Page 7 of Undercover Hacker

The loud smack echoed through the room, before I had time to register that the ogre of a man had smacked my ass. A second later, the pain registered with a fiery heat.

“We will get your sister and the man that killed your parents. We don’t need the director. He can’t harm me.” Agent White laughed.

Once we made it to the parking lot, I was finally put on my feet. I couldn’t hold in my emotions any longer, not sure if they were from being manhandled or from seeing the first picture of my sister in twenty-five years. I lunged at Agent White and punched his chest. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me in.

“It’s okay. We will find her. I promise,” Agent White whispered in my ear.

His hand running up and down my back settled me down. Feeling embarrassed, I stepped away from Agent White to wipe the tears from my face. Brock engulfed me in a hug that felt good. The loud crack of flesh hitting flesh had me jumping back to see what was going on.

“You knew my wife was alive?” Antonio growled. He lurched toward Agent White again.

Brock leaped forward and grabbed Antonio before he had time to throw a second punch.

“What are you talking about, man? I’ve never met your wife. You’ve never shown me a picture of her.” The agent was standing up, wiping the blood dripping down his face with his sleeve.

Antonio pulled out the picture of my sister and pointed at her. “Zane, this is a picture of my dead wife, Kat.”

“I swear I didn’t know she was your wife. I’ve met her a couple times on assignment. Everyone says her husband is dead and she won’t date.”

This was getting too strange. “You're married to my sister?”

“I think we are uncovering too many secrets. Let's go to one of my safe houses and talk out a strategy. Not here, where cameras are watching us.” Agent White pointed at the camera positioned on us.

3

Zane

The tension in the car was so thick that it almost felt suffocating. Sophie had been quiet since we got in the SUV. I wanted to reach over, grab her hand, and let her know everything would be okay. The need to reassure her was eating at me. In the rearview mirror, I saw that Antonio had been staring at that photo for the past twenty minutes.

I had no alliance with the director. “Antonio, I swear, if I had known she was your wife, I would have told you. You’ve never shown me a picture of her or told me her name.”

“I know you would have told me. I lost it back there. Let's get to the safe house and figure out what the director is after. It seems he’s keeping things from us.” Antonio shifted to stare out the window.

“Can you please explain why a stranger knows you're married and your family doesn’t?” Brock looked annoyed that I had known something neither he nor Antonio’s family knew.

A few years back, Antonio had asked if he could tag along on my op. He was led to believe the man we were going after had killed his wife. He wanted vengeance. The case was to eliminate the target. I gave Antonio the right to take the shot.

“We met on assignment. It was a whirlwind romance. We got married on the last day of our assignment. When we were having breakfast in a local cafe, a gun man started taking shots inside. I was hit. When I woke, the director told me she was dead and had no living rel—”

“Do I look like I’m fucking dead?” Sophie shifted in her seat to turn toward Antonio. “How could she do this? I’ve spent my life trying to find her and go after the men who killed our parents, and she fucking works for them. How can she look at that man every day knowing he killed our parents?”

“Let’s work together and figure out what’s going on. There must be more to the story than what we think. We’re almost to the safe house.”

I was taking Sophie to one of my many houses, one I kept in a shell company. Only one other person knew about it. The house was back in the mountains, and trees helped cover any satellite surveillance. It was hard not to notice the helicopter to the right of the house when we pulled up.

“Fuck.” Things kept going wrong.

“He beat us here?” Antonio didn’t need to look. He knew what my outburst was about.

At the same time, Sophie and Brock both asked, “Who?”

“My brother.” I parked the car in the driveway, not storing it in the garage. “Leave your things in the car. When we are done talking to him, we’ll need to head to another house.”

Sophie opened her mouth, about to ask more questions. I shook my head. She would find out soon enough.

Antonio was halfway to the house before any of us got out of the car, probably going after my brother. I needed to step on it. My brother wouldn’t be upset, but the people with him, would be.

“Fuck. Hurry! We need to stop Antonio,” I yelled at Brock and Sophie.

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