Saving Hannah

by J P Barnaby

  Table of Contents

  Blurb

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  α͵

  β͵

  γ͵

  δ͵

  ε͵

  ϛ͵

  ζ͵

  η͵

  θ͵

  ι͵

  ια͵

  ιβ͵

  ιγ͵

  ιδ͵

  ιε͵

  ιϛ͵

  ιζ͵

  ιη͵

  ιθ͵

  κ͵

  κα͵

  κβ͵

  κγ͵

  κδ͵

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  Copyright

  Saving Hannah

  By J.P. Barnaby

  Thomas Aberthol’s luck has run out. His daughter, Hannah, needs a miracle he can’t deliver. A hacker with a felony record, Thomas has little chance of finding work that will provide the care she needs. Out of money, out of options, and out of hope, he throws himself on the mercy of someone he never thought to see again.

  Even after ten years, Aleksander Sanna still dreams of that drunken kiss. A perfect moment in time when Thomas wanted him. In his world of elegant code and high finance, the picture he holds of Thomas torments him in the dark of night.

  Their worlds collide as Thomas interviews for the job he so desperately needs with the company Aleks inherited from his father. Thomas doesn’t get the position, but Aleks offers him a completely different kind of proposal, one suited to Thomas’s unique talents… one that will change the course of both their lives.

  For Ian, Chandler, and Parker—thank you for welcoming me into your family.

  Acknowledgments

  IT’S NOT every day one gets to come back from the dead. JP Barnaby had been well into retirement when fate intervened in the form of Elizabeth North. “Could you just send me that one last book you were working on?” Or… what was unsaid—“Could you please just stop pretending to be retired and write another book for me?”

  So for Elizabeth and for all the folks out there who were saddened by JP’s retirement, this one is for you.

  α͵

  THOMAS ABERTHOL knew he was fucked. It didn’t really matter if he loosened the Brooks Brothers noose around his neck or got naked and danced on the desk. The interview was over. He should have worn the gold tie, the one his mother had given him for Christmas, but he needed a touchstone. So he’d pulled the blue-and-silver one out of mothballs. A stale, sticky scent clung to the material, overshadowing the loss of its sheen over the years. He’d last worn it at his college graduation, and he needed the reminder that he had value. Something he might have believed—if not for the scowl on the interviewer’s face.

  “Mr. Aberthol, your qualifications are impressive, if a bit dated. Tell me about your gap in employment between 2008 and now.” The man’s mousy little eyes watched him from over the top of the tablet in his hand. Thomas’s short and pointless resume reflected off his thick-framed glasses.

  Thomas swallowed. “I worked as a programmer for Jonesboro Consulting until 2008. After about a year, I figured out they were data mining information they had no right to. So I hacked into their servers and stole it. I didn’t release it, though… I just wanted to show them the data wasn’t secure. I was arrested anyway. I testified against my employers and received a five-year sentence at a minimum-security facility.”

  The explanation, while truthful, glossed over quite a bit. It was supposed to engineer sympathy but did nothing to help Thomas. He could see it in the shocked and scandalized expression of the man who held his future in that little fucking tablet. Good thing he left out the rest, like Richard fucking him sideways.

  “Yes, Jonesboro mined data from less than legal sources. I remember the coverage. Well, thank you for your candor, Mr. Aberthol, but this job would require long hours and frequent travel. From our discussion, it sounds like those would not work for you. I’m sorry.” The man, whose name Thomas was too tired to remember, held a hand up, showing the way out. The interview had taken ten minutes, far less than the forty-five it took him to get to Midtown.

  The hallway seemed longer than it had when he still had the hope of landing a job. He’d seen rumors online that Mirkwood Investments had been looking for a white hat to test their security system. Lots of white hats had been on the wrong side of bars at some point in their lives. Mr. Beady Eyes apparently didn’t appreciate that fact.

  On the other side of his defeat, the corridor stretched for miles. He didn’t think he could manage so many steps. But Thomas hadn’t come this far just to give up. He put one foot in front of the other, as he had since his arrest, and found the elevator. The car dinged open, and with quiet relief, he stepped inside. The doors slid closed again even as the weight of the world forced his shoulders back to their permanent slump.

  Tomorrow.

  Tomorrow he would worry about how to keep them all alive.

  The long trek back along I-20 took the rest of his strength. His mother called somewhere around Six Flags, but he couldn’t stand the worry he’d surely hear in her voice, so he let it go to voicemail. Once he told her he didn’t get the job, she would sigh and pick up something to clean. Her disappointment grated harder against his skin each time it happened.

  The phone rang again. He glanced down to check the display, since his mother never called twice in a row unless she had an emergency with Hannah. The screen held someone’s name he hated but appreciated in a weird, masochistic way. He hit the button to answer, finding perverse pleasure in talking on his cell phone against the law. “I’m being a good boy, Gerry.”

  “I figured. You have incentive now, and no internet. How’s Hannah?” The concern in his voice always remained at odds with the fact that the guy had fucking put him in prison.

  “The same.”

  “I don’t know if that’s good or bad. At least she’s not getting worse.”

  “She may, if I can’t find a fucking job.” Thomas bit back a sigh.

  Special Agent Gerald Sorenson had called him every few months since his release a year and a half before. Thomas had no idea why. Gerry said it was because he respected what Thomas had done to bring down Jonesboro. Unfortunately, he didn’t respect Thomas enough to get him out of prison when they’d learned of Hannah’s condition. He just pushed them to release his communication restrictions and allow generic emails. His mother had sent them from her phone, and Thomas got to watch in helpless horror as the daughter he’d never met wasted away in pixelated color.

  “I can give you a letter that says you fully cooperated with the FBI during the investigation,” Gerry offered, and Thomas nearly laughed aloud.

  “Yeah, I’m sure that would help. Unless I can hide my record, I’m screwed.”

  “Any company that doesn’t run a criminal background check probably isn’t worth working for.”

  Thomas did sigh this time, a frustrated burst of air that caused feedback in the phone. “I don’t care if they’re worth working for as long as they pay me. Insurance is a fucking pipe dream right now.”

  “Hang in there, man. Focus on your little girl. Something will pop.”

  “Sure.”

  They hung up, and Thomas exited onto Highway 5 just as the sun reached its peak. It would be another Georgia scorcher, another day Hannah would struggle to breathe. Sweat rolled beneath the collar of his Walmart dress shirt, and he swiped at it with the discarded tie. Three hours of his life wasted—three hours of her life. Thomas pushed in on the little spot of pain building in his gut at those words. He couldn’t think ab
out that, not yet. He had to focus, had to get them through another day.

  Thomas pulled off on the side of the road toward his parents’ crumbling two-story house. He remembered a time, before his dad’s binges and before Hannah’s illness, when every shutter shone and none of the shingles were cracked. Hell, sometimes when the old man was sober, they’d even shoot hoops at the now-dilapidated backboard on the front of the garage. Things were different once, but those times lived at the very edge of his memory and were certainly hell and gone now.

  Lush green grass rolled in every direction, a span of acreage unparalleled in today’s housing market. A weak electrified fence surrounded a small vegetable garden. Everything around him held a majestic beauty, and he scanned it, looking for the most beautiful thing of all: a pair of bright strawberry-blonde pigtails bounding in the midday sun. He wouldn’t see them, of course, so he looked for the floral bonnet instead.

  The swing set stood unused; a forgotten sun-bleached plastic seat swayed in the hint of a breeze. A new patch of duct tape wound around the upper bend of the A-frame, another fix for the one thing that brought Hannah joy. One day, maybe, they’d be able to replace it before her time ran out.

  Thomas wandered to the front of the house, where he found that precious bonnet rocking gently against his mother’s shoulder as they rested on the porch swing. He saw himself so clearly in Hannah’s features—her eyes, her cheeks, and the little nose that always seemed to bleed. She didn’t get his brown hair, but that made him happy. Thomas had always loved the strawberry blonde of her mother’s hair. Sherry had been beautiful in ways he learned daily through their daughter.

  It wasn’t until he walked under the side of the porch that he heard the quiet snuffling of his mother’s tears. He ran then, racing up the stairs two at a time only to catch his foot on the loose board he always forgot. A nail snagged his pants as he went down, ripping the fabric and tearing into his leg, but he barely noticed. He crawled the remaining steps to his mother’s feet.

  “Mom, what is it? Is she okay?” The words brought bile up from his stomach, burning his throat as he waited for the answer. The pillar of strength for their little family, his mother rarely let him see her cry. She raised her head at the commotion, shifting Hannah to her left as she wiped away the tears with the other hand. Her blue eyes, so much like Hannah’s, had lost their life.

  “She’s fine, Thomas. Just a little tired. I found her asleep under the swing set earlier.” She stroked the back of the bonnet like it was the only thing in the world that would bring her comfort.

  “Then what—” He stopped at her broken expression.

  “We… we got the foreclosure notice today. It’s really happening. They’re really going to take my house.”

  Charlotte Aberthol turned her face toward the porch’s long overhang, her tears falling.

  Thomas, on the other hand, slumped to the floor. His daughter’s illness had drained them: emotionally, physically, and financially. If he could’ve just gotten a fucking job, none of this would have happened. Hannah would have real insurance; his mother would be able to keep the house. No one wanted to hire an ex-con; didn’t matter what he went down for. You’d think he’d killed a man instead of just typed on a keyboard.

  He broke with his mother’s tears. The sun-warmed swing pressed into his forehead as he let the wetness run down his face. Seven years of pain and stress stripped his life down to survival and supporting Hannah—nothing else mattered. Hannah’s diagnosis, watching his mother work while he couldn’t, the enormous insurance premiums—the past few years had sucked them all dry. Now they wouldn’t even have a home. Losing his mother’s home, the home he’d grown up in, the home where Hannah felt safe, the home his mother had worked all her life for, cracked the foundation of his hope.

  If he’d had life insurance, he’d have used it. In his mind he’d found a hundred different ways to die. Unfortunately, none of them helped his family, and his death would just leave them alone and more vulnerable.

  “Thomas, don’t cry. We’ve made it this far. We’ll get by.” His mother ran a hand through his hair, professionally cut for the first time in months.

  “I don’t know what else to do. The doctors say she’s only in partial remission. With this last round of chemo, the leukemia could come back before her hair does. How am I going to keep paying the insurance premiums without work? We’re tapped out, all of us. How am I going to keep her alive?” The sob broke from him. One hand rested on Hannah’s bare leg as she slept through his devastation.

  “Here, take her,” she said quietly enough not to wake Hannah resting against her shoulder.

  Thomas stood and easily took Hannah from her arms. Feathers weighed more than his daughter did, and he couldn’t stand it. He took a deep breath and replaced his mother on the swing. Hannah didn’t wake at the changing of the guard. Thomas kissed the bonnet protecting her scalp from the midday sun. She’d had gorgeous pigtails once, a rite of passage for every Southern girl, but they were gone—just like almost everything else.

  Hannah stirred and snuggled closer into his shoulder, sighing against his cheap, scratchy shirt. Tiny hands clutched Lizzy the lizard against her chest, like the little stuffed alligator tethered her to the world.

  “Hi, Daddy,” her tiny voice, rough with sleep, whispered against his ear.

  “Hi, baby.”

  “What happened at your ennerview?” Hannah stretched against him, a cat in the warm summer sun.

  Thomas rubbed her back slowly, trying to find the words. She smelled like fresh-cut grass and sweet summer flowers. “Someone fell asleep in the grass again.”

  “I got sleepy.”

  “I know, baby. The doctor said you’ll get tired sometimes until you’re better. Any nosebleeds today?”

  “No. My mouth feels better too.”

  “That’s good, honey.”

  “Meemaw said we have to move if you didn’t get the job. Do we have to, Daddy?” The soft innocence in her voice cut him up inside like broken glass. Another tear rolled down his cheek, and he kissed the top of her head so she wouldn’t see it.

  “Meemaw told you that?”

  “No, I heard her on the phone with Miss Sarah from church.”

  “I don’t know, Hannah. But you know Daddy will take care of you, right? I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  “I know, Daddy,” she said, her voice so sure of him that he could have made himself believe it too, until she added, “except me bein’ sick. You can’t fix that.”

  Thomas Aberthol’s world shrunk to the pinprick of a child’s truth. He couldn’t fix the cancer any more than he could stop the bank from taking their home. It was a horrible, vicious tide of God’s wrath that started with his arrest, swelled with Sherry’s death, and crested with his daughter’s illness. The watermark of their strength rose with each new horror inflicted upon them. They’d survived so far, but who knew for how much longer.

  “Daddy, I’m sorry. I’m sorry, Daddy.” Hannah’s voice drew him out of his thoughts, and he looked down to see red splotches on his only dress shirt and his daughter’s hand over her nose. The nosebleeds had gotten worse over the past few weeks, and while their cancer team didn’t appear too concerned, it scared him to death.

  “It’s okay, baby, I promise. Let’s go in the house.” He carried her through the screen door and into the kitchen, where he met his mother at the sink.

  “Sarah called. She said they may have an opening—” She spied her granddaughter and grabbed a towel from the sideboard to put over Hannah’s face. “Hold this right there, pumpkin, that’s a good girl.”

  “They’re getting worse.”

  “I know. Give her to me and get that shirt off. Maybe I can save it.”

  Later, as he lay on the spare twin bed in Hannah’s room, watching her sleep, it would occur to him just how bad things had become that he needed to fight to save a ten-dollar button-down shirt. It hadn’t always been that way. Ten years before, he’d graduated Ge
orgia Tech at the top of his class and gotten hired by one of the best consulting firms in Atlanta. He’d been on top of the world—until it crashed in the flames of the Department of Justice. His career had been meteoric, a limitless expanse of possibility, and then with one stupid idea, it all spun out of control.

  Maybe one day it would stop spinning.

  β͵

  ALEKSANDER SANNA stared at the screen as his heart banged an unfamiliar rhythm in his throat. He hadn’t seen that face in ten years, and there it stared back at him from its news story in the Atlanta Journal. The story told the tale of a single father trying to care for his daughter while she fought leukemia. Aleks ran a finger over the digital lines of his face. Thomas had gotten older, as Aleks had, but he still made Aleks’s breath catch. He stared at the image and suddenly they were twenty again, and Aleks lay in bed watching Thomas sleep after a hard night of drinking. After Thomas had kissed him.

  Before Thomas walked out of his life.

  He brought up Chrome in another window and did a quick Google search. The Atlanta Journal article came up, but so did a host of other articles. It seemed Thomas had been a rather bad boy. Aleks hadn’t paid much attention to the Jonesboro scandal. Back then, he’d been in the programming pool, spending an insane number of hours writing gorgeous code and trying not to be the son of the boss. He succeeded at the former and failed at the latter.

  On the second screen of the search, Aleks found Thomas’s LinkedIn profile. The man had been a genius programmer in college but had nothing on his resume for years. Not a single job since his conviction. He could understand why. His company ran background checks, like most, and wouldn’t hire a felon no matter what kind of mad skills he had.

  Aleks hit a button on his headset. The phone picked up after one ring.

  “Wes, could you come in here, please?”

  “On my way,” a chipper voice responded.

  He sat back in the chair and tore his gaze from the screen, looking out the window instead. Ten years and he still couldn’t get the feeling of Thomas’s hands out of his head.