Page 36 of Hacker Beloved

“Hold on,” Paolo yelled from the front of the van.

With one hand, I grabbed a bar attached to the side. With my other hand, I reached across Zayla and Asher and helped brace them. The tires screeched as Paolo took the corner. A horn blared as the van tilted a second time, but in the other direction.

The vehicle came to a screeching halt, and the back doors flew open. We were greeted by a team of doctors and nurses. Asher crawled out of the van still holding Zayla. and I was a step behind him, but a nurse cut off my path as Asher placed Zayla in the center of a gurney.

“I’m Dr. Lynn. Can you tell us anything about her collapse?” The tall woman asked.

Asher scrubbed a hand over his face. “She was fine one second and out the next. There is a possibility someone implanted a device in her and could have poisoned her.”

The doctor’s green eyes blinked a couple of times. “Okay. Let’s get her into the hospital and start running tests.”

I reached out and twined my fingers with Asher’s as we followed the team of medical professionals. Two large glass doors slid open, and the faint scent of disinfectant filled the air. Another set of doors opened near the check-in counter. Asher and I were only a few steps behind, but a nurse stopped our progress. “Let us check her over. As soon as Dr. Lynn has information, she’ll come to see you.”

“Is she going into surgery?” I asked.

“No,” the woman’s eyes softened. “Let us do our job. I promise she is in good hands.”

Kat strode over and placed her hand on my forearm. “You will only be in the way. They have a sitting area right over there.”

I glared down at Kat. “Are you fucking serious? I watched you fight four security guards to get to Antonio when he was in surgery, and you couldn’t even enter the room. I’ve never known you to be a hypocrite, Kat.”

“We will give you an update soon,” the nurse stated. I turned to tell her I would be going with her, but she’d already slipped through the door, and it closed. My fingers were wrapped around the handle, but it didn’t budge.

“CJ,” Kat said softly. “You’re right. I’ve done that on not one, but three occasions. And I can stand here and say I won’t do it again, but the words would be a lie. What I can tell you though, is one of my incidents caused complications in Antonio’s surgery. Hospitals are my kryptonite. Each time I step through the doors of any medical center, that faint scent of bleach mixed with a hint of latex sends my mind hurtling years in the past. I relive the day I woke up, and Juan told me Antonio had died. I hate thinking about the years I spent as a shell of a person, because I didn’t have the man I loved anymore. Only to find out he was alive, and Juan had deceived me.”

Damn it. I dropped Asher’s hand and wrapped my arms around Kat. Not very often did I see her cry, and if you called her on it, she would deny it even as tears dripped down her face. “I feel hopeless.”

Asher placed his hand on my back. “Let’s all have a seat and regroup. Zayla’s going to need us when she wakes up.”

Paolo leaned against the wall in the waiting room. He had my backpack in his hand. Asher was right. We needed to figure out who took the documents. I yanked my laptop out of the bag and tapped the power button. Asher sat right next to me and his shoulder brushed against mine. The simple touch eased a tiny bit of my anxiety.

When my computer finished powering up, I clicked on the icon that gave me access to my virtual server. The system still had the bank video feed. It didn’t take long to get back to the exact location. Zayla had walked out the back area’s door. Asher wrapped his arm around her waist, and the scene played out as Zayla dropped the folders and fell to the ground. Asher’s attention was on Zayla. The front door opened, and a person walked in, but a blur covered their image making it impossible to see who it was.

“Can you fix that?” Asher asked.

At the DEFCON Hacker convention this year, I’d sat on a panel that listened to startups pitch ideas for funding. I recalled that one of them was a woman who’d developed a reflective material that caused a person to look like a reflective star. I had thought it was interesting, but the cost of the clothing was out of control. Plus, I didn’t think the market for it would be that big. In the end nobody invested in that company.

“No, the material is causing that reflection, and the camera didn’t pick up the image.”

Antonio dropped into the chair on my other side. “Can you do anything to the video to try to get a better image? Because she took the documents.”

“It might be possible to do some enhancements. But the best solution might be to reach out to Aaron and see if one of his contacts in the film industry could take a look. It would probably be quicker too.” I countered.

“Send the video to Aaron,” Kat said as she got up. “I’ll call him and tell him what we need.”

Aaron was Asher and Antonio’s other brother. He’s an A-list actor, although he doesn’t do films anymore. When he had met his partners, Neal and Daisy, he walked away from his Hollywood career to be with them.

The doors xZayla was wheeled through opened, and Dr. Lynn walked out. She gave us a brief update, informing us that they had started running tests and planned to do an MRI. She promised to give us more information when she had it, but warned that it would take a while for the results to come in.

Asher asked if we could see her, and she responded that we would be able to soon.

When Dr. Lynn left Paolo brought up a good point about the events at the bank. “All the time I’ve known Vincenzo, not once did he back down from a challenge. Not one of his men or Liu’s men showed up to the bank today. Not even around the permitter watching to see if we showed.”

I glanced up from my laptop. “He might have hired an outside crew.”

“Yesterday, he sounded like he would burn down the world for the information Zayla retrieved. As much as I want to say fuck them, we need answers. Do you have anyone in the Russo family you can reach out to?” Antonio asked Paolo.

“I’ll make some calls,” he answered as he pulled the cigarette pack from his pocket and strode for the front doors.

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