Page 13 of Royal Hacker

“Are you ready for your date?” Sophie asked.

“I’m leaving early to dye my hair and find a new outfit.”

“Do you need us to come help you?” Bridget asked.

I contemplated them coming over to help me and maybe help with my nerves. The problem was I had so much to get done. I needed to review the code Neal sent before he had a heart attack. Even though I knew there wouldn’t be an issue, I still liked to see if I could find something wrong with his codes.

“I think I will be okay. I need to look at a few things for Neal before I go out.”

“If you need us, don’t hesitate to call. Why don’t you head out and go get ready? I want a full report tomorrow of what you guys do.” Bridget struggled to get out of the chair. She was due to have Alonzo at the end of the month.

Not waiting for Bridget to change her mind, I shut everything down and headed home. On the way, I texted Megan. She’d been my hairdresser for the last few years. Like me, she loved the colors of the rainbow for her hair. Last time I saw her, she had the complete rainbow.

A few hours later, I had a subtle shade of ruby red in my hair, a cup of hot cocoa in one hand, and some Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in the other. Before I sat down, I gave Lemon a new dog bone, hoping she would go chew on it in her bed. I sat down to review what Neal sent me.

Time was flying while I was testing the code in a virtual environment. I put the security software on a virtual PC and hit it with all the hacking tools I had to break through the program. When my email pinged, I looked to see if it was a new message from Neal—and my heart dropped. For the last few weeks, someone had been sending me strange emails. I’d tried to find out who was sending them, but the culprit was amazing at hiding his tracks.

If the person weren’t so creepy, I would have asked Neal to hire him. That brought up the next thing Neal would be furious about: I hadn’t reported these emails. They’d been a little creepy, but nothing to get too worked up over. I grabbed a Reese’s for comfort before opening the email.

From: B. Waterville

To: Patty Beckett

Subject: My long-lost love

Patty my love,

You could have been with me, but you choose another over me. I saw you last week going to a sex club. My perfect Patty shouldn’t have been going to places like that. You are too special to be having sex of that nature with strange men. You are very special to me, and what you did has brought misery into my life. I’ve been waiting and waiting for you, and you never come or answer my emails. I love you and want you to be a part of my life. If you don’t change your behavior, I’m going to have to step in and not wait for you to come to me, my love.

Yours forever,

Waterville

I don’t know how long I sat there rereading the message. In the previous emails, he’d talked about his life. Nothing more. He’d never said he was watching me. That sent a shiver down my back.

Lemon must have noticed I was upset because she came over and lay across my feet. I was reading over the email again when someone knocked on the door and scared the crap out of me. I pulled up the security feed and saw it was Sam. I’d completely lost track of time.

When I’d arrived home, I’d told the bellman to let Sam up when he came. I hadn’t expected him so soon, and I wasn’t even ready.

Lemon took off toward the door, barking like she would take on the world. The girl was only two feet tall but acted like a Labrador. When I opened the door, Sam was wearing a white button-down shirt with black slacks. For a split second, all my troubles went away.

“I thought we agreed to seven?” Sam asked.

“We did. I had something happen, and I lost track of time.” I shrugged and waved for him to come in, uncertain I wanted to bring all the drama on our first date. That last email had me on edge, though, and I should probably have called the cops.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Sam asked, pulling me into a hug. “You look a little upset.”

Working on untangling myself from Sam’s arms, I pointed toward my office. “Let’s head to my office, and I will show you.” I filled Sam in about the email I received. I went on to talk about how the first email had started with him talking about his life, but now they were escalating.

* * *

Sam

The second Pattystarted talking about her emails, my anger rose. I knew who she was talking about. We’d been trying to find him for the past month, and we thought we had. If she was still receiving the emails, that meant the man the police had in custody might not be the Waterville Stalker. For the past few months, Team Blackwood had been working with the local police to bring the Waterville Stalker into custody.

He’d been stalking women, and when they did something he felt they shouldn’t have, he killed them. The local police had asked us to help because their caseload was so high that they could not put enough time into the case.

“How many have you gotten?”Why have we not seen anything from the police about this? They should send us updates when new people get emails.

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