Page 38 of Royal Hacker

“We have her location, sir,” George said to my father.

How the fuck did George have my location? They only showed up ten minutes ago. I had a sick feeling in my stomach. The only way my father would have my location was if he’d had a tracking device implanted in me. If that was true, my father and I were going to have a long talk about invasion of privacy once I got out of there.

“Where is it, Dad? You tell me right now. I want it out—this is not a request. It is a demand. When did you do this?” Jessica yelled at Dad.

I was kind of excited my father had put a tracker on me. I might get to go home intact and not in a body bag. “I understand why you’re mad, sis, but can you guys come get me and then we will yell at Dad? We are close to the two-hour time limit.”

* * *

Sam

“I’m on my way,little pixie. I will get you—don’t worry.”Holy shit, we have a location.There was no way I was going alone. This man needed to be put behind bars. Not wanting to let Patty go, I grabbed Neal’s phone from the table and dialed the director of the FBI. They had been looking for this guy for a long time.

Director Charles tried getting me to stand down while they went in and rescued Patty. There was no way I would not be in charge of this op. I was already on my way there and assumed my team was as well. Everyone was probably upset that I’d taken off without a plan, but I didn’t care. All I wanted was Patty back.

I was thirty minutes into the forty-minute drive when I heard Patty’s breath catch. “He’s back, and the phone is dying. I love you, Sam. Please hurry.”

Brock had been working on his computer in the passenger seat of the SUV. “We will get there in time. I’m working on disabling his security on his house since I know the location and his name now. The rest of the team is behind us, along with Patty’s dad. I don’t think King Beckett should have come on the operation to rescue Patty, but he wouldn’t stay back at the office.”

“What happens if we lose her? You heard her—the asshole was back.” My voice was betraying me and cracking.

“Don’t think that way, Sam. We will get her back, and she will be right back to driving us all crazy with her pranks. Let’s talk about strategy for these next ten minutes. It looks like he has her in the basement.”

Fifteen minutes later, we arrived at the front door. John and Dave had the ram in their hands, waiting to break down the front door. With my nod, they had the door down within seconds. Brock and I both had our guns in our hands when we walked into the house.

Brett was wiping the blood from his nose, but he also had an automatic rifle pointed at us. I suspected Patty had done the damage to his nose, and when Brett came upstairs to take care of his bleeding nose, he must have seen us outside. That gave him the time to grab his rifle.

“So the almighty Sam who caught my beautiful girl’s eye is here to save her. Too bad, I already took care of her. You corrupted her, and it was—”

I heard the bullet whistle past my ear, then it hit Brett in the head. He collapsed to the ground with a perfect head shot.

“I sure hate all the show-boating people do,” Patty’s dad stated with no remorse.

“You didn’t need to kill him,” Director Charles said. “I will need to take you into custody.” Clearly, Director Charles didn’t know who the king was.

King Beckett only laughed.

I didn’t care how their conversation ended—I wanted to get to Patty. While running through the house, I found the stairs leading down. I could hear talking coming from inside the room.

“Tell me the account number, and I will let you live,” someone demanded on the other side of the door.

I raised my gun and slowly crept around the door. I could hear Brock behind me. Doug was the last person I’d expected to be part of Patty’s kidnapping.

It sounded like Patty was trying to catch her breath. “Why are you doing this, Doug? Jessica gave you millions.”

When I walked around the corner, Doug had Patty in a chokehold, a knife to her throat. Blood was seeping through her shirt from a cut on her stomach. Brock and I both leveled our guns at Doug. He kept moving with Patty in front of him, and we couldn’t get a good shot.

“You ruined my plans. I’ve known you had an issue with me for years. I remembered you had another hacker friend when you were in college. When I looked him up and noticed you were the one who sent him to jail, I figured I could use him to take you down. I was surprised when he wanted to keep you in his prison and not kill you for sending him to jail. I was all right with that, as long as you were out of my way. Then you went and told Jessica on me before I could get Brett to get rid of you. Sam, drop your weapon, or I will kill Patty. You too, Brock.”

There was no way I was going to drop my weapon. The look in Patty’s eyes was pure anger. She kept looking down, and I couldn’t understand what she wanted. My goal was to keep him talking until he made a mistake, and we could take him out.

“Why don’t you explain how kidnapping Patty was your goal?” I asked, continuing to move closer.

“Stop. I will kill her right now.” Doug pressed the knife into Patty’s neck, causing a trickle of blood to form.

I stopped immediately.

“I wanted her to stop digging. Brett and I would get her to give us access to her accounts, so we could drain them. The goal was to make Brett do everything until today, when he was upset. When you told him you were the one who put him in jail, he lost it and wanted to kill you. I needed the—”

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