The Hero and the Hacktivist

by Pippa Grant

  I flag down a cab and give the cabbie the first address on the list Willow gave me.

  Some might call it stalking.

  I prefer to think of it as private security.

  The apartment building is eight stories high, brown brick, with balconies spaced to suggest people who can afford three beds and two baths in Manhattan live here. The synagogue across the street is quiet at this hour. So’s the dry cleaner. But the ice cream shop and the pizza joint are open. There’s no sign of the Hummer on the street.

  Either she’s not home yet, she has underground parking, or she’s at one of the two other addresses Willow gave me.

  I hop out and circle the block, checking the alleyway between the rows of buildings. A couple making out look up at me, so I put my head down and stumble like I’m drunk.

  Not like they can see me clearly in the dark anyway, unless they’re vampires, which they’re not, because vampires aren’t real.

  Despite what it looked like that time we had a mission in El Salvador.

  I’m circling back to the front of the apartment when I see Eloise getting out of a Lyft.

  What the hell?

  Where’d she leave the Hummer? Is it really hers? Is she dealing something and had to leave the merch somewhere a guy like me couldn’t snoop in it?

  Does she have an identical twin nobody knows about?

  She glances up and down the street, doesn’t make me, but does look twice at a black Lincoln parked three spaces from her door before she hustles inside.

  No bag.

  No coat either, even though it’s forty-something degrees. But she didn’t have a coat when she left the juice bar either, so I suppose that’s not surprising.

  I cross the street for a better angle at her building. No lights flick on street-side of the building, so I’m guessing her place is in back.

  Or she doesn’t use lights.

  Always a possibility.

  I ignore the grumble in my stomach when I walk past the pizza place, still checking out the neighborhood, going over everything I know about Eloise.

  She’s weird. And not in the freaky sort of way, but in the intriguing sort of way.

  She pretends to be weirder than she really is, which is weird in its own way, and that’s more supposition than fact at this point.

  She has a hot pussy and Mr. Winky still wants another go, but that’s secondary, because she’s also maybe in trouble.

  My gut says she is.

  But my gut could also be telling me I shouldn’t have had that pastrami sandwich for lunch—highly unlikely, because I have the stomach of a goat, but it’s preferable to think that my gut’s in a twist because of pastrami instead of because I shouldn’t be fucking around with my sister’s friend.

  Or it could just want there to be trouble.

  Not many chances for an adrenaline rush when you’re working the recruiting office with an aging commander and a green petty officer. Excitement there is one of them forgetting his Tums at home.

  Recruiting isn’t a bad job.

  It’s just not the job for me.

  I’m crossing to do one more sweep of the alley when my phone buzzes.

  Text from Parker, who basically only speaks in autocorrect. With—shit.

  With practically the whole family on group text.

  Parker: Reverent, Elastisaur says to tell you to quit shellacking her.

  Parker: DUCK. Shellack.

  Parker: SHELLACK.

  Parker: S T A L K. Quit shellacking her.

  Rhett: I’m not stalking her. Or shellacking her. Get a new phone.

  Brooks: Somebody’s got a boner for the piercings.

  Gavin: All that SEAL training has gone to his head.

  Jack: Leave him alone. He’s slowly making his way up from fucking sheep.

  Knox: My Nana wrote a book about aliens who fuck sheep.

  Brooks: *GIF of a sheep*

  Gavin: *GIF of a sheep mounting a harbor seal*

  Knox: *GIF of a sheep doing the Macarena*

  Knox: Aw, fuck, I messed that up. Super lame. Sorry. Don’t kick me out of the family text, or I won’t knock Parker up.

  Knox: *GIF of himself shaking it in a Tarzan loincloth*

  Brooks: MY EYES. Fuck, dude. I need my eyes to hit a baseball.

  Gavin: *GIF of brain bleach*

  Parker: *GIF of juicy lips*

  Jack: *GIF of throwing up*

  Parker: Oklahoma, and Azerbaijan…

  She sends a grainy picture of me outside the pizza place across from Eloise’s building, and I curse out loud. The couple that was making out on my first trip through the alley looks up again, and this time I just turn and walk away.

  Parker: Don’t tell me quick snot you, Rapunzel. That’s your sloth.

  Parker: I hibbity-jibbity this ducking phonograph.

  Parker: That’s your S L O U C H.

  Brooks: And your girly jacket, Rapunzel.

  Jack: Just because he’s not big enough to shop in the men’s department doesn’t mean we need to always remind him where he gets his panties and his hair ties.

  Gavin: Are you sure that’s Rapunzel/Rhett? It could be Bigfoot.

  Brooks: G, get with the program. We’re not calling him an ape tonight.

  Gavin: Bigfoot could be a woman.

  As entertaining as texting alone with Parker and her autocorrect is, I’m not so entertained by the new nickname her dipshit phone just gave me in front of our brothers. I silence my phone and head back to the apartment building, and this time, I walk in.

  A doorman looks me up and down with a oh, great, the riff-raff is here sniff. Which is pretty impressive, considering he’s five-foot-two and looks like he could maybe wrestle a toy poodle if the toy poodle was already in a harness. “The strip bar is on the West Side, sir.”

  “Spot security check. Cameras are out on the fourth floor, and there’s a door left open on the south side.”

  “We don’t have cameras.”

  Good to know. “Might want to check into that silent fire alarm going off on the tenth floor too.”

  His eyes flare toward a desk for half a second before he apparently remembers the building is only eight stories tall. “Sir, you need to leave before I call real security.”

  I clap him on the shoulder. “Good job, Pennington. I’ll let headquarters know you passed with flying colors.”

  I leave the building without lifting his keycard—it was tempting, but too easy, plus, without cameras, I don’t need a keycard to get in—and treat myself to pizza across the street.

  It’s a long pizza. A two-hour pizza. With me just hanging out by the window, watching the city night get darker with more mist rolling in, watching that black Lincoln, slouching like I’m playing on my phone, which is turned off because my siblings could go on for hours with the group texts, especially with all the autocorrects Parker’s phone makes.

  When I eventually turn it back on, I have sixty-three missed texts from my siblings, and one from an unknown number.

  Thanks for the hand job.

  I’m smiling when I leave the pizza joint and head for home.

  Still not convinced she’s not in trouble somehow, but the fact is, she has to ask for my help if she wants it.

  Until then, she’s just a girl I’d really like to sleep with again.

  If by sleeping I mean finally getting off with her, that is.

  11

  Eloise

  Chaos and I are good friends. Mostly because I usually go looking for it.

  But chaos on my servers is not a good thing, and the fact that my dummy server has been hacked six ways to Tahiti is giving me pause.

  It’s no big loss for me—I only keep bank account information there for the Saudi royal family so that if anyone tries to steal from me, they’re actually stealing from dudes who have enough money and security to invade an alien planet—but it is disconcerting to know someone’s looking for me.

  Especially when paired with the second message telling m
e they know where I live and they’re coming to get me if I don’t give the money back.

  Since it might be time to move again—Nebraska is nice in the winter, I hear, and they can’t possibly have internet that far west of New York—and because I don’t know the Ass of Glory enough to ask him for tips on self-defense and security, I hit the sack early enough Sunday night to be up in time for the end of my brother’s shift at Ground Peace on Monday.

  It’s a hippie coffee shop a few blocks from my apartment, with walls covered in sayings about love and happiness, daisies on every mismatched table, and the best crew in the entire universe.

  “Aw, damn, it’s Wheezy.” My brother already has his Ground Peace hat off, and he’s making his way to his favorite table for his post-shift snack.

  “Damn, you work here? I meant to go to the other hippie coffee shop.”

  His broad face splits in a grin. I sling an arm around his shoulders—even I have a few inches on him—and he hits me in the ribs. “Don’t spill my coffee, brat.”

  “You shouldn’t be drinking coffee. The chicks hate it.”

  “I hate your hair.”

  “I love your face.”

  We sit at Davey’s table under a painting of a sunflower—I’m the only one still allowed to call him Davey, because at work he likes to just be Dave—and I steal a chunk off his cinnamon roll.

  “You’re such a brat,” he grumbles.

  “Where’s the girl you were telling me about? Want me to kiss you so she knows you’re super hot?”

  He goes an adorable pink. “She’ll think you gave me cooties.”

  I glance at Annabelle behind the counter, because I know exactly who Davey has a crush on, and I know it’s reciprocal. They live in the same apartment building, which is an awesome independent living facility for adults with disabilities.

  Not that Davey needs much help, but he does sometimes forget to eat things that aren’t sugar, and every once in a while he’ll sleep through his alarm and miss a shift at work. He doesn’t have to work, but he doesn’t know that, and besides, he likes his job.

  Mostly because it’s close to Annabelle.

  “You invite her to that concert yet?” I ask Davey while I snitch more of his cinnamon roll.

  He puts his plate in his lap. “Get your own, thief.”

  “It tastes better on your plate. What are you wearing? Not the bowtie, please. You can’t wear bowties to rock concerts.”

  “You can’t wear bowties. I look like a stud in them.”

  “Rub it in a little more. It didn’t hurt enough the first time.”

  He grins again, and I grin back.

  I fucking love my brother. We can’t live together—I drive him nuts, which then makes him drive me nuts—but he’s everything that’s right in the world. He’s a year older than I am. Our sperm donor couldn’t handle the stress of Davey’s Down syndrome and my colic, so he split before I was out of diapers.

  His loss.

  Not that he knew his father either. None of us knew until that lawyer showed up four years ago with a big fat check for me and Davey to split.

  Davey’s half of our inheritance went into a trust fund that pays all his bills, managed by an old law firm, with my name nowhere on anything related to him.

  There’s literally nothing in any public records tying Davey to me—I made sure of it—which is the only reason I’m not contemplating taking him with me to Nebraska. Or Canada. Or Zimbabwe.

  Wherever.

  He’s actually safer here in New York until this leg warmer thing blows over with all the people in his circle who aren’t me who look after him.

  I wonder if I could trust Parker’s brother enough to ask him to check on my brother while I’m out of town.

  I’d ask Sia’s brothers, but I’ve hit on them too many times, and they’re both in Virginia for hockey season.

  Plus, they’re not SEALs who apparently have hero complexes.

  Davey takes a huge gulp of his coffee—which I’m willing to bet has double caramel flavoring in it, because his sweet tooth rivals mine—and he eyes me before taking a quick bite of his cinnamon roll and putting it back on the plate in his lap.

  I hold up my hands. “Fine, fine, I’ll get my own cinnamon roll. Can I borrow ten bucks?”

  “You need to get a job.”

  “I have a job. I just forgot my wallet.”

  “Liar. You should be Pinocchio for Halloween.”

  I wince, and not because that was a solid burn. High five to Davey. “Yeah, I don’t think I’m doing Halloween this year.” It’s five weeks away. There’s a possibility I’ll still be in hiding.

  Davey rolls his eyes. “You wear a costume every other day of the year but you won’t do Halloween.”

  “This isn’t a costume. It’s style.”

  “It’s ugly.”

  “I have a work trip coming up, and I don’t know if I’ll be back by Halloween.”

  “Are you going to prison again?”

  This is why we can’t live together. He’s grinning, because he knows he’s getting my goat—the one tattooed on my back, because it’s my zodiac sign and my Chinese birth year—and I’m equal parts exasperated and impressed with how far his verbal sparring skills have come since he moved out on his own.

  “I never went to prison,” I inform him, “but if I had, I would’ve gotten myself a prison bitch named Fluffy and we would’ve broken out by sawing the bars with files we made out of stale prison bread.”

  “You are so weird.”

  “Speak for yourself, Mr. No Tattoos.”

  “I got a tattoo.” He smirks and pulls up his Ground Peace work shirt sleeve, showing off a peace sign on his shoulder.

  “Shut up. Is that real? When did you get that done?”

  And where? Fuck. If somebody was using rusty needles on my brother, I’ll stick a rusty needle up his nuts.

  Davey rolls his eyes again. “Smitty helped us.”

  My shoulders relax, because I trust Smitty more than I trust myself. He owns the coffee shop, has a special needs kid of his own, and he’s about seventeen times more trustworthy than I am.

  I know, because I hack in to check his accounts every now and again to make sure he’s not taking advantage of his staff, and usually find out he’s been making donations to pet shelters and children’s hospitals and paying his bills on time along with staying honest with his payroll.

  It’s not that I have trust issues.

  It’s just that I have trust issues.

  I’m complicated, okay?

  “You gonna get ‘I love Eloise’ tattooed on your other shoulder?” I ask.

  He snorts his coffee out his nose, and once I’m sure he’s not going to die, we both dissolve into laughter.

  “You’re such a brat,” he grumbles again around a mouthful of cinnamon roll.

  “Love you too,” I tell him.

  It’s not his fault he lost the sibling lottery.

  We chat a little longer before I walk him back to his place and bail. Not only am I in the final countdown to that side project I launched the other night while I was spreading cheer in the form of a dickwad’s money around the internet, I also have a sexist troll I’m out-trolling in a Vikings in Space video game that I need to get back to.

  Because there’s nothing like ignoring a problem to make it go away.

  While I pack for an impromptu trip to Romania.

  Or somewhere.

  Just in case.

  12

  Rhett

  Tuesday is almost interesting at the recruiting station. A half-dozen of the kids who wandered in off the streets have their phones explode with the electronic voice yelling “I send dick pics,” while we’re talking about life in the Navy.

  And every last one of them goes red and denies it so hard, there’s no question they actually do send dick pics.

  I get to go Scary SEAL, and two of them piss their pants.

  That was fun.

  So was helping three dudes sma
sh the hell out of their phones on the street on my way to the subway after work and then growling, “I have a sister, fucker. Send a dick pic again and it’ll be the last time you have a dick.”

  New York is alive with phones tattling out dick pic senders, and whatever this virus is, it’s preventing the phones from being shut off.

  For some reason, it makes me think of Eloise. Seems like something she’d find hilarious.

  Or maybe I just have Eloise on the brain.

  Before I’m off the subway, my phone dings with sixty-five alerts—text messages, emails, that news program that gives me auto-updates—about the virus exposing dick pic senders all over the country. It’s an epidemic.

  I read a few stories about guys claiming innocence who were at daily religious services when their phones went off, about CEOs being exposed—heh, exposed—as dick pic senders during board meetings, about courts having to be adjourned for the day when the lawyers or judges’ phones started squawking, and about the stock market shutting down early because of what reporters have dubbed Dick Pic Gate.

  You ask me, they should call it Nutgate if they have to -Gate it. Or they could come up with something honestly original. Like the Telltale Dicks Virus.

  I head to Parker’s apartment, because it’s taco night, and also because I want to know if my brother-in-law’s phone is infected.

  Notice I’m not wondering if Eloise will be here.

  Nope.

  Not thinking about her at all.

  Haven’t thought about her all day.

  Excluding every time I heard a phone squawk, “I SEND DICK PICS.”

  Which happened so much on the subway that I have a boner, even though it’s just background noise now.

  It’s wrong to want to bang her again. I know this, but I can’t help myself.

  My body wants what my body wants.

  And my body wants the chaos and adventure that I’m not getting on training and missions right now.

  I walk into Parker’s apartment, ready to scare the piss out of Knox, but he’s bent over laughing while Sia attacks Chase’s phone with a marble unicorn statue.

  Chase’s phone voice is still squawking out a warbly insistence that he sends dick pics.

  “I know he sends dick pics, you ass,” Sia shrieks. “He sends them to me and I like it.”