Page 73 of Wicked Games

He pales.

“You don’t want to see what happens if you get a third strike,” I warn. “And I will end you if you ever disrespect either of us again. Understood?”

He nods quickly, his eyes wide with fear.

“Now get the fuck out of my sight before I change my mind and give you exactly what you deserve.”

He lets out a little squeak and scurries into his room like the rat he is.

When his door closes behind him, I jog down the hall toward the stairwell. Hopefully Natalie and William heed my warnings and leave me the fuck alone, and this is the end of it. I have enough shit going on. I don’t need to add ex-girlfriend drama on top of it.

It doesn’t take me long to jog up to the top floor, and I don’t bother knocking when I reach their door and just walk in.

Their room is identical to mine, only they have ornate canopy beds and arched ceilings and windows that make the room look a bit like a cathedral.

Jax is stretched out on the couch, looking at something on his phone, and Jace is at his desk, studying his laptop.

“Anything?” I ask, settling on the couch next to Jax.

“Maybe,” Jace says, his attention still on his screen.

“Maybe?” I ask when he doesn’t elaborate.

“Whoever did this is good.” Not looking up from his computer, he lifts Felix’s phone and wiggles it. “But they were sloppy.”

“How so? And explain it to me like I’m five,” I add.

Jace and Jax are two of the smartest people I’ve ever met, and Jace forgets that not everyone is a self-taught hacker who can follow his computer speak when he explains this stuff.

He spins in his chair so he’s facing me. “I found a flaw in the code that I can use to reverse engineer how they got into the system.”

“So you can you track them?”

“I should be able to once I follow the breadcrumbs back to the source.”

“How long will that take?”

Over the years, I’ve learned that hacking isn’t as exciting as it looks in the movies. Most hack jobs take weeks, if not months, to even get a foot in the door, and most of that time is spent trying to trick some moron into giving you access to their systems.

The active part of hacking comes after, but even then, it’s a lot of coding and trial and error, and not the big, dramatic hacker battles the media shows us.

“No clue.” He blows a bubble with his gum and pops it with a loudsnap. “But there’s something weird about it.”

I glance at Jax as he leans forward, his forearms on his thighs. “What do you mean?” he asks.

“At first glance, it looks like an error in the code, but the deeper I look into it, the more I’m positive it was deliberately put there and disguised to look like an error.” He rocks back and forth in his chair, pushing himself in a slow arc with his feet.

“You think they purposely added a way for you to track them?” I ask.

He snaps his gum loudly. “Yup.”

“Why would someone do that?” Jax asks. “Why would they deliberately add something to the code that would make it easier to get caught?”

“One thing you have to understand about hackers is that we love to fuck with each other.” Jace leans back in his chair and blows a quick bubble. “This kind of shit is like when a serial killer writes letters to the police, giving them just enough clues to drive them crazy, but not enough to actually solve the case. Or when a bomb maker puts their signature on every bomb to claim it and taunt investigators.”

“So they’re giving you a way to track them because they think you won’t be good enough to track them?”

“That would be my guess.”

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