Page 2 of Hacker Revelation

“Buddy, I’m not saying you can’t come back, but let’s take you out for a week. I need you to stay with your grandparents.”

“Okay. Grandma Ross always has warm cookies for me.”

Cookies. Too bad adults weren’t that easy to bribe. Kat could have bribed me with sex, and I would have dropped to her feet. I shook my head to get the image of Kat’s naked body out of my mind.

She gave me a raised eyebrow in response to my far-off gaze as she rose from the child-sized chair.

I gathered Ant into my arms. “I’m sorry Ant worried you today. I hope you will allow him to come back once his uncle is behind bars.”

Principal Anderson gazed past us, lost in her own thoughts. “I understand things happen in our lives. We would love to have Ant back when his uncle is in jail.” She ruffled Ant’s hair and extended her hand. “Thank you for understanding that I need to protect all the students.”

Ant’s school had dismissed the students for the day. Only the teachers remained. Mrs. Ferguson, Ant’s teacher, gave him a hug and had tears in her eyes when we went to say good-bye.

The walk to the car was uneventful. Kat lifted Ant into his car seat and kissed him on the forehead. She mumbled something to him that I couldn’t hear. Ant leaned in and kissed his mom on the cheek before I closed his door and followed Kat around the car. It had been a difficult couple of hours, so I wrapped my arms around Kat. She automatically rested her head on my shoulder. Her eyes still had a sheen of water.

“He’s fine, Kitty Kat.”

“I’m still worried.” Her words came out muffled against my chest.

We had almost made it to the house when Ant asked the question I had hoped to avoid. “Did you track me with ESP?”

I let out a chuckle. “GPS, son. Yes. You did good. I’m so proud of you.”

Kat was deadly quiet in the passenger seat. The tension in the cab was almost suffocating.

“Do you have GPS devices on anyone else besides our son?”

Six years earlier, Kat and I had run an undercover operation for Juan Sanchez. It was the first and last case we worked together. That was when Juan was the director of the CIA. I fell for the fiery redhead the second she stormed into the briefing room and commanded everyone’s attention. By the end of the week, I had my ring on her finger. It was a whirlwind romance.

The op was informal, and we had the intel we needed by the following week, so we spent an extra day in Berlin to celebrate our wedding. The morning of our flight home, we stopped in Kat’s favorite café to have coffee. We had just sat down when someone fired on the restaurant with automatic weapons. I took three shots before I could grab my gun.

When I woke in the hospital, Juan Sanchez informed me that Kat had been shot and didn't survive surgery. I had lived the last five and a half years thinking my wife was dead. Those days were my darkest. The sun never seemed to rise. Many nights, I wished I would have died with her. She was my sunshine.

When Sophie, a close friend of my sister-in-law’s, was escorted out of White Hat Security by the CIA agent Zane, I had used my connection to find out why they had taken her. Juan, who happened to be Sophie’s uncle, had been forcing her to work for the CIA. During the briefing I barged in on, an analyst had a picture of Sophie’s sister in a case file. Juan tried to prevent Sophie from seeing it, but it didn’t work, and I saw it as well. Sophie’s sister was my dead wife, who wasn’t dead after all.

After a carefully planned mission to find and extract her, I finally held my wife in my arms for the first time in almost six years.

So yes, I had bugged her. What sane man wouldn’t have?

“Kitty K—”

“Don’t you fucking ‘Kitty Kat’ me, Antonio. Did you put a tracking device on me?”

Our little man with big ears picked up everything. “Mommy said a bad word.”

Kat rested her head in her hands. “I’m sorry, Ant. You're right. We don’t say those words.”

I had to hold back the chuckle. Kat cursed all the time, but lately, she had tried to cut back on the swear words. A few more would fly when I admitted I bugged her shoes.

“I lost you once. It will not happen again. For every one you remove, I will replace it with two. Don’t try me on this, Kat.”

“It’s okay, Mommy. We are a cool blue dot on Uncle Asher’s computer.”

Kat looked back at our son and let out an aggravated sigh. “It would’ve been nice to know. Do you have a GPS tracker in your shoes, Antonio?”

“Yes.”

Kat’s head whipped in my direction. She hadn’t expected me to say yes. Juan Sanchez wasn’t the only dangerous case we had. Every member of my team wore a GPS device. Asher and his fiancé, CJ, were the only two people who had access to the GPS information.

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