Page 14 of Royal Hacker

“I think this is the sixth,” Patty answered over her shoulder.

“What did the police say when you gave them the emails?” I was trying to keep the anger out of my voice.

Patty stopped and looked at me with large brown eyes. She was biting her lip and fidgeting with her hands. That second I knew why the police hadn’t sent me a copy of the emails. She hadn’t reported them. “They weren’t that bad until today. I was going to contact the cops now.”

I took a few seconds to put my anger back. Patty had been getting stalker emails and done nothing about it. “Show me the emails.”

I went around Patty’s desk and sat down in her chair before she had a chance. I pulled her onto my lap. I wished we weren’t there looking at a possible stalker sending her email.

She reached over and brought up her email. My world dropped when I saw it was signed the same way the emails always were. Nobody but the police and my staff knew how the emails were signed or the contents of what was written. It also seemed he was to the point of being mad at her—and that put her at risk.

“I need to make a call.” I dialed the local police chief. “Hey, Chief.”

“Hello, Sam,” Chief Haley answered. It sounded like he was moving papers around on his desk.

“I’m at a friend’s house, and she showed me emails she has been getting. The emails are close to the other women’s.”

Chief Haley grumbled on the other end. This confirmed the wrong person was in custody.

“I don’t want to open that case back up. You better tell me it’s someone else.”

“It seems we have the wrong person, or he has an accomplice.”

“Fuck, send me the emails, and we will meet tomorrow,” Chief Haley ordered before ending the call.

“I think you might be overreacting a little. I think we should’ve looked through things a little more before involving the chief of police. How can you be positive this is the same person? I think this person is trying to prove their hacking skills.”

He had more than computer hacking techniques. The Waterville Stalker also hacked the bodies of his victims. The women were almost unrecognizable.

I had to come up with a plan to keep Patty safe and figure out who this guy was. “Patty, have you not been watching the news at all in the past month? There has been a stalker on the loose, sending emails to women, and when he gets upset with them, he kills them.”

A gasp escaped Patty’s lips. She looked shocked. That was when I realized Patty had not looked at a newspaper or watched the news in the last month. She had a seventy-inch TV hanging on her wall to the right of her computer station.Why isn’t she watching the news while she works?

“I get all my news from my Facebook feed. If there’s something important, it generally pops up in the newsfeed. Let me Google this to see what’s going on.”

Who the hell uses Facebook for their news?When she went to grab her keyboard, I pulled her back into my chest. She didn’t need to see the pictures.

“You don’t want to see the photos. This changes our plans for the night. I will call Brock and have him bring me a change of clothes and takeout. Go relax in your living room and go over the research you were supposed to have done.”

“That’s a little presumptuous, thinking I will sleep with you.”

“Patty, where in that conversation did I say anything about having sex with you tonight?”

“Well, you told me you would have Brock bring you clothes. So I assumed you were planning on staying. What guy stays over and doesn’t expect sex?”

I wanted nothing more than to throw Patty over my shoulder and head toward the bedroom. She was drop-dead gorgeous. But I wanted to take things slow with her. “No, we are taking our relationship slow. My main priority right now is to make sure you are safe.”

I kept Patty in my arms while I called Brock. I needed him to bring me some clothes and tell him his assumption about the stalker was right on. He said he would grab us some food and be on his way.

“Why don’t you show me around your house while we wait for Brock to get here.”

Patty got up from my lap and led me around her penthouse. The place fit Patty correctly. The house was comfy and cozy for being so large. The living room had big, fluffy black couches that faced another seventy-inch TV on the wall. The kitchen was modern, with sleek black countertops and crisp white cabinets. The house looked like it was taken straight out ofBetter Homes and Gardens. I would say it leaned more toward the modern side.

While we were looking at pictures from Shialia, the doorbell played the Mario Brothers theme song, and Lemon took off toward the door. I went on high alert, because someone opened the front door without being let in. There was no reason Brock would walk in. I pushed Patty behind me and went for my gun.

“What are…”

I silenced her so nobody could hear us.

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