Page 7 of Misunderstood Hacker

I waited in the entryway of my penthouse for Brock to say everything was all clear.

“Jessica,” Brock yelled. “I need you to go to Patty’s place and lock the door.”

From the worry in his voice, I could tell he’d found something wrong inside my condo.The need to know what he’d found was overwhelming.There was no way I would tuck tail and run. So I walked into the living room.

But I should have done as he said. The words scrawled across my lavender walls made me shake. Someone had written “Next time I get close, you will be mine” in red paint on the wall above my white couch.

Brock’s voice faded to the background, and my mind drifted back to ten years ago.

The cell I had been in for the last week was starting to feel like my safe house. Gray stone walls rose to the ceiling. The dead-rodent smell was getting easier to cope with. There were no windows in my cell, which made it hard to tell what time it was. Once a day, someone would slip a piece of stale bread through the door slit.I didn’t know what information they wanted from me, and the torture was getting worse. I just wanted to curl up and die.

The beating I had received a couple days ago had been so violent that they hadn’t touched me since. There were still open sores on my back from the whip. The desire for this to end was strong.

The door to my cell opened, and in walked one of the men that had been torturing me. Iwas hoping it wouldn’t turn to rape soon.

I needed to make a run for it. I waited for him to get close, then I stepped back to get leverage and kicked him in the balls. He dropped to the ground, and I headed toward the door. He grabbed me from behind and threw me to the floor. I thought for sure this was the minute my life would cease to exist.

“The next time you try something like that, you will die.”

Before I had time to figure out what the man whohad torturedme for days planned to do, he brought the butt of the gun down on my head, and the lights went out.

* * *

Brock

“Jessica, come back.Wake up.”

Jessica had gone into shock when she saw the words on the wall. Her face had gone stark white, and she dropped to the ground and rocked.I knew that, in her mind, she was back to being locked in a cell. The misery showed on her face.

She was shaking in my arms and had tears running down her face. I pulled her into my lap and tried to talk to her. Nothing seemed to help. I grabbed my cell phone out of my pocket to get Neal up to the apartment.

Neal, a longtime friend of Jessica and Patty’s, lived one floor down from them. I had also known Neal for years. He helped out on some of our cases when I needed it. He was the CEO of Patty’s network security company, Black Hat.

I didn’t wait for Neal to say anything when he answered the phone. “Neal, I need you at Jessica’s apartment urgently.” When he said okay, I disconnected the line. I needed to take care of Jessica.

I picked her up and carried her down the hall to her bedroom. Once inside, I set her down on the bed. I went to get a cold washcloth to wipe her face. I hated seeing her in this much pain. I knew once I had her safe, I would eliminate the men who had touched her. I had never understood why her father had just put them in jail instead of executing them.

Sam and Patty had left for Shialia a few days ago.Sam and I would discuss what was needed to eliminate the men in prison.If Sam had been here to see how Jessica was acting, he would have been on board with the plan.

I was running the cold washcloth across Jessica’s forehead when Neal walked in. He had obviously seen the wall in the living room.

“What the fuck is going on?” Neal asked, running to Jessica’s side.

“The alarm was off. I told Jessica to go to Patty’s place when I saw the saw the writing.Instead, she walked in, saw it, and went into shock.”

Jessica eventually calmed down and fell asleep. I pulled the pink fleece blanket up over her and pointed toward the door.

Neal and I went back to the living room to discuss our plan of action.

Neal pinched the bridge of his nose before talking. “I think what she saw sent her back to her kidnapping. She’s having a flashback.”

“I was thinking the same thing.We need to figure out who is after her.”The thought of someone after Jessica sent my nerves on full alert. I had been taking things slow with her since the divorce, but this changed everything.

Neal walked over to the couch and grabbed Jessica’s laptop. “I’ll pull up the video footage of her condo, and we can identify the perp.”

“You won’t find anything.” Frustration was evident in my voice.

“What do you mean I won’t find anything?” Neal glared at me. He was an arrogant hacker and thought he knew everything.

“Jessica said the cameras and the alarm haven’t worked for the last few months. She hadn’t gotten around to asking Patty to look at it.”

Neal’s face hardened. “So help me, I don’t care if I think of her as a sister, I will take her over my knee and spank that ass until she can’t sit for a week.”

The thought of Neal putting his hands on Jessica made me see red. Nobody would touch her but me. Not even realizing what I was doing, I grabbed Neal around the throat and pulled him out of the chair. “If you ever put a hand on Jessica, I will kill you.”

Neal pulled away and chuckled. I didn’t see the humor in the situation. Jessica was everything to me, and if someone was going make her ass red, it would be me. Considering her past, I had to make a decision about mylife. Was Jessica more important than the lifestyle? The answer was yes. I would change my life for her.

“It’s about time you admit you want her.” Neal kept laughing.

Just as I was about to respond, a bloodcurdling scream came from the bedroom.

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