Page 3 of Hide and Seek
According to the report, the body of Jacob Fisher was found on the side of a highway about fifty miles from the school with two gunshot wounds to the abdomen.
“No way,” I mutter and double-check the date on the report. It’s from two days ago.
The report fades from my screen and is replaced by a photo of another man who’s lying on a hardwood floor with a bullet hole through his neck and another time stamp overlaid on it from five days ago. An autopsy report loads next to the photo, and it’s for Erik Carmichael, who was apparently shot in a home invasion on the same date.
My brain starts ping-ponging as the photo and autopsy reports disappear, and I unconsciously start connecting the dots from the information I was just shown.
I’m still processing everything when my system flashes back to life and my screens are restored like nothing happened.
“Phoenix?” Echo asks as my headphones also flash back to life.
“Myles?” Cipher asks. “What the fuck, dude?”
The fact that he’s using my actual name and not my handle tells me how freaked out he is.
“I’m here,” I say quickly.
“What the hell happened?” Echo asks. “Why did you go dark?”
“Power failure,” I blurt out. “A short one. Knocked me offline, and I had to wait until it was restored.”
“Really?” Cipher doesn’t sound convinced. “Your fancy pants school full of billionaires had a power failure?”
“Not even the rich can be completely insulated from mechanical issues,” I say, trying to keep my tone light and unbothered. “I gotta log off anyway so I can finish that assignment before it’s due.”
“Yeah, okay,” Echo says, and I can tell that she’s also unconvinced by my lie. “Talk to you tomorrow.”
“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Cipher asks.
“Positive.” I try to sound confident and not at all like I’m about to lose my shit. “Just gotta get ahead of this assignment. Later.”
“Later,” he says.
I cut the feed and exit out of all of my programs except the private server for my class so I can upload my code. When that’s done, I shut everything down and start a full sweep and diagnostic of my system to figure out what the fuck justhappened and how the hell whoever just invaded my system managed to get into it.
I know what they wanted me to see, but not why.
The two men who’ve been blackmailing me are both dead, and they died only a day apart on different sides of the country.
Instead of being ecstatic that they’re gone and can’t bother me anymore, I’m filled with a cold sense of dread. Someone killed them, and they know I was involved in the shit they were doing.
Were those messages a threat, and whoever killed them is trying to tell me I’m next? Or was that their way of telling me I’m finally free?
Or was it a bit of both?
Pushing those thoughts to the back of my mind, I focus on my system and start the painstaking process of going over every layer of my security so I can reverse engineer how I was hacked and find the fucker who did it.
1
JAX
“Dum dum,duh duh da, dum dum da duh da,” Jace, my twin brother, sings from the other side of the room in the same tune as theMission: Impossibletheme song.
I glance over at him. “I take it you were successful?”
“Do do dooooooo,” he continues the song. “Do dodooooooo, do dodoooo, doo doo.”
“Doo doo.” Felix snickers from where he’s sprawled out on the couch in the center of the room Jace and I share.
