Chapter 2
Hackers Are Also Helpful
CALLIE
“Fuck you, Jake.” I’m so angry at my brother that I’m seeing black spots at the edge of my vision.
“Callie. Please.” Jake’s standing in the kitchen of his apartment, elbows leaning on the bar-level countertop as I pace around the connected living room. “I don’t know anything about Shane.”
He’s lying. Regardless of the fact that he threw some private detective’s information at me last time we argued, I know he knows more than he’s admitting.
I growl at him and tug on my long, dark braid.
Tears fill my eyes and I stop, turn to Jake, and cross my arms. His eyes shutter as he takes in my pathetic state.
This is not the first time Jake and I have had this fight.
This isn’t even the worst time. But I haven’t gotten anywhere with the insults and the yelling and the guilt trips.
Every time I’ve tried to ask people who should know where Shane is, I get stonewalled.
No one will tell me anything. They say they don’t know and give me a blank look.
No one in the business is actively looking for Shane, so he must not actually be missing.
“You have no loyalty.” My voice hitches, and I absolutely hate that about myself. I cry at the drop of a damn hat.
“First of all,” Jake starts, then stops. He runs his hand through his short blond hair. He’s so unlike me in appearance. Tall and slender and olive-skinned. Light hair and blue eyes. I’m all dark. Dark hair, dark eyes, but not a dark, criminal soul like the rest of my family.
“Jake.” I plead with my voice and my eyes. “Shane is a terrible person. A bad husband. And he’s got Mom’s ring,” I rasp, waiting for my brother to react. Shane knows how important that ring was to me. He took it to hurt me. To control me. Jake knows it too.
“Callie.” Jake flinches, but doesn’t break. “Don’t you think he’ll be back? Why would he take Mom’s ring?” This last question feels like it’s almost directed at himself.
Our father passed away three months ago, and it was a real wake-up call for me.
I realized I wanted to live my life differently, not cringe in the shadow of my controlling, narcissistic husband.
I don’t think Shane wants to be married to me, but the fact that I was the one who asked for a divorce sent him over the edge.
That and the fact that he didn’t get promoted within the family like he thought he would after my father died.
Instead of having to continue to prove himself to my father—which drove him crazy—he now has to prove himself to Jones, my father’s old colleague who was promoted into his place.
That only fed into Shane’s insecurity about his role.
He loves the drugs and money laundering and fight clubs.
At the same time, he’s never felt deeply connected with the group.
I get it. I feel bad for him. But I gotta get out.
We fought about getting divorced a month ago, and then Shane trashed our life and disappeared.
He called me two weeks ago to ask about my father’s inheritance money, and when I freaked out on him, he hung up on me.
I haven’t stood up for myself very much in our six-year marriage, but he stole the ring, everything in our joint bank account, and almost the entire contents of our apartment, so I can’t just back down.
“You’re covering for him.” I poke at Jake’s chest. “I’m your family.”
“Which is why I gave you Hawk’s contact information.” Jake looks pained.
“Oh, the sketchy hacker who your criminal friend recommended? Thanks so much for that.” I plant my fists on my hips and let the sarcasm drip from my words.
“Listen, I don’t know exactly where Shane is.” My brother sighs deeply and closes his eyes for a few seconds, probably realizing his mistake right away.
“Exactly? Where is he approximately?”
Jake groans and hangs his head.
Growing up, I didn’t understand what my father did to earn a living.
But when I was ten years old, my eighteen-year-old cousin went to jail for murdering a member of another crime family.
He was killed in prison shortly after that.
That’s when I realized that this life was not it for me.
Regardless of circumstances, I should’ve run instead of marrying Shane fourteen years later.
I hate it all: drugs and money laundering and fight clubs.
My brother shuts his eyes and sighs. If it weren’t for the fact that I’ve been staying with him since Shane disappeared, I’d leave and slam the door on the way out.
“Callie…” Jake has the nerve to look at me with tear-filled eyes. I hate how authentically upset he appears. I hate that he’s got dark circles under his eyes and looks torn up about whatever is going on.
“Fuck!” I do the next best thing to leaving, which is stomp down the hall and into Jake’s spare bedroom and slam that door.
I freeze inside the room with my arms crossed tightly.
Jake calls my name unconvincingly from outside the door, but I’m betting he really doesn’t want me to open it.
He gives up quickly, his footsteps echoing as he walks away.
Anyway, it’s pointless to continue to have this conversation with him. I know that. I think providing me with Hawk’s information was the most I’ll get out of my chickenshit brother.
Now if only the sketchy hacker guy would respond to my messages.
I take the few steps to my bed and sink down onto the comforter, pink, soft, and with lacy hearts stitched all over.
Shane didn’t leave me much when he disappeared, and sometimes I wonder what he did with it all.
Trash it? Donate it? Put it in a moving van and take it wherever?
But I’ve created my very own space at Jake’s.
As soon as he offered me a room here, I took the meager funds in my secret bank account and bought a new comforter set, a used bookshelf for the books Shane left in the apartment, and new supplies for my folded art creations.
Pink and black is my jam, so I basically have a bookshelf half filled with black-covered dark romance and the rest pink-covered fluffy romcoms. On top of the bookcase, I have a few of my book folding art pieces.
A hedgehog, a rabbit, the word love… each page of an old book folded to create something new.
The divorce has been a long time coming.
After love bombing the shit out of me at the beginning, years of controlling, neglect, emotional abuse, and abandonment followed.
I had been stuck with a father who never protected me from the family lifestyle or his lowlife associates, but I realized I didn’t have to be stuck with a husband like that.
Shane refused the divorce and then avoided me, spending more time than usual on out-of-town assignments before he disappeared.
I just know it’s because he was waiting for my dad’s inheritance to clear.
My father’s estate was to be divided three ways between me, Jake, and our half-sister Meadow, who lives in New York City.
Shane kept demanding half of the inheritance to even consider a divorce, and when I said no, he called me a fucking boring-ass good girl. And not good girl in a hot way.
A month ago, I took a weekend trip to get away from the drama with my best friend, Lola, who I met years ago back when we both worked at the library. I came home to an almost empty apartment. All that was left were my clothes and books.
My book folding art supplies and creations? Gone. Out of spite, because he always hated my hobby.
My mother’s ring? Gone. To control me. I squeeze my eyes shut and think about the ring, willing it to reappear on my finger.
It’s a green emerald set in gold, with swirling vines of roses etched into the band.
It was my grandmother’s ring, and my mother wore it until she gifted it to me at the end of my senior year of high school, right before she died.
Honey Bunny was nowhere to be found. Shane fucked with my rabbit.
But as I cried to Lola on the phone with the door of the apartment wide open, the sweet old lady who lived next door popped out and told me she’d found my poor bunny hopping around the hallway unsupervised, so she took him in and gave him water and lettuce.
I probably could’ve convinced the landlord to let me stay in our old apartment, but I didn’t want to be alone there in case Shane decided to come back. And since Dad’s fancy apartment in Portland sold right away, I ended up at Jake’s.
A second later, I feel the comforter shift as my giant lop-eared rabbit jumps up from the floor and hops over to snuggle up next to my thigh.
“Hey Honey Bunny.” I scratch the top of the rabbit’s soft head and sigh. “I know you’ll be happy never to see that asshole again, huh.”
Finally, two weeks ago, the inheritance check arrived, and I deposited it to the account Shane doesn’t know about.
Now all I want is to find that asshole and my ring, and get him to sign the divorce papers so I can be well and done before starting a new life far from here.
Lola hates the idea of me leaving as she thinks I’m running away from my problems, but while Jake hasn’t explicitly said how he feels about it, I bet he’ll be happy to get rid of all my drama.
I’d picked a Master’s in Library Science program across the country. With my share of Dad’s estate, I can start over and get a degree to become an actual librarian, a big promotion from the library assistant job I do now. I’d wanted to do that for years, but Shane sneered at the idea.
It’s time to move on.
I’m going to live a quiet, completely non-criminal life far from here.
My phone pings with a Gone message. I tap through to the message and breathe out in relief because Hawk agreed to talk. I send a day and time to meet at a coffee shop in Portland.
Lola thinks I’m nuts for reaching out to this guy. Of course, she’s usually too busy making heart eyes at my brother to pay much attention. I did promise her I wouldn’t do anything stupid, so I’m going to have to stretch the truth a little so she doesn’t freak out.
Everyone ignores me anyway, so they’ll probably not even notice.
And maybe starting Friday, when I meet up with Hawk, I can get some answers that lead me to Shane and my mother’s ring.