Page 17 of Hacker Salvation

The sound of my phone ringing stopped all conversation. I snatched my phone out of my pocket, and my lawyer’s name flashed across the screen. With Nate being in the wind, I’d hired an attorney my manager had told me about in the past.

“Hello,” I answered.

“Ms. Harper, this is Marty. I just spoke with the judge handling your case. They feel you’re a flight risk and want you to bring in your passport. They set a date for you to appear in court. The DA doesn’t want a circus. There was talk of a plea deal.”

“Plea deal for what? There is no body, and Nate has only been gone for one day. Why aren’t they spending time finding him instead of trying to frame me for murder? The sheriff said I had forty-eight hours to bring it in.”

John reached over and squeezed my thigh.

“Ms. Harper, there is evidence against you. The sheriff wants you to come in today. I think you should hear the plea deal out.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” I yelled into the phone. This was ridiculous. I clicked off the phone and hung up.

“You need a new lawyer,” John urged. “There’s no body. There can be no plea deal. Don’t even think about it.”

I shook my head. “I’m not. I’m thinking about running. I want to get the hell out of here. I just want to disappear for a while. This makes no sense, and you’re right.” I sighed. “The police are out to convict me.”

“Found it,” Neal mumbled between bites of his sandwich. We were all seated in the dining room of Daisy’s house. Neal had overtaken the table and turned it into a war room.

Everyone crowded around the computer. He had a satellite image of a private mansion. The feed was live. There were people there, but it was impossible to tell who. The television crime shows exaggerated the abilities of those types of programs. If this wereCSI, they would have found the killer already.

I rubbed my hand down my face. “So let’s go.”

John squeezed my shoulder. “You just had your passport revoked. We need to take it in.”

“Can we run before I have to turn it in? I want to go now and figure out what is happening. If that is Nate there, he has a lot of explaining to do, and I’m not waiting for him to come back here to explain.”

Neal twisted in his seat. “Do you really want to go?”

“No,” John barked. “It could be dangerous.”

“If you go with her, it might not be as bad,” Neal said. “You could go by boat and be there in about a week.”

“Fine. We go by boat. When can we go?” I asked the room.

John ran his hand through his shoulder-length hair. He didn’t have it up in its standard ponytail. “Have you ever stayed in a small boat for days? There are no maid services or house cleaners. It would be me, you, and a boat captain. There might be rough water. And once we get to Nicaragua, we would need to stay under the radar. This means being dropped off and swimming to shore, walking through the woods, and staying in a cabin off the beaten path.”

I didn’t care what I had to go through. “I’m going.”

John looked at everyone else in the room for backup, but nobody answered or said a word. Neal shrugged and smirked like he knew something we didn’t.

“Fine,” John finally said. “We leave tomorrow night.” He got up, grabbed his phone, and stormed out of the kitchen.

8

John

The dark coffee tasted good. I sat the cup down on the kitchen counter in Daisy’s house. I still couldn’t believe I was traveling to another country with Anna. I recalculated the mileage using an online nautical map program. From Los Angeles to Nicaragua, it was 2,400 miles. Even with the two men we’d hired to sail the boat nonstop, the trip would take three days. I ran my hand through my wet hair and pulled it back into a band. I was going to be spending three days in tight quarters with one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen. And she was engaged.

My phone vibrated on the counter. Gabriel’s name flashed across the screen. He was one of the new hires Brock had brought on last week. He was a quiet guy, and I hadn’t talked to him much.

“Gabriel,” I answered.

“Boat’s loaded and ready to go, boss.

“I’m not your boss.”

Gabriel barked out a laugh. “Okay, sir. Jacob just brought in the last of the groceries. What time do you plan to leave?”

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