Chapter 5
5
“You know,” my twin’s head is stuck in the fridge looking for something cold to drink, “it’s ironic we have a ghost working at GhostEye.”
I wondered how long it would take Rio to find out about Ava’s scant identity. I glance at my watch. Thirty-four hours. Ava Scott has been living in the house next door for thirty-four hours.
She hasn’t left once. I’m watching her a bit harder than I should. I wonder how long I’ll be able to blame it on suspicion. She sure wasn’t what I expected from the winner to say the least. There weren’t any women looking like her in my college program.
Which has nothing to do with anything. Still. I noticed.
Considering the woman arrived here with little to her name, I started worrying about her this morning after checking the security cameras and noticing she never left to get food. I know she doesn’t have a car but I informed her the guards would arrange one any time. I was in meetings the rest of the day so I instructed the guard delivering her work supplies to ask if she needed anything.
She said she had everything. It must be some sort of Mary Poppins backpack she has.
Rio pulls his tall ass out of my fridge empty-handed. “You don’t have anything but kombucha in there.”
“My body is a temple.”
“Tequila?”
“Of course.”
I don’t point out the second lot of irony between us as I grab my favorite bottle of reposado from a cupboard that’s otherwise bare and pour two out. I need one, too.
I didn’t sleep last night with Ava next door. Something is wrong, and it’s not just the shit Rio is about to bring up. My brother is here because he knows all the same things I do about this woman by now. But he didn’t sit in a room with her. He didn’t feel the uncertain energy rolling off Ava’s body, and if he did, he’d have stormed in here like a bat out of hell not a man thirsty after a long drive back from the city.
It’s unfair sometimes that I leave the schmoozing and in-person meetings to Rio. He hates the city as much as I do but he’s better at hiding it. He’s better at pretending he likes it even—the golf days, the dinners of caviar. The suits fit him so well it appears he enjoys wearing them. But he only breathes when he comes back here. He’s happier, just like I am, in a pair of dusty jeans rather than dress pants. He doesn’t trust anyone but his family and the animals. Something besides our features we have in common.
Rio undoes his top button and rolls up his sleeves, revealing the tattoos he typically covers for meetings. He raises his glass, and I do the same. We drink.
His words are heavy. “Promise me having Ava here isn’t going to fuck us.”
I don’t answer because my brother knows I don’t promise anything. I stopped making promises a long time ago.
Rio knows why, which is why he doesn’t push for one again. “Give me something close, because this woman is suspicious.”
“I’m watching.”
I understand Rio’s hesitation; I’m hesitant, too. It must have taken either a powerful pull or a powerful push to drive Ava here early with only a backpack to her name. It remains to be seen which one it is. Either can spell trouble.
Rio stands and leans against the counter behind him. “The girl has no real online presence, no online photos, no bank account, no state-issued ID. And the guards told me she arrived on foot with only a backpack.” He states the obvious. “This is shady. She’s twenty-five, for God’s sake, and she doesn’t have an Instagram? I can believe she doesn’t have a driver’s license, but no state ID? At her age?”
“She wanted cash, too,” I add, knowing it’s going to piss my brother off.
He scrubs a hand down his face and shakes his head, disapproving.
It gets worse.
“And the signatures on her contracts weren’t a close match.”
Now his jaw totally drops. “The hell, Zo? You let a hacker with no ID into our home, onto our systems… You said this hacking contest was a good thing and some degenerate shows up.”
“She’s not a degenerate.”
“I know I shouldn’t insult her but…”
“You’re insulting both of us. I’d like to think a degenerate wouldn’t have been capable of cracking my life’s work.”
He runs his fingers through thick dark strands and holds his tongue.
He’s right to be edgy. So am I. I learned the hard way not to take people at face value. I’ve been wrong before. So very wrong the collateral damage still lives in my bloodstream. So very wrong I’ll never forgive myself for that lapse in judgement, even if it was more than twenty years ago.
I don’t take this lightly, and even though Ava tried to be friendly, it will be impossible for us to be friends. I don’t trust her. I won’t trust her.
Trust is the ultimate Achilles heel.
Like Rio, I know there’s something off about Ava, that much is clear. I need to lean into that feeling so I don’t mess up. I need to stay on my toes, because the one time I didn’t, I let trouble right through the door. Literally. And this could ruin everything we built and stand for, because Ava brings more skill and talent in her pinky finger than anyone else we’ve ever hired.
He raises his glass and points his finger at me at the same time. “This is on you if shit goes down.”
Rio knows accountability is both my best and worst trait, and that I assume responsibility for this. But the words slip out of him because he’s always been the ominous, threatening type.
“Mmm,” is all I can answer from behind my deep thoughts .
He reads the small, wordless sound like the story of my life and calms down.
He, of all people, knows I don’t take this lightly. Someone with her ability needs to be kept at arm’s length.
Regurgitating our concerns about Ava will get us nowhere. My twin and I are very different, but in some things we are as identical as our DNA.What’s done is done.
For as bad as it could be on the one hand, there’s a beautiful balance here. We also both know this girl next door might be our hope for protecting GhostEye. Sometimes, you just have to take the risk. There are far too many people out there who would love to destroy us, and far too few fortifying our defenses. If she turns out to be clean, she could end up being priceless and worth every stupid decision I made with her in my office.
Her brains and ability got her halfway to me giving in to her unexpected demands. The other half? There was just something in her honey gaze that stirred me to take the chance. I refuse to believe it’s anything other than good intuition. If I’m wrong, my brother will make sure I take that decision to an early grave.
“So…” Rio tries to lighten the mood, but since he’s a serious man it only pivots to another shitstorm. “Santi told me he suggested she work on the Mexico hacks?” He scratches the corner of his eye. “We probably shouldn’t have told him about that at all. He didn’t mention it to Ava?”
“He’s reckless but he knows how to keep things to himself.”
“We can’t put Ava on that…”
“Goes without saying.”
The Mexico hacks have been a plague. The hacks haven’t resulted in any tangible loss but made us compromise our integrity. For some in business, that’s an everyday occurrence, for us? It’s rotting us from the inside out because our dad taught us that if you have to cheat to win, you don’t deserve to win. Karma looms over our shoulders.
It wasn’t right to hide these weaknesses in our system from Thad, our big investor.
But it’s only been less than a year since we’ve been able to take GhostEye out of the red and turn a real profit. Until a year ago when Thaddeus Getty entered the picture, we were running hard on loans to fund our offices and staff, and Santi hit a wall being able to expand his stud and training business because we leaned too heavily on his contributions.
Now, with Thad’s funding we’ve grown the business. It’s now far beyond what any of us could afford to fund if Thad pulled out. The company would collapse. We’d be sending hundreds of employees home without paychecks; many have families. I dragged Rio into GhostEye and bankruptcy would tar his name as a CEO.
And, of course, what I spent my life working for, to catch criminals, it might have all been for nothing.
The hacker or hackers have never made themselves known. All touchpoints were in Mexico. All from completely unrelated IP addresses. The locations plotted on a map seem to be coming together in a big ring right around my parents’ old hometown in Ensenada. It’s been forty years since they immigrated. In fact, we hardly have any family left there at all or this would be even more terrifying as the circle closes in on what feels like a very specific threat.
What will happen when the circle is complete? What do they want? And can we keep it a secret from Thad, who might be eccentric at times but doesn’t want to gamble hundreds of millions.
Someone has hacked the hackers .
So it’s me on the case, and only me, because apart from Santi, who I now regret us bringing in on it, Rio and I decided I should ramp up my duties on cybersecurity. To say I’m slammed, even without that worry, is an understatement. It would be helpful to have another head involved, but I’ve yet to hire someone I think can deal with this and keep it confidential.
I recall how pissed off Ava was at not being given a better role. She was all compliments and sparkling amber eyes until that moment. Then, something feisty ignited in her belly, and her confidence was admirable. Sexy even. Her nose scrunched, and she waved her hands around talking, that wild red mane of hers waving along with them. Her soft, full breasts nearly spilled out of her lowcut tank top as she pitched for something more.
I have never let my gaze wander over an employee’s body, but there was a grit about her that made her illuminate. She wasn’t just determined. She was wishful. Yearning. Needing more even.
That’s what Rio didn’t know about our little phantom. And it’s an image I’d be good to forget, because letting Ava stir these feelings inside me for the first time in years will cloud my judgment. I’m known for my self-control, but there’s a reason sirens were able to sink ships. Men can be weak, and the biggest strength any man can have is to know that.
If she could hack us, she has what it takes to figure out the meaning of the Mexico hacks. She could also hack us again.
I take a sip of the amber liquid, enjoying the burn down my throat. “Circling back to Ava, our new recruit hasn’t left the house. If I’m going to keep an eye on her I need to get her out. ”
How is she taking care of herself in there? Clothes can be re-worn and washed. I know Santi had the bathroom stocked like a hotel because I told him she didn’t come with much, but food-wise, I’m sure there wasn’t more than black coffee in the place. And maybe a few green apples that seem to appear anywhere my younger brother has been.
I swirl my caramel-colored tequila. Fuck. Like I don’t have enough to do and now I have to supervise.
Rio pushes himself up to standing and downs the rest of his drink. “I’ll see you at Town Hall in a few days. I’m off to Chicago tonight.” He places the glass in the sink. “We’ll see how this all goes. I want to think this whole Ava thing will be a win for us. There’s no denying she’s going to shake things up.”
As the warm buzz settles in my veins, his words feel heavier than ever. He’s right. She will shake things up. Ava could end up my greatest power, or my greatest vulnerability.