Along the Cane River: Books 1-5 in the Inspirational Cane River Romance Series

by Mary Jane Hathaway

  “Prison,” she groaned. Why hadn’t Paul had her arrested? Out of respect for her parents, probably.

  “I didn’t mean you should be in prison, or did anything to deserve prison.” He sounded a little panicked. “I’m not saying this right at all. Maybe you should talk to Tom. He’s good at this kind of thing. Or Gideon. He’s had to come back from some really bad choices.”

  “No, no.” She couldn’t imagine involving any more people. “And aren’t you good at this kind of thing? Isn’t this what you do for a living, tell people how to give up their life of crime?”

  He blinked. “Life of crime? What have you been doing?”

  And then without even thinking it through, she started at the beginning and told Austin everything.

  Chapter Ten

  She with one breath attunes the spheres, and also my poor human heart.—Thoreau

  Charlie started her story way back when she’d created an avatar that was male because it didn’t really matter and who cared anyway, it was just a game. Then it was more than a game and she made friends and built a group. The group evolved several times until it included some pretty clever programmers that traded sly little codes that could sneak into anywhere and do anything. They formed a guild in Ultimate Voyager and they were her family, closer than anyone she knew in real life. Especially one boy who was smart, funny, and dedicated to living dangerously. Everything Tyler did was thrilling. She fell hard for him and even though they’d never met face to face, he had her heart as surely as Paul had Alice’s. Whenever she needed him, he was there, no matter the day or the hour. Not physically there, and not even by video chat, but in other ways. They talked on the phone, texted constantly, and they were together online more hours than most married couples saw each other in a day.

  Then everything had gone wrong. They had a fight. It was over something silly and when he wouldn’t let it go, she’d laughed at him. Tyler hated to be laughed at. He could stand almost any other kind of slight, but laughing at him was unforgivable. He told her it was over. Within hours his number didn’t work, her messages were blocked, his facebook account disappeared. She thought he’d cool off, get over it, come back and say he was sorry he’d been such a hothead. A day later― an eternity in their relationship― he was nowhere to be found. Charlie mourned as if he’d died and went to take comfort in her online friends.

  Charlie paused for breath, looking down at Austin’s fingers interlaced with hers. “I logged into Ultimate Voyager and saw that my guild had attacked all my resource gathering plants, destroyed all my defenses, blew up our stores.”

  “And disbanded?”

  “Right. I was alone. And I know the character is portable. I know I could just pick up and move somewhere else if I had the courage. I would lose some of the special battle suits and things we’d won on our raids, but I still could have just joined another guild.” Sadness clogged her voice.

  “Except you were grieving.”

  “Grieving. I suppose that’s right.” She was focused on their hands, his hands. She’d never touched Tyler. He lived in Florida. Or so he said. Nothing he’d said about himself checked out later and she felt like a fool for how trusting she’d been. “But it was more than that. The head of my department called me into his office. Someone had sent him dozens of pages proving that I’d cheated on all my projects and papers, pulling them from the internet.”

  His fingers tightened on hers. “You were kicked out.”

  “No, I fought back. I tried to show them that all those internet sources were recently created, that someone was trying to set me up.”

  Austin leaned back against the seat, his lips a tight line. “They didn’t believe you.”

  “They did, actually. These were professors of computer science and they knew the forensic evidence was pointing to my innocence. It would just take time. But then I got a notice my bank account was overdrawn.”

  “They hacked your bank account?”

  “Everything was gone. All my savings.” The memory washed over her. She had folded to the ground in despair, too shocked to cry, too angry to form words. “I decided to come back home.”

  “But you never asked Paul for help.”

  She paused. After everything she told him, she didn’t know why she hesitated now. “Do you remember last spring when ScreenStop was hacked?”

  “Of course. It was huge. All over the news. Paul said they cut the net worth of the company in half. They lost…” Austin’s eyes went wide. “Did they blame that on you?”

  “It was my program. My virus.”

  She didn’t know what she was expecting but she was unprepared when Austin put his other hand to his eyes. It was such a position of despair that her throat went tight. She didn’t need to say anything more. He understood what a complete mess it was.

  He dropped his hand. “Did they really think Paul would believe it was you?”

  “I’ve been trying to keep him from finding out.”

  “First, I think you’re right. I think he already knows. Second, my mama says that a jaybird don’t rob his own nest.”

  Charlie barely heard him over the pounding over her heart. Her worst fears were being confirmed. “I’m sorry. Jaybird what?”

  “It means that you don’t work against yourself. There’s no reason for you to sabotage Paul and Alice’s company. None at all.”

  “Unless I just wanted the fame.”

  “Okay, that could have been, but then why run back here? Why hide in this little town with the same people you just tried to ruin?”

  She saw the moment the realization struck him and she almost cringed at the dawning horror in his eyes. “You’re… you’re UltimateStarCrossed, the player that got doxxed and shamed for trying to cheat her way to the top. The trolls were feasting on you for months. Your guild said they had proof you’d been cheating for years, even at that developer’s conference in Miami. ”

  “None of that was true. I had an alternate, but I wasn’t collecting points or running raids with bots. And the hacks they said I’d downloaded would have ruined the fun. Some people said it had to be true because I’d been accused of cheating before. What really good player hasn’t? I never let it bother me. My guild always defended me. They vouched for my skill…until they turned against me.”

  “Have you played since?”

  “I haven’t been online. I wiped all my accounts. UltimateStarCrossed is dead. I killed that orphan character.” She let out a long breath. “I’m here, though. Not thriving, obviously. But I survived.”

  “So, what now?”

  Alarm shot through her. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re going to let them know what breed of bear they decided to poke, right? You’ve got to show them you don’t corner something bigger and meaner than you.”

  If she hadn’t been so scared, she would have laughed. She didn’t feel big and mean. She felt pretty wimpy and fragile. “There’s nothing to do but try to disappear. The people who bought my parents’ house are going to have to move. They’re dealing with all the revenge that was supposed to come my way.”

  “And your― the guy?”

  “Tyler? Nowhere. Fiction.” She shrugged. “And I can’t point fingers, really. He never knew my real name, either. I loved him but deep down I knew, I must have known, that there was something I couldn’t completely trust.”

  “He knew enough to destroy your life,” Austin protested.

  “But I never told him my name is really Mary Charlotte. The cyber bullies are pranking the people in that house because they traced an IP address to that place. I never played Ultimate Voyager at work, so the bookstore is safe.”

  “Why did they go after Paul?”

  “Everybody knows his avatar, or at least the one he uses for the public. Anyway, Paul popped into a raid and said my name without me telling him, so the guild knew I was somehow connected. If they thought I was cheating, there wouldn’t have been a better time to make the accusation. A developer playing his own gam
e? But they were impressed and nobody said a thing about it until this year. Anyway, that’s why they used one of my programs to hurt ScreenStop.”

  “Mary Charlotte.” He looked out at the cars going by them, and seemed to be mulling over that bit of information. “They couldn’t get your full name from your school records? Didn’t they contact your advisor? I don’t know how you’ve escaped so far.”

  “I was looking over my shoulder for months, sure they knew exactly where to find me but I heard later that they’d sent all those accusations of plagiarism to every senior girl majoring in computer science. It was a huge mess, but that told me that they actually didn’t have as much information as I’d feared.”

  “They really didn’t know… then what about your bank account?”

  Charlie slumped in her seat, her chin dropping to her chest. She was nobody’s fool. Her daddy always got a good laugh out of a neighbor who always fell for some scheme or another. He’d always say old Mike didn’t have the good sense God gave a goose or that he didn’t have both oars in the water or if brains were dynamite, he didn’t have enough to blow his nose. Then he’d look at Charlie and tell her that she better keep her head on straight, that he didn’t raise no fools. “He got it from me. I’m an idiot.”

  He let out a soft sound, whether because he knew what was coming or because he didn’t want to hear her call herself names.

  “Tyler said he’d gotten into a bind, short on funds. He just needed a loan.” She shook her head. “I probably sound like the most gullible person on the earth but I’d known him for years. I’d loved him for almost as long. I didn’t think anything of it. Just made the transfer and figured that was the end of it. I never thought he could have backtracked the information and was keeping it, like insurance.”

  They sat in silence for a moment and Charlie looked out at the traffic passing them by. Alice would be wondering where they were. “You probably need to get back to work,” she said.

  “You haven’t said what you’re going to do.” He didn’t let go of her hand.

  “Do? Work at the bookstore. Get another job. Try to pay my rent.” She heard the irritation in her voice but couldn’t soften the edge. “What would you suggest, Mr. Counselor?”

  “You need to fight back.”

  “Huh. That easy.”

  “You’re the innocent party. You have evidence on your side. And powerful friends.”

  “Being the good guy doesn’t mean you win, and remember that I’m not completely innocent.”

  Austin shook his head, blue eyes darkening with determination. “You can’t just roll over and let them get away with this.”

  She swallowed, working to get up the nerve to say what was really keeping her from fighting back. “Maybe I’m scared to tell Paul what I did.”

  “What you didn’t do, which he already knows.”

  She looked into his eyes, hope sparking in her chest. “I don’t know where to start.”

  “We can plan it all out. How you’ll tell him and where. It doesn’t have to be tonight.”

  Her stomach clenched in response to the idea. “No, not tonight.”

  Smiling, he gave her hand one more squeeze and put the car back in gear. “I know it feels bad right now, but the more you get used to the idea of standing up to them, I think the more relief you’ll feel.”

  “I hope so,” Charlie said. She missed the feel of his hand. The bravery she’d felt when they were linked together seemed to leach away. “I’m so tired of hiding.”

  He didn’t say anything and she wondered what he thought about her. She’d let Alice give her a job and care for Aurora while she kept secrets from her, big secrets. The list of people she didn’t want to disappoint was getting longer.

  “I can understand that,” he said as he turned a corner into the historical district.

  “You have nothing to hide,” she said, laughing. “Everybody knows you. If you tried to hide anything, Father Tom or Gideon wouldn’t let you get away with it. That’s not even counting Henry, who seems to be able to see into a person’s soul.”

  He didn’t join her laughter. “I told you that I had as many secrets as the next guy.”

  A cold chill settled on her. Tyler had seemed completely transparent, but his secrets were too many to count. “Surely not.”

  Austin pulled into the little lot behind the bookstore and parked. He got out and said nothing else as they walked toward the front door. A few feet from the corner, she reached out a hand and pulled him to a stop. They stood facing each other in the no man’s land between the bookstore and the sidewalk. Weekend tourists wandered by, fanny packs strapped on, sunglasses perched on their heads. The breeze from the river wafted toward them and Charlie could smell the change in the weather. Summer was ending and she wasn’t at college. It was fall and for the first time in years, she was in Natchitoches while the rest of the world moved forward.

  “Tell me,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Tell me your secret. If you can’t tell them, you can tell me. Maybe I can help. Maybe I can do what you do, and show you the way to shuck off that old guilt.”

  He looked into her eyes, and she remembered the first time they’d met, and how she’d thought he was a handsome Southern guy from a good family who led an uncomplicated, privileged life. There was a shadow in his eyes she hadn’t seen, or bothered to see. He was just a person, with burdens and anxieties and secrets. Just like her.

  Chapter Eleven

  “Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby― awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.”

  ― Lemony Snicket

  “It’s not something little. I didn’t put salt in someone’s coffee, or hack their facebook account and change their profile to a chicken.” He was trying to be funny but sadness tinted the words.

  “Well, that’s my cue to model-walk away, then.” She echoed his light tone.

  “You know, when I was about fifteen, I had this friend, a girl named Heather. She was the ultimate geek but hotter than the bottom of an old-school laptop. She cosplayed Sailor Moon at all the ComiCons. Every guy wanted to date her, every girl wanted her as a friend. I felt privileged just to be allowed in her presence even though she was always pitching a fit about something.” His lips were tuning up. “I used to get Green Lantern and Green Arrow mixed up and it made her crazy. She finally dumped me over it. She told me I was the lamest noob she’d ever encountered and always would be.”

  “That’s a very specific sort of shade she was throwing.” Charlie was afraid to ask if this girl was still part of the local gamer culture.

  “She moved. No idea where she is,” he said, as if he knew what she was asking. “My parents must have been praying double time because I escaped that relationship with just a bruised ego and a residual aversion for Green Lantern.”

  “That can’t be your secret.”

  He sighed. “No, it’s not. It’s related, though. I spent a year of my life trying to impress this girl and she despised me. Openly, vocally, completely despised me. You’d think that would have taught me something.”

  “No?”

  “No. I met Megan my senior year in college and she was Heather 2.0. I would have thought they were clones except that Megan couldn’t pull off that Sailor Moon cosplay. The selfishness, the complete self-absorption was the same, the way she turned her attention to you when she needed something, but otherwise you were invisible. She wouldn’t even let me tell people we were dating. Most of the time, I was trying so hard to carry the conversation and she was offering so little, I might as well have been talking to her cat. She was up all night and even though I’m a morning person she would call at eleven at night to ask me to go get her some Twix, or at midnight to get her some doughnuts, or whatever. I never met any of her friends. She knew all of mine. Once, I asked her about her family and she went on for hours about her older, more beautiful sister who had landed some sort of TV show when they were little. She was still extorting
money and gifts from her parents to make up for the fact she hadn’t gotten to be on television, too. Anything her sister accomplished, she had to beg, borrow, or steal something even better.”

  “Oh, no. Never give power to the bitter, thwarted sibling. Remember Loki? That never turns out well.”

  He grinned. “Now I’ll never think of Megan the same. She’s Loki now, out for power while wreaking as much mayhem as possible.”

  “Glad I could help,” she said, smiling up at him. His big secret was coming and she knew it wasn’t anything shocking. It couldn’t be.

  “I loved her. Honestly, I did.”

  “There’s no shame in that.”

  “I know love is a good thing. Jesus said that if we have the faith to move mountains, but don’t have love, we’re nothing.” He focused somewhere down the riverwalk, thinking. “But love isn’t a get-out-of-jail-free card. I did things for Megan that I shouldn’t have done for anyone.”

  Charlie nodded. Lots of people made bad choices out of love and regretted them, especially when they were far from home and family. “This sounds like first love in a nutshell.”

  He met her eyes, visibly steeling himself for her response. “I cheated for her.”

  “You mean―”

  “I wrote papers for her, did her homework. I even helped her cheat on exams.”

  “Oh.” Charlie thought of how hard she’d worked in college, making sure everything was her own work and never borrowing inspiration from friends or teammates. She never used a source she couldn’t credit. She never even browsed a web page on source code if it looked like it was taken without permission. It was hard to reconcile what Austin had said to the man who stood in front of her. “Okay, that’s pretty serious. But some say it’s not cheating if you’re alive in the end. You survived Megan and you didn’t get expelled.”

  “But my pants are on fire every time someone mentions my degree. In fact, every time I go to work and sit behind that desk, I feel like a fraud.”