The Ghost and The Hacker (Dark Fire Book 3)

by Ivy M. Jones

  He lets me put all my clothes on without saying a word, including my shirt, which I can't find initially, only to remember that it ended up on the floor by the front door.

  "Sarah..." He doesn't finish the thought.

  "I don't even know what to say, Zach. You wanted me to stay in your past. Fine. I was already there. For such a huge city, it's amazing how small it is. And even smaller when you can't keep the fuck out of my life."

  "You lived in a ghetto, Sarah," he moans. Then he seems to realize what he's admitted.

  "You went looking for me," I gasp.

  "Not specifically," he says, letting his head drop to the wall with a thunk.

  "You got my address. You knew my apartment was a dump so you set this-" I gesture to the apartment, "-up. Jesus, Zach, I can't even... And here I thought I was nobody special to you."

  I turn to leave, but his hand on my arm stops me. His hold is light, but the look in his eyes is deep and gripping.

  "You've never been nobody special."

  "YouTube, Zach."

  "Oh, fuck. That was you? Of course it was." His head drops back and he presses his eyelids together tight. "I was trying to convince everyone. Even me."

  "You had me convinced. At least, until this," I gesture down the hall and he swallows. I watch his Adam's apple move and it makes me horny all over again. I put the brakes on that, right quick. "Figure your shit out, Coffield. Until then, leave me the hell out of it."

  "It's Moore now, and please, don't move out, Sarah. I swear I'll be out by next week. But don't leave. I don't want you back in that shithole you were in before."

  "You haven't been a part of my life in a long time, Zach. You're just a ghost. What do you care?"

  "I lived in places like that, Sarah. When I first got here, that's all I could get. It took me years to get out. If you won't do it for me, do it for you and Lucy. I know the shit that happens in those buildings. You and your friend...you're safe here." His fingers squeeze my arm ever so slightly. "Please," he begs.

  "I won't go back there. Lucy would kill me if I made her move out of here now. She thinks we got a haunted apartment for what we pay. She's practically ready to marry the damn ghost. Or maybe Teddy."

  And that is true, but I don't want to go back to that nightmare of an apartment, either. Zach is right; we're a million times safer here, even if I can't deal with saying "Zach is right" out loud right now.

  "Teddy. That's how you got up here," he says, figuring out how I found him.

  "Yeah, but he was a pawn. He never knew he was being played by a master."

  Zach smiles down at me like I'm the master. "Lucy," I correct, shaking my head. "Lucy's plan. Lucy is the master strategist."

  "I seem to recall some amazing ideas from you, too, Sarah."

  "And obviously, some horrible ones," I say, remembering why I'm standing by the front door.

  Hurt, Zach takes a step back, letting go of my arm.

  "Sarah," he chokes.

  "Figure out your shit, whoever-the-hell-you-are. I'm sick of living with a ghost in my head. And I refuse to fuck one."

  Sarah

  I take the stairs down to my apartment, then past where Lucy is hanging out on the couch, clearly waiting for me. I go directly into the bathroom and flip on the shower. I can hear Lucy's footfalls in the hallway and I strip quickly, hopping into the shower as she pushes open the door.

  "Cy lives on the tenth floor, then?" she says, sounding very nonchalant.

  "And so does Mr. Europe," I bite out.

  "Wait, what?" She's not nonchalant now.

  "Mr. Europe didn't die. I might kill him, but he wasn't murdered in our apartment. Zach set this whole dream apartment thing up. I didn't ask, but I'll bet the furniture really is new. Mr. 'I want you to stay in the past' is clearly having a hard time keeping his own damn rules."

  "Wait. Your Zach? Zach Coffield is upstairs? That explains a lot."

  "Explains what?" I ask, finished soaping over the evidence of sex with Zach.

  "You were gone a while."

  "What are you implying?" I hiss. I flip off the water and Lucy pushes a towel to me. A towel that Zach had delivered to the apartment to further the illusion that some guy had bailed for Germany or France or something. A wonderfully soft towel, much nicer than I probably would have gotten for myself. But that's beside the point.

  "Just saying. You come back after over an hour and I find out you spent the time with Zach. Then the first thing you do is take a shower... It just seems like it would only take ten, maybe twenty minutes to call him a list of mean names, knee him in the jewels, and come back. And you wouldn't need a shower after that."

  I let the tears I've been holding in fall down my face.

  When I slide the shower curtain aside, I see Lucy with her sad face on. I'm crying into her shoulder, the towel wrapped around me, the damp ends of my hair and my tears soaking her sweater.

  "And you have, like, three hickeys," she points out over my muffled crying.

  "Shit, what?" I pull away to look in the mirror. I use my hand to wipe away the fog and, sure enough, there are two tiny hickeys on the tendon of my neck and a third huge one on my collarbone.

  "Godammit. This is not the past," I say, pointing at my hickeys while looking at Lucy over my shoulder in the mirror.

  "Yeah, no. Pretty sure he just said all that to keep you safe. But obviously the guy doesn't want you there, in the past. He wants you here." She makes a random all-encompassing gesture that I take to mean this apartment, and here in his life.

  When I whine and give her pleading look she adds, "And he clearly wants you here." She grabs her crotch and laughs when I cry out to the ceiling.

  "I don't see what the problem is, Sarah. The love of your life lives four floors above you. In the same building."

  "Four floors and eight years ago," I add.

  "That's bullshit. You're just scared."

  "You know what?" I cry, "Yeah. I'm fucking terrified. He broke my heart once in a big bad way, Lucy. You weren't there. The man I love was on the run, gone somewhere I couldn't follow, on his own and alone and not even an adult yet. I was depressed for months. And the only thing that snapped me out of it was finally doing something about it. I went looking for him. And when I finally find him, the douche-bag breaks my heart again, telling me I have to stay in the past."

  I sit down on my bed and Lucy sits down beside me, putting her hand on my back before saying, "You know what I got out of all of that?"

  I shiver and try not to cry again. "What?" I ask.

  "The first thing you said wasn't 'The boy I loved'. The first thing you said was 'The man I love' and that tells me more than anything else. He can't break your heart if you don't love him."

  "I don't want him to break my heart again, Lucy," I whimper.

  She lets me lean into her before kissing my head. "Then let's put his past where it belongs and get you guys on the road to the future," she says.

  "What are you talking about?"

  "You're probably one of the only people I know who can find out whether Zach still has a warrant out for his arrest without anyone know you're looking."

  I lift my head and stare.

  She's right, but I can do one better. If there is still a warrant out for his arrest, I can make it disappear. I just need a computer.

  "I need to get dressed. Then we need to go shopping. I'm going to need a computer."

  I don't share my new plan with her. They call it plausible deniability for a reason. She knows I'll be hacking, but she doesn't need to know what I'm planning to hack.

  It's late when we return after dinner and shopping. It took longer than Lucy thought it would because buying a premade computer is a waste of time. I searched through parts until I had everything I needed, bringing over mountains of clam cases and boxes and a new tower to where she waited with the cart.

  I sit on the floor in my room, a clean bed sheet below me to keep dust to a minimum. I'm putting the computer together as f
ast as I can, trying not to make any mistakes as I plug wires into the motherboard and load the CPU and fans into the tower. I didn't even bother with a graphics card. I'll use onboard because there's no point. I'm not using this computer to surf the internet or watch movies or play videogames. I just need speed and memory.

  Since it's nearly Saturday morning when I'm finished loading software and getting everything working together, I wait until nine and then call to have high speed internet hooked up. The apartment is wired for internet, but it isn't on. Lucy and I have been mooching off a neighbors' unprotected wifi.

  It's not even hacking. You just turn your tablet on and it tells you if there's usable wifi in range. Lucy did it for years before I met her in college, without realizing her laptop didn't come with free wifi. She spent a considerable amount of time at coffee shops where they offered it to all their customers, so it never occurred to her that her campus apartment wouldn't have it, too.

  I'm promised my high-speed internet by Monday afternoon, which feels like way too long, but I make due by searching for the Pennsylvania Statute of Limitations on thefts of less than five thousand dollars using my tablet. The news is heartening, but not really. Zach was seventeen when he left Lakemont. Old enough to be tried as an adult. And despite eight plus years going by, the Stature of Limitations only protects him if there wasn't a warrant out for his arrest. But he'd told me there was.

  My father lied to me.

  Which is something else I need to deal with.

  The phone rings once before Mom answers.

  "Hello?" She doesn't know it's me. She's forever refused to get caller ID. She still doesn't understand the No Call List, which I put her home number and cell number on, and keep updating. Without that little gem, I have no doubt she'd have had Caller ID installed years ago.

  "Hi, Mom," I sigh.

  "Sweetheart. How's New York City?"

  How to answer that...

  "It's like a dream." A nightmare, sometimes, too. "Lucy and I got lucky and found an apartment in a really nice part of town that's right in our price range, so we've moved."

  "So soon? I thought you needed rental history for that sort of thing," she says. She's only repeating what I told her when I explained why I wouldn't have space to put her up for awhile because my apartment would be too tiny. I'm really glad I did because it would have been a disaster once she saw the ghetto I was living in.

  "A friend made a reference for us and our salaries were enough to get us the apartment."

  "Lovely, sweetie. Is there room for me if I want to visit, now?"

  I smoosh up my face before answering; I know how hard it is for her to see me. I'm a little female version of my dad, and after his death, there were times when she would look at me and I'd see sadness in her eyes. My Mom, a product of a June Cleaver upbringing, loved my Dad so deeply that a part of her died right along with him. And despite the fact that his schedule was insane and he really didn't care one way or the other, dinner was still on the table by five thirty, she still wore skirts and low pumps at all times, and she always made sure to touch up her makeup before he came home.

  Her rebellion was in how she raised her child. I learned self-defense, took Computer Science courses in high school and chose it as a major in college. I wore jeans pretty much every day, and I spent about as much time with my dad as I did with my mom. I had no interest in the June Cleaver life and they both respected that.

  "Probably not for awhile," I say, skirting the truth. "I'm pretty busy. I wouldn't have a lot of time to spend with you if you came out."

  I hear her let out a relieved breath. It sends a pang through my chest. It doesn't bother me that she's relieved not to see me. What bothers me is that I remind her so much of my father that it hurts her to see me.

  "Well, that's fair. It's not a bad idea to make sure your bosses have a good impression of your work ethic. You've always been responsible and made good financial choices." I knew she's referring to that time between college and New York when I didn't have a real job. Some might have called it Failure To Launch, but it was much simpler... It's a hell of a lot easier to work at McDurmont's Bar, living in the same cheap off-campus apartment I'd lived in since freshman year, using all my extra cash to search for my long-lost boyfriend, than to hold down a normal nine-to-five.

  At the time, I lied and told my mom I was saving up as much money as I could for the future. In truth, I was funneling it all back into my search.

  "So anyway, mom. Something came up and I wanted to ask you about it."

  "Well, alright."

  "I was wondering if there was ever a warrant out for Zach's arrest."

  Silence on the other end of the line, then a quiet, "Whatever made you wonder about that, Sarah?"

  "I saw a guy who looked just like Zach. I started wondering what would happen if Zach came back," I lie.

  "Well, it's New York City, sweetie. And they say everyone has a twin. If you were going to meet Zach's twin, it might just be there, I suppose."

  I wait for her to actually answer the question, but she's quiet.

  "Mom. Was there a warrant out for his arrest?"

  "Yes," she says, sighing.

  I'm not even mad. I already knew the truth. "Dad lied to me."

  "And he spent every extra hour he could trying to find evidence there was another perp, Sarah. You know full well he never thought Zachary would have done such a thing. But how would it have looked if he refused to put out a warrant against his daughter's boyfriend when there was a witness placing him at the scene?"

  My mother: an amazing memory, logical and insightful, and so fucking annoying sometimes it makes my head hurt.

  "Mom, the witness was his dad- a man who died a few years ago when he tried to knock over a bank outside Lakemont. Obviously, the witness had a few character flaws."

  "He had a history of unreported domestic abuse, Sarah. Not the kind of record your father could use to brand him a liar, or even pin him with the thefts. He didn't have the money on him and there was no evidence that he'd been breaking all the windows down Main Street."

  "He probably used a baseball bat, mom." I tap the power button on my new computer and it sparks to life, everything humming like a sleek racecar.

  I will be eating ramen for a very long time to pay for said humming racecar.

  "Your father did make a comment shortly after Mr. Coffield died, though, that strikes me as odd now."

  I sit forward in the executive desk chair. "What did he say?"

  My mom hums under her breath like she always does when she's remembering something.

  "If I recall correctly, a bunch of uniforms had to go through Roger's place above the bar after we found out he'd been killed. They brought box loads of paperwork back for your father to go through with the County Sherriff's office. It took them almost all weekend, but when your father came home, he said, 'I feel like I finally get to sleep now, Mary.' And eight months later, he died. I never really thought to ask him about that night. It only really sticks out now that you're asking about it."

  I'm really grateful for that amazing memory I was pissed off about earlier. There were boxes of paperwork, which means box loads of stuff that would have been scanned and added to the case file. Now I have stuff to search through. Along with the search for a warrant, I have something else to look for.

  Zach

  I can still smell her, despite a second shower after she left. She's in my skin and in my brain and- Oh, Jesus, I've fucked up.

  I should have trusted her. She would have made it out of that ghetto on her own. I shouldn't have worried about her living there to begin with; Her dad made sure she could defend herself before she ever met me, which in hindsight was probably one of the only reasons he let his daughter date Roger Coffield's son.

  She could and would have kicked my ass handily.

  I'm only out of the shower a little while when Cy comes back from running errands.

  "Hey man, where you been?" I give him a fist bump and
step back.

  "Had stuff to do," he says cryptically, though he looks a little sad.

  It's not odd that Cy's been on his own a bit. He tends to have days where he just needs to get away for a while. What's odd is him being missing overnight. Cy doesn't sleep with groupies or roadies or fangirls. If he's out getting some strange, it means he's in a relationship. But he's obviously not in a relationship he can talk about, or he'd be telling us all about it.

  Our Dad can be an over-sharer.

  I note with some confusion that, after a couple hours of errands, his hands are empty. He doesn't have anything in a grocery bag, or a videogame in a plastic sleeve. He's not even carrying a six-pack of my rootbeer, which means he forgot to pick more up like he said he would.

  Griffin and Nicki show up twenty minutes later and we order delivery. While we're all waiting, they ask me how the pursuit of my Night of Dreams girl is going. I let out a broken sigh and admit that I fucked up.

  "I keep bumping into her. I keep getting the chance to make it right but I keep fucking up.

  She's amazing, you know? I should have just trusted in that. She could kick my ass. I knew that. I shouldn't have gotten involved. I just ended up fucking everything up anyway. It's just...I just...She's so amazing, and god! I'm still crazy about her. She's beautiful and so smart- so fuckin' smart. She always was so smart. And I was this loser from the wrong side of town who lived above the bar, and she was, like, this princess. Her Dad was the Police Chief. Did you know that? That's how perfect she had it growing up. Straight-laced and straight A's and just straight up beautiful. I'm-"

  I look up to see Griffin's eyes glazing over and poor Nicki looks like she just wants to escape.

  "I fucked up." I take a sip from the second to last vintage root beer bottle in my stash and curse Cy for reneging on his promise to get more today.

  When Justin comes in, I nearly breathe a sigh of relief that the focus isn't going to be on me anymore. When Andy follows him in, I make a dash to the hallway to discretely order more food from the Thai place down the street.