Page 56 of Jaeda

I shook my head. “I cannot deal with this version of you. You need to get a woman, Daddy. When you’re single, you meddle. As a matter of fact, where is Maddie? Go tell her you want to get back together.”

He waved me off. “Just make sure you have that nigga here next Sunday, Jaeda. Don’t make me have to pull up on him.”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“Have you met me?”

I folded my arms. “Fine.”

My father smiled and kissed my cheek. “That’s what I like to hear. This should be fun.”

Without another word, he walked away. My head dropped back, and I groaned. If this dinner went south, I might only have the memory of Quaid’s good head left.

Fuck. My. Life.

Irubbed my temples as I sat behind the computer, looking at the screen. On rare occasions, I took house calls. This particular client was a special case. When he contacted me about a breach, I thought it was going to be a routine thing. Then I got in his computer and found all kinds of encrypted folders. To the untrained eye, they would have never been found. A professional had hidden them, but they also didn’t possess the skills I did.

When I stumbled upon them and opened one, I was sick to my stomach. This man had thousands of pictures and videos of underaged kids. Not only that, he was selling the pictures online. I’d immediately call Titan and put him up on game. He took the info back to Mia’s grandfather, and that set the plan in motion.

Mr. James told me to give Mr. Williams here a reason to call me back, so I put a virus on his computer. He’d come back to me a week later, and here I was. Unbeknownst to him, I’d installedsoftware that would allow me to access everything on here, encrypted or not. Titan and his team were outside watching as my computer gathered the names and addresses of every person he’d sold the images to. They were just waiting for the word to come in.

This nigga looked like he was on some shit. First off, the guy was shady as hell. He’d been looking over my shoulder the whole time. Every time I clicked on something, he started pacing or asking what I was looking for. I kept my gun on me. In this business, I never knew when someone was a standup individual or a fucking creep. Either way, my goal was to make it home by any means necessary.

“Did you find anything?” Mr. Williams asked.

“I’m running diagnostics. Mr. Williams, I’m gonna be real with you. Something ain’t adding up. What kind of sites are you visiting for this type of virus to gain access to your computer?”

“What do you mean? Nothing out of the ordinary.”

“I’ve just never seen this before. This looks like some black-market type of shit.”

He swallowed hard. “I wouldn’t even know how to get on the black market. Look, just focus on removing this virus, a’ight? I don’t want them coming back and looking for anything else. How can I get my security upgraded? This shit is crazy.”

“Hold up. I can’t fix this properly without understanding what happened.”

“I told you what happened. Somebody put spyware on my shit, and the same muthafucka probably put the virus on there. I need it off before they ruin me.”

“Financially, as long as you have insurance?—”

“It’s not just financially.”

I eyed him skeptically. Yeah, he was about to spiral. The wide-eyed crazed expression on his face was a dead giveaway.He was in panic mode and trying to figure out how to get out of this shit.

“To dig deeper into this, I’m gonna need to take the computer with me,” I said.

“What?”

“Everything I need is back at my office.”

“Then why didn’t you bring it? You came highly recommended, but so far, you seem unprepared and unqualified. There ain’t no way I paid you what I paid you and not even a week later, I get a virus. Maybe you’re the one that put it on there. Is that how you stay in business, Mr. Michaels? You fix a problem only to create a bigger one?”

I chuckled. “Mr. Williams, you seem suspicious, if we’re being honest. What don’t you want me to find on this computer?”

“Look, they already accessed secure client files. If that list gets out, I’m fucking dead. You don’t know the people I work for, man.”

I slid the chair back and stood to my feet.

“I think I’m gonna go. I can’t be part of this. You’ve been acting shady since I got here. Like whatever you’re hiding might be some shit you do federal time for.”

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