Exploited (Zero Day #1)

by A. Meredith Walters

  I knew this case would make or break me. Solving it would earn me a promotion.

  Failing would mean desk duty for the foreseeable future.

  I pulled out the paperwork I had brought home. Maybe I should just look over the information again. See if there was something we’d missed earlier…

  My phone rang, startling me. I dropped the file and moved to answer it before it could ring again.

  The name on the caller ID gave me pause. My finger hovered over the screen, hesitating instead of taking the call.

  I can’t deal with this. Not tonight. Not when I need my head to be on straight.

  “Hi, Dad,” I said into the phone, hoping like hell this time the call would be different.

  “Your mother is in the hospital,” my father said without preamble in his gruff manner.

  My stomach twisted and I felt the familiar burn of bile in the back of my throat that accompanied any dealings with my family.

  “Is she all right?” I asked, swallowing hard.

  “Of course she’s not all right, Mason. She’s in the hospital!” my dad barked.

  “What happened?”

  “She got into the pills again.”

  I tried not to sigh. The acid burned in my belly. “I thought you had locked up all the medications—”

  “Well, she obviously got into them. When will you get here?” Dad demanded.

  I ran my hand over my face, my jaw clenched. I readied myself for battle.

  “I can’t come right now,” I told him. I prepared for the blowback.

  “You ungrateful little shit. How can you live with yourself after you’ve abandoned your mother when she was so fragile? You’ve put this family through hell and this is the thanks we get?” my dad roared into the phone.

  “Will Mom be all right?” I asked, already knowing the answer. Mom’s suicide attempts weren’t serious enough to put her life in jeopardy. Her therapist had told me that she had no desire to die.

  I knew exactly what this latest round of pill popping was.

  Punishment.

  Because I had moved away.

  What I couldn’t tell my father was that if I hadn’t left, I would have ended up next to Dillon in the ground. I had been suffocating.

  “She’ll be fine. No thanks to you,” Dad huffed, and despite my vow to not let my parents rope me in with guilt, I felt myself being pulled in again. Against my better judgment.

  Against what was best for me.

  “I can drive up on Friday after work—”

  “Well, that’s not good enough!” I cringed at the rage in my father’s voice. Even though he was two hundred miles away, I still braced myself for the blow.

  The one that was meant to maim.

  “We lost the best son. The good son. Now look what we’re left with,” my dad muttered just loud enough for me to hear him clearly.

  I was all too familiar with my father’s disappointment and regret where I was concerned.

  “I’ll come up on Friday,” I told him again.

  “We wouldn’t want to put you out,” Dad remarked drily, his anger abating just a bit. The truth was he couldn’t handle my mother on his own. He needed me. Even if he wished he didn’t.

  “You’re not. I can leave straight from work. Maybe get off an hour or two early.” There went my fucking weekend.

  “Fine,” Dad snapped. “We’ll see you then.”

  Then he hung up. And I was left feeling like I had been beaten up and thrown away.

  I put my phone down and stared at the pile of papers I had planned to read before bed. The words swam in front of my eyes and I closed the file, my head no longer focused on the elusive hacker and the unsolvable case.

  Talking to my parents always threw me. It took me hours to feel okay again. It was hard to remember a time when my family had been healthy and functional. Once I had been able to talk to my dad on the phone and not feel bad afterward.

  Once my mother had been happy and whole. She hadn’t spent her time dwelling on a tragedy she could never change. She wouldn’t have contemplated using my twisted emotions to make me feel even worse.

  Once we had been a family that loved and supported each other.

  I hadn’t thought that Dillon would be the one to unravel it completely. I had thought we were strong enough to get through the horror of what had happened—together.

  But as time wore on, my memories of a “better time” were becoming harder and harder to recall.

  Now all that was left was a suffocating need to escape.

  And the realization that no matter how hard I tried, my parents and I were trapped in an unending cycle of grief, guilt, and bitter resentment.

  Tigger meowed noisily at my feet, indicating it was time that I fed him. On autopilot I filled his food bowl and walked into the living room.

  Coming to Richmond had felt like the right plan. I had needed a new start. I had also needed distance. But with the way things had been going so far, I wasn’t entirely sure I had made the right decision.

  I thought about Hannah, the woman I had met that morning. I was supposed to meet her again tomorrow. I thought briefly about standing her up.

  I wasn’t in a position to start anything with anyone. My disastrous situation with Madison was proof that I was a fucking mess when it came to women.

  What would be the point of leading her on when I knew that, in the end, one—or both—of us would end up hurt or disappointed?

  But there was something about this new woman that had me discarding all of my hesitations. Call it instinct, but I wanted to see where things headed.

  I had built my career on reading situations. On following my nose down the rabbit hole and coming out on the other side. And something inside me told me not to dismiss Hannah.

  That she might be exactly what I was looking for.

  I thought about her easy smile. How quickly I had engaged in simple, uncomplicated conversation.

  Maybe a date or two would be all right.

  Just to see…

  I closed the case file and shoved it back in my bag, my eyes feeling heavy. I had a brief moment of hope. Perhaps I’d finally be able to fall asleep without tossing and turning for hours.

  Maybe, just maybe, I could find rest without the nightmares.

  Without the guilt that raged and raged.

  I turned off all the lights and went into the bathroom. I washed up. Brushed my teeth. Changed into my pajamas. Each step carried out exactly as I did it each and every night. No deviation.

  A therapist I had seen briefly when my insomnia had reached critical levels had suggested that a nightly routine would get my mind ready for sleep. In much the same way mothers bathed and read to their toddlers before tucking them in, I tried to find ways to unwind. Simple things that I could focus on instead.

  It never worked.

  As on every night for the last twelve months, as I lay in bed, my eyes on the ceiling above me, my mind drifted to Dillon.

  The last conversation we had before he died.

  The promises I had made but never kept.

  My grief was my consistent companion.

  I loved my brother, but I wished that for one night I could forget.

  But memories weren’t forgiving.

  And they wouldn’t let me go.

  Chapter 4

  Hannah

  “Hey, sis. Sorry I haven’t been by in a while.” I pulled up a chair beside Charlotte’s bed and tried to get comfortable. It was hard, though. The coarse material of the seat scratched against the backs of my legs, making me feel itchy.

  This was the last place I wanted to be. I hated the sounds and smells of the residential facility where Charlotte lived. It was nothing more than a glorified hospital, and I hated that this was where she would spend the rest of her days.

  Charlotte was sitting up in her bed, her eyes fixed on me as I fidgeted in the chair. Drool collected at the corner of her mouth and I leaned over and wiped it away with a tissue.

&nb
sp; “Where have you been?” Charlotte asked in her stunted, garbled tone, which was hard to understand. Her arms lay limply on either side of her, her skin ghostly pale as a result of spending her days beneath flickering halogen bulbs. Her once long, shiny brown hair was now cut short around her face.

  So much about my once vibrant and energetic sister had changed in the seven years since she had been living at the Appleton Center. She couldn’t walk. She couldn’t move her arms. She couldn’t feed herself or wipe her own ass.

  She depended on the nurses and aides to take care of every single one of her needs.

  But her eyes were the same. They were the one thing that hadn’t changed.

  The bright green was still intense. They still saw everything, even when I wished they didn’t. They still watched me with a pointed interest that at times, particularly when I was trying to hide so much, made me uncomfortable.

  Today I couldn’t meet her gaze. I felt guilty for not coming to see her. But sometimes it was too hard to sit with her. To hold her hand and talk to her about things that didn’t really matter.

  I missed my sister.

  The woman she could have become.

  Looking at her lying in bed, unable to move on her own, made me so, so angry. Sometimes it was impossible to keep that rage in check. It bled into everything. It tainted my whole world.

  Even if it motivated me—gave me purpose—I didn’t want Charlotte to see that side of me.

  To her I would only ever be Hannah, her loving big sister. I never wanted Char to see how deep my fury ran. And I knew that if anyone could see through me, it would be her.

  So when I couldn’t keep my anger hidden, I didn’t come to see Charlotte. Even if it broke both our hearts. It was for the best.

  “I’ve been extremely busy. Work has been crazy. And then I got the flu,” I said, fussing with her blanket as I tucked it in around her, then smoothed it down, then untucked it and did it all over again.

  “You were sick?” Charlotte asked. I could feel her eyes. They burned a hole right through me.

  I nodded, staring at the bright red flower pattern on the sheets. “Really sick. I couldn’t get out of bed for days.”

  I knew she didn’t believe me, but she let it go. I hated that she accepted my lies without question. She would have hounded me before, never letting me get away with it.

  In this new life we were forced to lead, dishonesty was permitted without consequence.

  It was a twisted, poisoned sort of existence but one I had come to thrive in.

  What did the truth even look like anymore?

  “I missed you,” Charlotte slurred. It had taken me a long time to adapt to her voice. She sounded nothing like she used to.

  It was just one more thing that had been taken from her in the accident that almost ended her life. Some days I wondered if she wouldn’t have been better off not surviving. Because what kind of life did she really have now?

  Then I’d hate myself for thinking it. Because at the end of the day, at least Charlotte was still alive. I hadn’t lost her like we had lost Dad. And the truth was I wouldn’t have been able to survive it if she had died too.

  I had to remind myself to be thankful that I had a sister to visit and not a grave.

  I took Charlotte’s hand in mine, trying not to cringe at the feel of her cold, waxy skin. “I missed you too. I won’t let it go so long next time,” I promised, knowing that it was another lie.

  “Family Feud?” Charlotte asked and I smiled. I used to make fun of her crazy obsession with the cheesy television game show. Since her accident it had become something else. A link to who we used to be, perhaps.

  I chanced a look at my younger sister, hating the way her lips couldn’t quite stretch into a smile. I lifted her hand and held it against my cheek. Just for a minute.

  It’s all for her….

  She was the reason I had become the person I was.

  The day we almost lost her was the day my whole world changed.

  —

  It was a sunny day. Almost perfect. It was warm for the beginning of March, and I had been spending the afternoon hanging out on the back quad behind the science building. I was a freshman at Virginia College and I had a break between classes.

  I hadn’t wanted to go back to my dorm room. My roommate was a bit on the odd side, spending all night in front of her computer doing God knows what.

  “We should go to the Pi Kappa Phi party tonight. Liam was asking if you were coming,” my friend Talia said, handing me the sunscreen so I could apply it to my arms.

  My stomach twisted a little at the mention of my longtime crush, Liam Hollister.

  “He was?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant—and failing.

  “Hell, yeah, he was. He’s hot for you, Han!” Talia exclaimed, nudging my leg with the tip of her shoe.

  “Well, maybe we can go for a little while. Not long, though. I have to study for my systems development midterm,” I told her. Talia rolled her eyes.

  “You need to stop being such a nerd, Hannah. Guys like Liam Hollister come around once in a lifetime! You need to jump on this ship before it sails right on past you,” my friend lectured, and I laughed. She was right. I did study too much. Plus, what would one night hurt?

  To think that up until that point my life had been so simple. My biggest worry had been whether going to a party would interfere with my study time.

  My head had been full of thoughts of cute Liam and what I would wear to make him notice me.

  Then my phone rang.

  I was still laughing when I answered it.

  “Hannah?” my mother’s frantic voice hissed in my ear.

  I stopped laughing.

  Thoughts of Liam Hollister vanished.

  My heart started to thud painfully in my chest.

  I had never heard such panic in her voice.

  “Hannah. Something bad has happened. It’s your father.” She took a deep breath. “And Charlotte…”

  —

  I continued to hold Charlotte’s hand as we watched Family Feud. Every now and then my sister’s eyes would drift my way, as if to make sure I was still there. I gave her hand a squeeze, even though I knew she couldn’t feel it.

  I felt sad. Grief-stricken.

  And of course angry.

  Our family had lost so much.

  And all because a bunch of lazy government officials thought cutting a few corners to save some money on their bottom line was more important than safety.

  All it took was a badly constructed stretch of road. Too much rain. Cracked and eroding asphalt. My father lost control of his car. Thrown from the vehicle, he was killed on impact. Charlotte was trapped inside with severe trauma to her head and spine.

  Three more people lost their lives that day in the same location. Dozens more were injured. And when my mother, along with the other families, inquired about the conditions of the road, they were blocked at every turn by people more worried about covering their asses than about making things right for the victims’ families.

  I had been so angry. My father was dead. My sister would never be able to walk or care for herself. And we were given a paltry apology and nothing else.

  It wasn’t enough.

  I needed to make someone pay for ruining our lives.

  It wasn’t long before I found a way to get my revenge.

  “Visiting hours ended thirty minutes ago, Hannah,” Cory, the night nurse on duty, said, appearing in the doorway. Her round frame filled the space, blocking the light from the hallway.

  I glanced at my watch and startled when I saw the time. It was later than I had thought it was. I had to get home.

  My sister had fallen asleep at some point, her mouth open slightly. I had been so lost in my memories that I hadn’t noticed. I leaned down and kissed her softly on the cheek before gathering my purse and following Cory out into the reception area.

  “Sorry. I lost track of the time,” I said. Cory patted my arm, her hand heavy on
my skin.

  “It’s all right. It means a lot to Charlotte that you’re here. We can bend the rules once in a while.” The nurse gave me a wide, toothy smile, her bright red lipstick staining her front teeth.

  “Thanks” was all I could say. I hurried out of the building, trying to outrun the memories that I wished I could leave behind with my sister. But every time I saw her, it all came rushing back as if it were yesterday.

  Those months after the accident had been the most horrible of my life.

  —

  I couldn’t get out of bed. I barely ate. I never went to class. When I was called into my adviser’s office, I knew it was bad.

  Worse than bad.

  I was dangerously close to flunking out, and unless I busted my ass I wouldn’t be coming back to school next semester.

  I came back to my dorm room despondent but unable to think of any possible way to dig myself out of the mess I was in. And I wasn’t entirely sure I cared enough to try.

  I collapsed on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. I was depressed. But also angry. Because nothing was right. Or fair.

  Because the contractor the city had used to lay its roads had decided to use a low-grade product that should never have been allowed to be used. There were so many people at fault. The contractor. The city officials who saw only a cheap job to trim their budget.

  My mother, who refused to demand answers.

  I pressed the heels of my hands into my eyes until they ached. I hated feeling so out of control.

  So powerless.

  Because that’s what I was.

  I was one person. What could I possibly do to make things right for Charlotte? For my family? For all the other people affected?

  “How was your meeting?”

  I dropped my hands, surprised to hear my roommate’s voice. Rose Norris spent most of her time in the dark corner of our tiny dorm room, clicking away at her computer. Like me, she was an information technology major, though we didn’t share many classes.

  On paper we should have gotten along really well. But Rose was an odd duck. Completely antisocial. And she sort of freaked me out.

  I wasn’t sure we had shared more than a few dozen words since we had moved in at the beginning of the school year, so hearing her voice now startled me enough to bring me out of my malaise.