The Hero and the Hacktivist

by Pippa Grant

  I’ve always liked Willow best of Parker’s friends. Mostly because she’s a preschool teacher and the most likely to cave fastest under pressure. But she’s developed some backbone since the time I interrogated her about what she knew about Knox, and I’m not sure I like it.

  Not when she’s using it against me, anyway.

  I nod to Gallagher. “You teach her that?”

  “Nope. She’s always had it. Just got lucky enough to be there when she found it.”

  She smiles all dopey-lovey-dovey at him. He winks back at her.

  It’s disgusting.

  “I can’t help her if I can’t find her,” I point out. Let’s ignore the part where I have her tucked away safe in my apartment, because interrogations only work when people think they’re getting something for giving you information. At least, this interrogation. “You asked for my help.”

  “That was before you came in here demanding to know what she’s into. Maybe now I think we should cut you out completely and I should just send my stepbrothers to rescue her.”

  Her stepbrothers are three princes from a small country in the northern Atlantic. They could most likely keep Eloise locked in a castle and safe for eternity.

  If they didn’t toss her out first when she offered to bang them all. And I know she’s propositioned the one who’s here to play hockey in the States at least twice.

  Still, the thought of Eloise being locked in a castle makes my gut twist. She’d go fucking nuts being around royalty all day long.

  I pull up the picture of the leg warmer and the threat and hold up my phone for Willow to see.

  She gasps and recoils. Gallagher tosses the guitar and is across the room in an instant. He slides one arm around Willow while he scans the picture.

  Considering the overprotective growl coming from him, he can keep dating Willow. But if he ever screws her over, he’ll find himself playing guitar with his toes and singing out his asshole.

  “Whatever she’s into isn’t murder, so yeah, I’m gonna help her.” I point to the picture again. “What do you know about this?”

  “We should call the police,” Willow declares.

  “Who are going to ask questions,” Gallagher mutters.

  Willow goes so pale even her dark hair gets a little ghosty. “Like they did last time?” she whispers.

  “Probably worse.”

  “Shit.”

  Whoa. Willow cussing is not normal.

  “What was last time?” I ask.

  “Nothing,” they answer together quickly.

  “Completely unrelated,” Gallagher adds.

  A not-so-distant memory of something Parker was yammering about a while back niggles my brain, and I look around the penthouse again. High exposed ceilings. Designer everything. Marble. Artwork. Fancy-ass lighting fixtures. Furniture that’s losing resale value merely because I’m standing in the room possibly getting cooties on it. Great view. “Didn’t your ex steal all his money?” I ask, jerking a head at Gallagher.

  Suddenly, Willow has me in a headlock and is digging a finger into the space between my third and fourth rib, which is ticklish as shit. “I don’t know what she’s into,” she shrieks. “Now go fucking find her before I call Parker and Sia and we all glitter bomb your apartment in the middle of the night!”

  Shit, this tickles. I’m squirming and snorting and it’s a damn good thing the kinds of dudes I chase on missions never try tickle parties, because I’d be fucking useless.

  “Okay,” I gasp between unmanly giggles. I’m gonna kill Parker for telling anyone about my tickle spot. “Okay.”

  She shoves me away and leaps back like she’s afraid I’m going to go after her tickle spot or something. Gallagher’s doubled over losing his shit so bad he’s laugh-crying.

  Willow tosses her short hair. “Get out,” she says again.

  I rub my ribs. “Do that again and every last one of your preschoolers is getting gum in their hair on your watch.”

  “Go find Eloise and save her, and do not call the police until after we talk to her, or else we’re going to have to find out if that’s a real threat or if you’re just full of hot air.”

  “I fucking love you,” Gallagher gasps between chortles.

  “Love you too, schmookums,” I mutter.

  Gallagher doesn’t even bother to flip me off. He’s still laughing too hard.

  I wiggle my phone and the picture at Willow once more. “I’m all she’s got right now, so if you think of something, you damn well better tell me.”

  Wasn’t an entirely wasted trip.

  Because I’m putting together a theory about Eloise and money, and the leg warmer is sparking another much more recent memory.

  Time to go see if I’m right.

  17

  Eloise

  Rhett is gone for hours, and in all those hours, Pigpen doesn’t move.

  Just stands there.

  Watching me and my cats.

  The clock has barely turned over midnight, but it feels like about a hundred years in the future, because I’m sitting here with no phone and no computer and I’m bored. I looked at the laptop on the nightstand by the double bed once an hour or so ago and Pigpen signed to me that if I did what I was thinking, he’d tie me up and hang me upside down from the shower curtain rod. After I verified that he meant with my clothes still on and that he had no interest in seeing me naked, I gave up the game and accepted the fact that this is my punishment for circumventing laws to do some good in the world.

  Sometimes I have to be punished. And not in the fun way.

  Although, if I’m being honest, I’ve never been punished in the fun way, no matter what I let my friends believe.

  And I’m not even sure I’d actually like being punished the fun way, because I really don’t have all that much meat on my bones and weak ankles run in my family. Which is related. Probably.

  But back to being bored.

  I stay bored for another hour or so before the door opens. Rhett walks in looking like a strong, silent angel of doom, if the angel has bloodshot eyes and bulging biceps under his Henley and a chiseled jaw two days past a three o’clock shadow—yes, three o’clock, because it couldn’t wait to start until five o’clock to shadow—and I’m pretty sure he’s willing the skin under his eyes not to sag and betray the fact that he might be a little tired.

  Not everyone can look as fabulous as I do at one in the morning. And Parker mentioned he’s working a nine-to-five at a recruiting station for the Navy somewhere in the city. Pretty sure this isn’t his lunch break.

  Pigpen heads for the door without a word—is there some law that these two can’t co-exist in the same space for more than five seconds or something?—and suddenly it’s just the two of us.

  “Where’s he going?” Rhett asks.

  “Out for cat food.”

  And to check on Davey for me.

  Because he didn’t really just stand there staring at me the whole time.

  We talked. A little. Using our hands. And not in the dirty way. He signs because his sister was born deaf.

  I sign because the doctors said it was the best way to help Davey learn to communicate when he was little. My mom taught me before I could walk. Wasn’t fair that we lost her before I finished high school, but that’s life.

  Also—and on a much less personal note, because who the fuck wants to get personal?—I was still really bored most of the time the Ass of Glory was gone, because Pigpen isn’t much of a conversationalist, even with his hands.

  Rhett crosses the small room in five steps and throws himself onto the couch next to me. I process his body heat and the crackling energy that makes my bikini biscuit throb. He hands me a small stack of printed computer paper without saying a word. I flip through and my neck gets hot. Then my stomach drops. Then my toes start to go numb.

  And my bikini biscuit goes into hiding.

  Dirk Lemonson’s mafia definitely knows at least one of the apartments I own.

  And the Ass of G
lory definitely suspects, if he doesn’t outright know, that I’ve got ninety-nine problems and leg warmers are one of them.

  “Talk,” he orders.

  My boobs are sweating. “This whole military thing—you protect the weak and innocent, right?”

  “You’re not weak and innocent.”

  “No, but I’m protecting the weak and innocent too. We’re basically on the same team.”

  “You’re a thief.”

  “I’m a hacktivist.”

  “You’re a cybercriminal.”

  “If you’re gonna throw out accusations, at least add the mastermind part.”

  He scowls at me, and the crackling energy between us amps up. I think maybe I should call a lawyer, except I don’t want to, because that would be like admitting both a leg warmer mafia and the cops are mad at me, even if the cops don’t know yet that it’s me they’re mad at.

  Also, I really, really don’t like the disappointed vibes rolling off Rhett, and no, I don’t want to think about why.

  “Talk,” he orders again. He leans into my space, those hazel eyes boring into me like he can see something more than the face I put on for the world.

  Like he’s not sitting here just so he can tell his buddies that he scored a freaky chick, but because he actually might care about me more than a person usually cares about a random hookup with an out-of-place bridesmaid at his sister’s wedding.

  It’s unsettling enough that I start babbling. “You remember before Parker met Knox, how she was always dating losers who made her feel like she could never be important? How she kept getting turned down for promotions at work because all those dickasaurs in management took credit for her ideas and she never fought for herself because even when she did, she never won?”

  There’s a thick vein ticking in his neck.

  He remembers. And he loves his sister as much as I love my brother.

  There’s something about adding the heart to the muscles that’s doing weird things to my insides.

  I could get addicted to a guy with heart who’s strong enough and quick enough and patient enough to handle me.

  “There’s a dude out there preying on people who are just as insecure as she was. He’s pretending to be a woman, so they don’t even know who they’re talking to and trusting, and then he’s using his female persona to steer them to an idiotic life coaching class he offers that’s really just a cover for him to meet women online so he can talk them into leaving their husbands for him, and he’s taking their money and he’s using them and exploiting their biggest fears to make himself rich.”

  He’s pinching his lips so tight together that the edges are turning white.

  “So I might do a few things that are technically illegal, but I’m not doing anything immoral.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know why it’s illegal to be moral.”

  “No, why do you care so much about breaking laws to help strangers?”

  I don’t answer, because I don’t talk to anyone about why I do what I do. And if you think it’s because of the cheating dickwad from when I was nineteen, it’s not.

  That was a one-off start, not the whole story.

  It was hard enough to ask Pigpen to check on Davey for me, and I was already going out on a limb there, because the only thing I know about Pigpen is that my gut says he’s trustworthy because he gets what it’s like to love someone with special needs.

  Is Rhett trustworthy?

  I’d bet my life on it.

  But I don’t know that my life’s worth much right now, and trusting him is letting him closer.

  I’d rather spread out my trust instead of letting it get so concentrated in one deliciously sexy package.

  “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me,” Rhett says, low and dead serious with so much intensity radiating off him that if one of my cats tried to jump on us, they’d probably bounce back off the force field.

  No one’s ever willingly pulled me into their vortex before, and I like it, but I also know I shouldn’t. “I didn’t ask you to help me. You just showed up at a convenient time.”

  “Someone trashed an apartment that belongs to you.”

  I know. I saw the pictures. And the leg warmer. And the printed copy of the post I made in the leg warmer group exposing Dirk Lemonson for being a lying slimewad.

  Rhett has me figured out enough that he went looking for leg warmers.

  I’m either getting really bad at keeping shit to myself, or he’s way too observant.

  Actually, considering the leg warmer pinned to the cabinet, his conclusions were probably reasonably obvious. The surprising part is how fast he found my leg warmer post, which means either he actually is some kind of god, or Buzzfeed or HuffPo or someone picked up the story. Or maybe it’s trending on Twitter.

  I’ll pat myself on the back for that later.

  I shove up off the couch, because being this close to that much testosterone is scrambling my brain. Thankfully, the force field doesn’t hold me back and throw me onto Rhett, because I might kiss him if it did, and I don’t do kissing.

  Even if I’m curious what kissing him would be like.

  It probably wouldn’t open a wormhole to another dimension where I’m actually an empress of the universe and vigilante justice is lauded, which is a shame.

  And the fact that I’m even considering trying the kiss in the hopes it would make all my problems disappear is an indication I shouldn’t be here.

  Princess Sparkle Butt is snoring on her back with her legs spread beside the radiator, because she’s totally inept at picking up on danger signals. Prince Snufflesaurus is poised and ready to leap from the top of the fridge, because he doesn’t like new places but he does love leaping.

  And I need to get both of them in their carriers so I can hit the bank in Poughkeepsie where they think my name is Phoebe Skittletits, and where I have a fake passport hidden in a safe deposit box.

  Because when you inherit enough money to buy a small country and you decide your life mission is to right the wrongs the law can’t fucking touch, you know it’s inevitable that you’ll need a fake passport and a new identity one day.

  “If you so much as think about putting one of those cats in a carrier, I’m calling the cops,” he growls.

  “Holding hostages is illegal.”

  “Cooperating with a criminal is illegal too. Which one you think the NYPD’s gonna care more about?”

  Minor setback. I’ll wait until he leaves or goes to sleep, and then I’ll sneak out the window.

  “And I don’t know what you’re thinking, but you have no phone, no ID, no cash, and no credit cards, so just how far do you think you’re gonna get?”

  Semi-major setback.

  I can overcome this with a trip to a library and a call to a guy who does things without asking many questions. Plus, I’d bet Rhett keeps a stash of twenties in his freezer.

  What? I’ll mail it back to him plus a shit-ton of interest once I’m safely in some obscure tropical or sub-Saharan location.

  “They got your computers, Eloise.”

  I wave a hand. “If that was really a secondary apartment for me, and if there were computers in it, and if some bad dudes made off with them, all of my hardware is set to self-destruct by rewriting itself with a virus that plays ‘It’s a Small World’ on repeat if anyone but me tries to log in.”

  He opens his mouth.

  A phone on the other side of the wall suddenly erupts in a dick pic confession. At least three people bang on the walls or floors or ceilings around us loud enough for it to carry through into Rhett’s apartment.

  He hits me with a laser-gaze that clearly says he will refuse to believe the dick pic virus wasn’t my handiwork, which is actually really fucking complimentary.

  Most people who know I have money assume I really do just waste my days playing video games and my nights playing in a band that covers boy band songs.

  He thinks I have skills.

  I like that abou
t him.

  I possibly like way more than just that about him.

  “What? It wasn’t me,” I lie. But only because ego is the major reason most criminal masterminds get caught. I’m not a criminal, and my calling is bigger than me, therefore I will keep my pride to myself.

  Although I have debated signing a complete confession eventually and putting it in a sealed envelope to be opened upon my death, because there are worse things than going down in history as a hero after you’re dead.

  “Whoever you pissed off is a bigger danger than you are,” Rhett says.

  No shit. “Excuse me? I can be fucking terrifying.”

  “You have a cat named Princess Sparkle Butt.”

  “It’s a cover.”

  He starts to say something else, then shakes his head.

  I get that a lot.

  But usually when I ask dudes way out of my league if they wanna go find a closet and get their freak on. Not usually when someone’s talking about my life possibly being in danger.

  Denial is my friend tonight. I’m barely holding onto it, but I’m trying.

  “Did you eat anything?” he asks gruffly.

  Now that he mentions it, I might be a little hungry. And his concern is like a battering ram to the self-protective stone wall I keep around my heart. “No, but your dick looks like it could fill me up.”

  He swallows and shuts his eyes, tilting his head into his hands, but not before I catch the way his pupils dilated. “You know Parker and Willow and Sia are worried about you.”

  Shit.

  Now I’m getting all lumpy in my throat and stingy in my sinuses.

  They’ve never asked me to change.

  They’ve asked me not to dry hump their brothers and their boyfriends—husbands, same difference—especially at their weddings, but they’ve never asked me to be anything other than what I am otherwise, and they never blink when I say things like we should glitter bomb the fuck out of that fucker.