The Hero and the Hacktivist

by Pippa Grant

  Sadie McSanders: Oh, honey, we women have to stick together. Have you heard of Dirk Lemonson? He offers this amazing, life-changing self-help course on how to leave your husband and find a man worthy of you.

  Donna Farwell: OMG, I’ve heard so many amazing things about it, but I can’t afford it. :-( My first La-Di-Dazzle paycheck hasn’t come in yet, and my husband doesn’t know I’ve already spent twice that much on leg warmers, lol. But I love them! Did you get my design idea?

  Sadie McSanders: Of course, and it’s fabulous. Stick with it, honey, and in six months, you’ll be making enough to outright buy a house in Malibu like Samantha Bobbersnatch did! Did you read last month’s DazzleGram?

  I gag and go on to the next message, because I haven’t yet been able to crack the passwords on the “Dirk Lemonson” life coach courses.

  Heidi Johnson: OMG, Sadie, I took Dirk Lemonson’s course, like you told me, and I left my husband and next month Dirk’s taking me on a cruise to Hawaii so we can get to know each other better. Soul. Mates. Thank you SO MUCH for telling me about him. I never thought I’d fall in love in an internet course, but he just GETS me. BTW, this is all on the down-low. We’re not talking about our relationship publicly, but I know you’d understand, and I know you won’t tell anyone.

  My blood pressure is trending toward volcanic steam levels.

  Especially when I scan a few more messages and find at least four more with the same message, different cruise line.

  Dirk Lemonson is in love with them.

  Dirk Lemonson wants to take them to Hawaii/the Bahamas/Europe.

  Dirk Lemonson just needs a little money from them for the deposit, but he’ll cover everything else.

  They’re not usually into dick pics, but sending naked pictures back and forth with Dirk was soo transcendent.

  I’m seeing red, so I shut down the private messages and start a new thread in the group, using Sadie’s profile, of course. I upload a selfie of the real Dirk Lemonson, doctored just a bit, so he’s wearing his own leg warmers, of course.

  With a full confession about him being a man, stealing people’s designs, not having an office or a real plaque with everyone’s names, and not actually donating any profits to African orphanages.

  On top of scamming all of the women in his life coaching sessions out of money for vacations he’s not taking any of them on.

  I back out of all my secret channels, making sure I leave no trace.

  Usually, I’d be quite proud of myself right now. One more internet asshole exposed.

  But I’m not done yet. Something this big deserves a grand finale.

  Once, about a year after my mom died, when I was working as a maid at a hotel and soaking up everything I could about computer programming, worrying about my brother and how I was going to take care of both of us, I met a guy in a chat room who said all the right things.

  Convinced me he understood me.

  That we were soul mates.

  A friend at work told me to be careful, because you never really knew who was behind the computer.

  To prove her wrong, I hacked into his life. And I found out he had a wife and kids and two other mistresses on the side.

  I’d told him about my brother. About my mom. About my hopes and dreams and fears. About everything about me that was normal.

  And he’d been a fucking liar.

  I ditched his ass after sending a confession through his email to his wife and two other mistresses, and I don’t regret it for a second.

  Just like I don’t regret reallocating Sadie McSanders/Dirk Lemonson’s cash.

  And just like I’m not going to regret that one other thing I need to do tonight.

  I’ve been sitting on this one for a while. Waiting until the time was right.

  I open a file that might as well be the trigger on a bomb, and I set the countdown. The time’s right, bitches.

  By this time next week, Dirk Lemonson won’t be the only asshole going down.

  8

  Rhett

  My SEAL team is on my mind Saturday night when I follow Brooks into a friggin’ juice bar in lower Manhattan. It’s been two months since I was reassigned to the recruiting station, and I’m getting twitchy.

  The reality of my future is setting in hard, and I don’t like it.

  I want to be out there. Fighting the good fight. Making a difference in the world.

  It’s what I’m trained to do.

  And it’s what’s always kept me from looking for trouble when I’m not training or deployed.

  I’m not getting my fix, and I’m getting jittery.

  Eloise?

  She’s a safe bet for working out some of that energy without actually crossing lines that’ll get me booted out of the Navy. Because my other options for excitement include a Batman mask and trolling around in some not-so-safe neighborhoods for kicks, and I might be a fucking god, but when I’m on mission, I have surveillance and intelligence and equipment and a plan, whereas if I went out and played Batman, all I’d have was my adrenaline and a driving desire to hit something.

  Even I know that’s not a good plan.

  But it’s sounding more and more appealing.

  “You ready?” Knox asks when we join him at the long wooden tables in the fancy rooftop joint. There’s too much shiny in here. Like the decorations are compensating for the fact that the main course here is fiberless fruit water.

  It’s like saying I’ll take the protein out of the cow and leave you with just the shit, call it extract of bovine, and charge you triple for it.

  But Parker’s band plays here once a week or so, and since I’m stationed back home for a while, I might as well take advantage of seeing family more often.

  “I brought earplugs,” I tell Knox. “I’m ready for anything. You knock Parker up yet?”

  “Yeah, Rhett wants an excuse to knit baby booties,” Brooks chimes in, which makes Chase Jett snort.

  Jett’s selling T-shirts with the band’s picture on it. He and Knox are both wearing one. They brought a cardboard cut-out of Dax Gallagher, Willow’s rock star boyfriend, and the cut-out is wearing one too.

  All three of them—even the cut-out—stare at me expectantly.

  I punch Brooks. “Buy us T-shirts.”

  “Buy your own.” He drops his expensive coat, showing off his band T-shirt over his fancy baseball muscles, which are second-class behind my SEAL muscles.

  I fork over thirty bucks—thirty bucks?—for a T-shirt with my sister’s mug on it, pretend I’m not buying it just so I can see the look on Eloise’s face when she ignores the fact that I’m wearing a T-shirt with her mug on it, and I pull it over my gray thermal.

  And then we wait.

  Gavin and Jack show up, both of them in band T-shirts too.

  We shoot the shit, insulting each other and being really fucking glad to all be together, until Chase and Knox start staring at the stage, both frowning.

  “Shouldn’t they be on?” Knox says.

  Chase nods, which makes the light catch the side of his head, and swear on my favorite smelly running shoes, the dude has glitter sparkling in his ear. “Ten minutes ago.”

  A-ha! A problem.

  I stand up.

  Chill and together, of course. “Gonna go take a piss,” I tell the table.

  But really, I’m doing recon.

  Can’t do it in real life right now. Might as well investigate the weirdness that’s my sister’s band going on late.

  I circle the perimeter of the bar first, checking out anyone playing on their phones. One dude keeps zooming his camera in on the drum kit set up on stage. Smells like a cop. I’m gonna keep my eye on him.

  Mostly because cops and juice bars don’t mix. What cop can afford these prices for apple juice?

  I circle around to the bathrooms. Figure Parker and the band should be nearby, because there’s nowhere else for them to be hiding up here.

  Sure enough, they’re in a small room between the kitchen and the john. />
  And there are only four people in the room.

  Parker, Sia, Willow, and Dax Gallagher.

  Know who’s missing?

  That’s right.

  Chaos. Chaos is missing.

  “We can go on without her,” Sia’s saying. “Remember the time she went to Tibet for three weeks without telling anyone?”

  Gallagher and Willow share a look, but Parker and Sia don’t seem to notice. They have their blond heads together. “Right. And then the time she said she was cleaning the duck shit off her landlord’s patio as payment for getting a new fridge.”

  “She owns the whole building, you know. Wherever it is she lives. I think.”

  “Yeah, but she never tells us the whole truth about anything, and it’s always funny, so do we really care?”

  “I care that she’s missing,” Willow says.

  “Like she went missing to Tibet for those couple weeks after you and Dax hooked up?” Sia asks.

  “She wasn’t missing. She told us she was getting out of the city for a while.”

  “Missing, in hiding, same thing. She’s acting like she’s up to something again, and she’s going to get herself in trouble. One of these times, she’s not going to come back.”

  I step the rest of the way into the room. Parker notices me, and she groans.

  I get that a lot. Means I’m doing something right.

  “Go away, Rhett.”

  “You have a problem.”

  “We don’t have a problem we need your help solving. Go. Away.”

  She used to say that when we were kids and I’d toss her Barbies in the toilet so I could go on search and rescue missions too. Mostly because she always thought Brooks was the one who threw her Barbies in the toilet, because I tricked him into doing it once before he could talk clearly, and then every time after that was his fault and he couldn’t defend himself.

  He likes to rub his salary in my face now, the baby brother out-earning all of us combined.

  I probably deserve it.

  I like to rub in his face that I’ve saved the world a few hundred times, and all he’s ever done is failed to reach the World Series.

  We’re tight.

  “I said, go away,” Parker repeats.

  I keep staring at her, because I know if I stare long enough, she’ll give me Eloise’s address just to make me leave.

  It takes about seven seconds, but she finally huffs. “I don’t know where she lives, okay?”

  I turn the look on Sia, who snorts. “Dude. You’ve met my brothers. Until you can simultaneously get both of them in headlocks, you don’t scare me.”

  “Challenge accepted.”

  I shift the shit-your-pants glare to Willow, who whimpers and ducks behind Gallagher, who chokes on a snort. “Who are you supposed to be, Captain America?”

  “I do know where you live,” I tell him. “And your night security falls asleep around 2:30 every night, and you have a hole in your camera coverage on the southeast corner of the building.”

  I have no fucking clue if any of that’s true, but his smirk drops, and he reaches for his phone.

  “Her address?” I say to Willow.

  She glances at Sia and Parker, then scribbles down three Upper East Side addresses on the back of a napkin. “It’s one of these. I think she rotates because she’s kinda paranoid. I would be too if I were her.”

  I nod and turn to go, but a prickle of awareness makes the hairs on my arms go into a rave, and Eloise pummels past me into the room. She’s in black cargo pants, combat boots, a ripped T-shirt that shows off hints of ink and smooth skin on her stomach, and her eyebrow ring has a diamond in it tonight. That spiky hair fascinates me. I want to know if it’s sharp or soft, and what it looks like right out of the shower.

  “This asshole leprechaun tried to hump my leg on the subway,” she grumbles. “I had to stop and get tequila to wash it off, and rum to wash it down.”

  “You didn’t drive?” Sia asks.

  “Hummer’s in the shop. Getting it painted. Feeling neon pink today.”

  Sia sucks in a breath. Willow’s jaw drops. Gallagher gives me a what the hell? look, like I can explain this.

  “Oh my god, you’re dying,” Parker gasps.

  “Cool your titties. It’s just a color.”

  “But you don’t have anything pink.”

  “And now I will. We playing tonight or what? What’s the Ass of Glory doing here? He play drums or something? You guys replacing me?”

  Parker’s face screws up like she tasted a lemon. “You did not just call my little brother the Ass of Glory.”

  “I might be sick on your behalf,” Sia says, putting a comforting arm on Parker’s shoulder.

  “Oh, stop,” Willow chides. “She’s just trying to get a rise out of you two. Let’s get out there. We almost have time to squeeze in most of the set.”

  The women bustle out the door toward the stage, leaving me alone with Gallagher.

  I’m two seconds from asking for his autograph—Half Cocked Heroes fucking rock, dude. We listen to half their third album every time we’re getting pumped to head out to neutralize a target—when I remember I like my man card and therefore don’t gush over stars.

  Instead, I lift my chin at him. “Like your last shit.”

  “It didn’t suck,” he agrees.

  We both grunt, and I head for the stairs.

  Because my gut’s telling me Eloise is a liar.

  Sure enough, I find her Hummer in the parking garage, and it’s still yellow.

  It’s also loaded down with boxes.

  Like she’s moving.

  And now I’m a total dick, because I should leave her alone. It’s just sex. I can get off with somebody else.

  Maybe.

  Haven’t exactly been able to work up any interest in any of the women I’ve talked to in the last two weeks, and I can’t find anyone else’s picture in my spank bank, no matter how hard I try.

  My brain’s stuck on the woman who’s apparently moving without telling her friends. I’m starting to suspect they don’t know her at all.

  I peer closer at the moving boxes in her back end.

  Maybe she’s not moving. Maybe she hated the window decorations in a shop she walks by every week and paid them to take down their flowers and butterflies and put up taxidermy chickens and statues of humping trolls instead.

  Or maybe she has humping troll statues in those boxes and she’s going to sneak around Manhattan setting them up on street corners and launch a secret geocache website.

  Yeah, that’s probably closer.

  Since the attendant’s starting to notice me, I head back upstairs.

  What?

  My sister’s in the band. I gotta watch.

  But I have a feeling in my gut that I don’t like. And it’s not that I drank too much of that wheatgrass juice shit.

  It’s a feeling that one of my sister’s friends is hiding something.

  9

  Eloise

  I’m so on fire tonight that the fire’s on fire. I’m banging my drums like a normal woman wants to bang one of those Hollywood Chrises.

  All our juice bar groupies are singing along like they know the words.

  We keep getting free refills of avocado kale juice, which probably means the bar has avocados or kale about to go bad.

  And I rock out with my bad self all through our set.

  Denial is my favorite sport. I could get a gold medal in it. I could get a platinum medal in denial.

  And tonight, I’m denying that there was a message hiding on my server telling me I’m a dead woman.

  It’s not like a computer can kill me. Or that anyone can figure out where I live. I have seventy-two registered addresses with the post office, and none of them are my actual address. Three are empty city lots, and one’s a shipping container somewhere between here and Australia on the HMS Schooper.

  I list Willow’s ex-fiancé’s address when I register for those frequent buyer cards at groce
ry stores and adult toy stores, and the library thinks I live at Yankee Stadium.

  The women’s bathroom on the second level behind the first base line, to be exact.

  I’m untraceable.

  I even hacked into the county clerk’s office and changed my name and gave my brother a different mother on his birth certificate after I found out Knox had done his librarian magic to figure out I inherited a bellbottom fortune. I can disappear like a magician in a smokescreen.

  Eloise Jayne might not even be my real name.

  But if somebody found a way past my firewalls and into my servers to leave me a message that I’m dead, I might have fucked up somewhere.

  And I really didn’t want to go out by being strangled by a leg warmer, so I’ve spent all three hours that I’ve been awake today—what? I like to work all night—revamping my internet backdoor routes and reassigning IP addresses and doing all kinds of nerdy awesome orgasmic things I won’t bore you with.

  Let’s just say I had a virtual garage sale and packed up and moved my house about six times before I realized I was running late for our show this morning.

  Tonight.

  Whatever.

  We finish up our show with some Backstreet Boys—our band only plays boy band songs—and when we’re done, Dax has managed to sneak unnoticed into the back corner, where we join his cardboard cut-out along with Chase, Knox, and Parker’s four brothers.

  Three who turned me down, and one who banged me with his triple-sized cock.

  The only thing that could’ve made tonight better was if Sia’s brothers had shown up.

  They crash our shows when it’s not hockey season, and that really gets the crowd riled. It’s like trained apes on stage. It’s magic.

  Knox pushes back in his seat, and I sit on his lap before Parker can get there. “Hey, sexy beast,” I say.

  Because if there’s any possibility I’m going to die by leg warmer tonight, I don’t want my friends to mourn me.

  “Get off,” Parker says with a playful shove to my shoulder. “Unless you want to be the one wearing the unicorn blanket tonight.”

  Okay, even I can’t get that freaky, so I slide off Knox’s lap and end up squished between him and the Ass of Glory.