Page 36 of Royal Hacker

* * *

Patty

Fuck,fuck, fuck! He’s coming in.I quickly put the phone under the pillow and dropped to the bed to act like I was still sleeping. My goal was to figure out what he wanted without having to talk to him.

“I know the pills have worn off by now. Get up.”

That voice made all the alarms go off in my head. I hadn’t heard that voice since sending its owner to jail. He was hacking for a terrorist organization and helping them sell guns on the black market.Well, he was a scrawny kid back in the day. Maybe I can overpower him and get the upper hand.

I slowly sat up and tucked my legs under me on the bed. I wrapped my arms around me for extra comfort. “Why are you doing this, Brett? I thought you were in jail. I don’t understand why you killed all those other women.” I was trying to act brave, but my voice was betraying me and coming out shaky.

Brett’s face turned red, and he walked toward me. “We would’ve been running your father’s country and ruling the world if Neal hadn’t turned me in. I tried those other women—they looked like you. They weren’t you, so they had to go. I made this room for you, so you can be comfortable until we get to know each other again.”

“Neal didn’t turn you in—I did. See? We aren’t made for each other, so why don’t you just let me go, and we can call it a day?”

With a betrayed look on his face, he started toward me. I hurried and jumped off the bed, ready to take him out. I made it halfway to him before the chain stopped me. Brett punched me in the face. The force knocked me off my feet. I hit the ground with a thump to the ass. He hadn’t duplicated the plush beige carpet in my house. The flooring was concrete.

“I can’t believe this. You betrayed me. I need to go check on something. While I’m gone, figure out how you are going to make this up to me. I will be back in two hours. You will need to tell me what you will do, or I will do worse to you than I did to the women who looked like you. If I can’t have you, nobody will. Right now, you saying how you betrayed me makes me not even want to give you a chance to fix this.”

The overweight piece of shit stomped toward the door and slammed it behind him. It would have been better if I hadn’t pissed him off. At least I had two hours. Maybe Sam and Neal could rescue me before Brett came back.

* * *

Sam

I could hearthe flesh crack and assumed Brett was hitting Patty. That took my last ounce of strength. I grabbed Neal’s laptop off the table and whipped it against the wall.

“What the fuck, man? Did that actually solve anything?” Neal screamed at me.

“Actually, yes. Sorry, I’m not taking this well. I can’t handle the fact she is getting hurt.” I sat back down in my chair to continue to listen to the conversation. “I will buy you a new one.”

Two hours was not a lot of time to work with.

Patty finally picked up the phone. “Sam?”

The sound of her weak voice was hard to listen to. Patty had always been a strong-willed woman. “Are you okay?”

“I want to come home. If I don’t make it—”

I cut her off. We weren’t going down that train of thought. “Stop, let’s work on getting out of the cuffs first. You said the room looked like yours. Is there a nightstand next to the bed, and is there anything in it?”

I heard shifting on the other side.

“Holy fucking shit, this guy is creepy. He’s been in my fucking bedroom.”

“What do you see?” I asked in a calming voice.

“I see everything I have in my drawer at home. I mean everything…” Patty whispered the next part, as if hoping no one else would hear. “He even has my same vibrator—that’s fucked up.”

“Sweetie, can you look in the drawer and see if you have a paper clip?”

I heard more rumbling from the drawer. “I got a bobby pin. Will that work?”

“Yes, I’m going to give you instructions on how to pick the handcuffs. Are you ready?” I couldn’t believe our luck.

“Ready.”

“The first thing I need you to do is bend the bobby pin to the left at a ninety-degree angle. Use the nightstand to help make the bend. Once you have that bent, bend the bobby pin again halfway past the first bend to the left for another ninety-degree angle. When you’re done, it should look like an S shape. Let me know when you have it.”

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