White Knights

by Julie Moffett

  White Knights

  Book One

  Julie Moffett

  Geek Girls Rule

  My name is Angel Sinclair. I’m the youngest senior at Excalibur Academy for the Technologically Gifted and Talented in Washington, DC. I was pushed ahead a year because of my high IQ and considerable prowess behind the keyboard, making me an outcast even among my own peers.

  I’ve been looking for my dad all my life. A brilliant mathematician and cryptographer, he disappeared under mysterious circumstances when I was eighteen months old. Although my mom tells me I must put him in my past, it only makes me more determined to find out what happened to him. When weird accidents start happening at my school and the vice principal is involved in a deadly incident, I don’t see it as a coincidence. After launching my own investigation, with the aid of an unexpected set of allies calling themselves the White Knights, I discover a threat far greater than I ever could have imagined.

  I could take my discoveries to the authorities, but my own investigative methods would be at risk. Can anyone say hacking? No, it’s up to me to set things right. My objectives are straightforward: clear the name of the vice principal, learn the truth about my father, and stay alive. In other words, save the day and try not to look too much like a dork while doing it.

  Praise for Julie Moffett’s

  White Knights Mystery Series

  “This book is Hogwarts for geeks. It is the perfect blend of YA, computer geeks, and spies! ... I am so thrilled to be sharing this book with you...because I loved it! Like—stop a stranger on the street and don't stop talking about this book until they run away screaming, thinking you've escaped from the psych ward! Crazy good!” ~ Ginger Mom and the Kindle Quest Blog

  “Love this new YA spinoff series from the Lexi Carmichael series by Julie Moffett. Same great pace, excitement, mysteries to solve, hacks to make, character growth, and an ending that makes me excited for the next book! Geek girls rock!” ~ Amazon Reader

  “I loved the whole entire concept of the book… This book was completely intriguing and it was just so AHHHHH, it was amazing. The book I believe targets all people of all ages.” ~ The HufflepuffNerdette

  “Absolutely loved it—great first book in a new series. This Y. A. series has already made my keeper list. Can’t wait for the second book!” ~ Amazon Reader

  “As a child, I love mystery books; Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, the Five Find-Outers by Enid Blyton and etc. So now, even when I’ve grown up, mystery books has been a soft spot for me. YA + Spy mystery is my weakness...I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this book. I am even looking forward to the next book. I think readers who love Ally Carter’s Gallagher Girls series would enjoy this book.” ~ Erucchii's Books and Recs

  Praise for Julie Moffett’s

  Lexi Carmichael Mystery Series

  “The Lexi Carmichael mystery series runs a riveting gamut from hilarious to deadly, and the perfectly paced action in between will have you hanging onto Lexi’s every word and breathless for her next geeked-out adventure.” ~ USA Today

  “I absolutely, positively loved this book…I found the humor terrific. I couldn’t find a single thing I didn’t like about this book except it ended.” ~ Night Owl Reviews

  “Wow, wow, and wow! I don't know how Julie Moffett does it but every book is better than the last and all of them are awesome. I may have 6 authors in my top five now!” ~ Goodreads Reader

  “Absolutely loved this book! I love the concept of a geek girl getting involved in all kinds of intrigue and, of course, all the men she gets to meet.” ~ Book Babe

  “This book can be described in one word. AMAZING! I was intrigued from the beginning to the end. There are so many twists and turns and unexpected agendas that you do not know who’s on the good side or who’s on the bad side.” ~ Once Upon a Twilight

  “Lexi Carmichael has to be the most lovable character I have come across. She is 100 percent geek and has zero street smarts, but she tries to think outside the box while putting herself in dangerous places without knowing how she got there. The author keeps you guessing who might be a double agent and who might want to harm Lexi.” ~ Goodreads Reader

  Books by Julie Moffett

  White Knights Mystery/Spy Series

  White Knights (Book 1)*

  Knight Moves (Book 2)*

  One-Knight Stand (coming Fall 2019)*

  The Lexi Carmichael Mystery Series

  No One Lives Twice (Book 1)*

  No One to Trust (Book 2)*

  No Money Down (Book 2.5-novella)

  No Place Like Rome (Book 3)

  No Biz Like Showbiz (Book 4)

  No Test for the Wicked (Book 5)*

  No Woman Left Behind (Book 6)*

  No Room for Error (Book 7)*

  No Strings Attached (Book 8)*

  No Living Soul (Book 9)*

  No Regrets (Book 10)*

  No Stone Unturned (Book 11)

  No Questions Asked (Book 12) January 2020

  *Print versions (available or coming soon)

  All titles are available in audiobook, and some on CDs.

  White Knights is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual locales, organizations, events, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  White Knights

  Copyright © 2017 by Julie Moffett

  All rights reserved.

  Published by True Airspeed Press

  No part of this book may be used, scanned, uploaded, stored in a retrieval system, reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form whatsoever, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews, without written permission from the publisher. For information contact True Airspeed Press, LLC, at PO Box 411046, Melbourne, FL 32941.

  eISBN: 978-1-941787-25-0

  Cover art by Earthly Charms

  Formatting by Author E.M.S.

  Table of Contents

  WHITE KNIGHTS

  Geek Girls Rule

  Praise for the White Knights Series

  Praise for the Lexi Carmichael Series

  Books by Julie Moffett

  Copyright

  Dedication and Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  Chapte
r 56

  Chapter 57

  More from Julie Moffett

  About the Author

  Dedication

  To my sister and best friend, Sandy Moffett Parks.

  The first geek girl I knew and admired.

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful for the ever-guiding hand of my sister, Sandy, in getting this book written and to market, my mom, Donna, for proofing all the various versions, my brother, Brad, for his wisdom and excellent brainstorming sessions, my wonderful cover artist, Su at Earthly Charms, my excellent copy editor, Sara Brady, the fantastic formatter Amy Atwell, and last, but in no way least, my extraordinary editor, Alissa Davis. You ALL rock!

  Chapter One

  ANGEL SINCLAIR

  On the 5,802nd day of my existence, my safe virtual life exploded into reality.

  I should have seen it coming—I’m smart enough. My name is Angel Sinclair and I’m a geek. For most of my nearly sixteen years, I’ve lived online, roaming the information highway—hacking, gaming, and manipulating the environment to suit my every whim. The Internet is my world. I control kingdoms and maintain important and critical alliances. I don’t need real-life entanglements, friendships with people who will come and go, or a boyfriend so I don’t feel alone. I’m never lonely online.

  I’m not bragging when I say I’m good at what I do. When I was eleven, I broke into my school’s computer system, just to see if I could. At thirteen, I changed the Twitter profile of a well-known gamer to read “Geek Girls Rule” after he posted a particularly sexist and ugly meme about women in the tech field. Later that same year, I hacked into the local police department looking for information on my father. I’ve hacked a lot of places since then, getting better and faster each time. I’m not into cracking—hacking with malicious intent. But I’m not above a hack when it serves the greater good.

  My older sister, Gwen, is always getting on my case to go out, hang with people, be social off the computer. Why would I? The girls at my school are always talking about guys or taking selfies to make sure they post the best angle of themselves. Who cares how you look while you’re eating in the cafeteria? I’d rather connect with the people who do matter via my phone or laptop. Online I’ve got constant access to what and who is important, and it is way less stressful than a face-to-face conversation.

  So, my plan for my senior year of high school was this—survive by keeping my head down, restricting my social life to online, and not making any waves.

  Simple, right?

  Wrong.

  I desired invisibility but would have accepted peaceful coexistence.

  Instead, they brought me war…on the very first day.

  Usually on the first day of school, the bus is late. I attend high school at the Excalibur Academy for the Technologically Gifted and Talented in Washington, DC, and most days the traffic sucks. But today the bus arrived promptly at my stop and dropped us off early. Grateful for an extra fifteen minutes before school started, I headed to the inner courtyard, which has a fountain featuring an elaborate sword encased in stone. I sat down on the bench, connected to the school Wi-Fi, and started work on my secret project.

  The search for my dad.

  I was eighteen months old when my dad left. Well, he didn’t exactly leave—he vanished. The police never found a body; he never showed up in a hospital with amnesia or appeared years later married to someone else. He was just gone. Never to be seen or heard from again.

  No explanations. No clues.

  A brilliant mathematician, he worked as security engineering analyst for King’s Security. According to the police files, he made a decent living and was happy with his work. He left home for the office one day and never arrived. His car was parked in its usual spot at work, but he didn’t make it into the building. His wallet, filled with cash and credit cards, had been placed atop his neatly folded jacket on the passenger seat. The car was locked from the outside, the key tucked underneath the front left tire. There was no evidence of violence, foul play, or robbery. He was on good terms with all his colleagues and had no known enemies. My dad had been considered intelligent, hardworking, and reserved, but was never disliked by anyone. He hadn’t withdrawn a large sum of money before his disappearance, his paychecks were all accounted for, and he hadn’t taken any extra clothes, personal items, or his passport before he disappeared.

  Mom was questioned at length by the police. No, they weren’t having marital problems, their finances were in order, and he supposedly loved my older sister and me. No hint of trouble in paradise. Fourteen years later, Mom still wore her wedding ring. I couldn’t decide if she was hopeful or delusional.

  The police opened a missing-person case, which went nowhere. When I turned thirteen, I found out why. After hacking into a police database and reading the reports on my father’s disappearance, I learned the detectives believed it was a voluntary disappearance. Even though they were unable to discover a motive—no known girlfriend, no trouble at work, and no financial black hole—they came to the unofficial conclusion that my father simply wanted to rid himself of his family and start over.

  Maybe they’re right. At the time of his disappearance, I was too little to do anything. But now, at almost sixteen and with mad hacking skills, I want to know the truth. I deserve to know the truth. So do Gwen and Mom. If he’s alive, I’ll find him. He owes us an explanation for his desertion—and it’d better be a good one. If he’s not alive, I’m not stopping until I know the truth as to what really happened to him. He deserves that.

  Of course, I didn’t let anyone know what I was doing. It made Mom sad to talk about him, and Gwen clammed up whenever I asked her any questions. I think Dad’s disappearance was harder on Gwen than me, because she remembered him. While that sucked for her, a part of me was envious that at least she had memories of him.

  “Yo, Angel?”

  I blinked and looked up from my laptop. Wally Harris, the shortest guy in the senior class and one of three students I work with at an after-school internship at a cybersecurity and intelligence company called X-Corp, stood with one hand on the back of the bench, his brown hair tousled, his thick glasses crooked on his nose.

  “Hey, Wally. What’s up?”

  “Welcome back to school. I’ve got a question for you. What’s the cube root of 0.000216?”

  I frowned. I never quite knew what Wally was thinking. Was he testing me? Being competitive? Or was this just a weird stab at friendliness? How was a girl like me to know?

  “Why do you want to know, Wally?” I asked.

  “Just humor me.”

  I did the math in my head. “It’s 0.06.”

  Wally smacked me on the shoulder. It almost knocked my laptop, which was perfectly balanced on my knees, out of my hands. “Excellent. Wanted to see if you’ve got game on the first day of school. Guess you do. Good luck this year.”

  Well, whatever his reasons for interaction, it was awkward. Nothing new there. Things were usually awkward when they involved me.

  He hefted a heavy backpack over his shoulder, heading to the interior school entrance. On the way, he tripped over a discarded Coke bottle, stumbled into the door, and promptly got jostled by two guys on the wrestling team.

  Yes, I said wrestling team. While there were certainly smart kids on the wrestling team, there were also lots of students at Excalibur who weren’t there for their IQ. Politician’s kids, children of ambassadors and the offspring of the rich and famous roamed the halls, ruling the school largely unchecked. Private schools, like any school, needed money to run on. That was the price the rest of us had to pay for attendance at an “exclusive” school.

  I watched Wally stagger along, shaking my head. Just another HBI—Hulking Barbarian Interaction. Nothing had changed in the eleven years I’d been going to school. Jocks were jocks, pretty girls were cheerleaders or dancers, and even though I was at a school for geeks, we were at the bottom of the social pecking order. Not that I cared much about the pecking order, but since I
fell into the geek category, I had to watch my back.

  I’m also the youngest senior at the school. I won’t turn sixteen until the end of October, but I’d been pushed ahead a year because even the gifted program at Excalibur was too easy for me. I would have happily (and easily) skipped the last two years of high school. So far, I’m the only student in all of Washington, DC, with an IQ of 153 on the Mensa International test for persons under eighteen. I know because I hacked into Headmistress Swanson’s email to read the Mensa report. Apparently, my IQ puts me in rarified company with some of the smartest individuals in history. Unfortunately, it didn’t get me out of having to attend Excalibur my senior year.