Page 45 of Hacker Beloved

“Can we stop for a second and talk about the fact that the person on the video was a woman?” I asked.

“Or she’s just someone the killer hired.” CJ shot back.

He pulled me out of bed, and we put our clothes on from the night before. My leg muscles groaned as I bent over to grab my shoes. When we stepped out of the room, the hall was silent. The bass from the night before was gone. Asher kissed us both before he walked out the front door. CJ led me to an elevator, where we went down a floor. He hit the unlocked button on the key fob, and we climbed into the vehicle.

I leaned back against the headrest. CJ reached over and squeezed my leg. “We’re getting close,” CJ said.

He rested one hand on the steering wheel and pushed the button to start the car. Soft Jazz filled the speakers, followed by a hissing noise. My eyes blinked opened to see a yellow smoke come through the vents.

“Get out,” CJ yelled, but my door wouldn’t open.

CJ shoved his shoulder against his door, and nothing budged. I pushed the down button on the windows, but they didn’t move.

“What do we do?” I asked between coughs.

“Glove box,” CJ’s words slurred. “Look for something sharp.”

My finger reached for the lever, but my arm wouldn’t move. My entire body went limp, and my head fell forward, connecting with the dash.

16

ASHER

My fingers wrappedaround the steering wheel so tight my knuckles turned white. The moment CJ’s phone went to voicemail, I knew something had happened.

I glanced at the family-owned restaurant on the corner of Mulbary and Grand Street. The last time I stepped foot in the Italian eatery, we had left with a threat to our lives.

It took three hours and some threats against the hospital for us to find the damn tape recorder. Which meant the killer could already be out of state with the two people I love.

My heart squeezed at the thought that I loved Zayla. Nothing would stand in the way of me finding them.

The tape recorder had fallen out of Zayla’s pocket when they transferred her between beds at the medical facility. I could only imagine someone had kicked it after it fell to the ground since it slid under the ultrasound equipment on the far wall. I’d almost given up hope, but decided to do one more check. So, I got down on the ground and searched. Dr. Lynn had rolled her eyes, saying it was impossible for the device to still be in the room, because they are cleaned top to bottom between patients. It appeared they’d missed a spot, because it was in the room.

We sprinted out of the hospital, and Paolo expertly weaved us through traffic, heading back to the hotel to play the recorder with CJ and Zayla. But when we arrived, the room was empty, showing no sign that they had been there at all. I pulled up the tracker app that CJ had designed. All employees of AA Security have a small, almost imperceptible tracker implanted in their right arm. When the screen finally loaded on my phone, all I saw on the New York map was my own blue dot. I zoomed out, but it picked up nothing. With a few taps, I went backward to see the last time the device registered. The last location was the Club garage. I tried his phone, and it went directly to voice mail. Paolo and I rushed back across town to find the rented SUV still parked in the garage with the doors wide open and yellow dust covered the seats and dash.

I called the team to determine if they could use the street cameras to search for CJ and Zayla. The damn killer always appeared to be one or two steps ahead of us, and I doubted that they would have allowed CJ or Zayla’s face to show above ground.

Originally, I planned to play the recording with Zayla, but now I hoped it had some clue as to who could have taken her. The team had run the image from the bank through the facial recognition software and it came back with no results.

With no other options, I played the recorder. In the beginning, Zayla’s dad reminisced about the language they’d created together and how much he loved her. She was his bright spot in a very dark world, and he promised if something ever happened to him that Zayla only needed to check the secret compartment on the floor under his desk. He stopped speaking and I thought it was over, but than he spoke again, but this time he talked about a a ten-year-old girl, who would be around thirty-five, now. And if something happened to him, Zayla was to hand over the documents in the safety deposit box to the police, but never the recorder. He went on to say he’d paid a family in Paris to take in the mystery girl. If the Italian or Chinese Syndicate found her, she would be in their grasp until they got what they wanted, and then they would kill her.

The possibility of the secret compartment still being untouched would be slim after so many years. But I hoped this long shot would work and had the team search property records to find the current owner. I was shocked when they reported back that Zayla’s dad still owned the property, and his bank account paid all the bills each month.

Paolo and I sped across town to access the condo. When we pulled up to the curb of the building, Paolo cursed. He went on to explain that Russo used condos in this building for his organization. That’s when I spotted at least five guards out on the street. With Paolo joining us, he wouldn’t be able to waltz through the doors. And I didn’t have time to scale the building or sneak in. My only option was to get Russo’s help.

I figured he wanted the tape recorder, and in return, I wanted access to the apartment.

Paolo cleared his throat and pulled me from my thoughts.

“You will sign that woman’s death warrant the moment you give that tape over,” Paolo stated.

“I doubt she is still in Paris. Plus, he never mentioned her name. Once CJ and Zayla are safe, we will search for the woman and find her before Russo even figures out her name,” I explained. Deep down, I knew my idea would still put the woman in danger.

“This idea is a long shot.”

“If I wasn’t so concerned about time, I would scale the fucking building and break a window. Antonio said the team was able to get a camera shot through the window. The place was never emptied and is still furnished, but someone definitely searched the place. Whatever is under the floorboards might have an answer for us.”

“Except if we find anything with the code, we don’t have a way to read it.” Paolo reached into his jacket and pulled out his cigarettes.

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