level cybersecurity position. But can I really trust her with the Ensenada hacks?
I can’t.
Nobody can know.
And yet everyone will if we don’t stop them.