Page 5 of Hide and Seek
“Do you think he got the message?” Killian asks, stopping Jace’s tirade before it can start.
“Oh, sonowyou want to know all about my brilliance and how I just did something incredible.” Jace shifts the knife to his left hand and snaps the blade open. “But to answer your question.” He spins the blade around his fingers in another complicated pattern he can practically do in his sleep. “I don’t know if he figured out exactly what we’re trying to say, but he knows that Felix’s would-be killer is dead and the guy who’s been blackmailing him has also been deleted from existence.”
“It’s scary how easy that is for you,” Felix says, his eyes on how Jace is still spinning the blade. “Doing that with one hand is freaky enough, but being ambidextrous with knife spinning is diabolical.”
Jace tosses him a grin. “It’s always fun seeing people’s sphincters clench when they realize we can fuck them up with either hand just as efficiently.” He tosses me a quick look. “Right, bro?”
“It really is,” I agree.
“So this Myles kid knows the people who were blackmailing him are dead,” Killian says, bringing the conversation back to Jace’s hack job. “What are the chances that he figures out you’re the one who got into his system?”
“One hundred percent.” Jace grabs a pack of gum off his desk and pops a piece out. “It’s a matter of when, not if, with this kid. He’s one of the best, if notthebest, that I’ve ever seen.” He tosses the piece of gum in his mouth and chews loudly. “But it should take him a while to find out how I got into his system.” He flicks his gaze to Felix and makes a “go on” gesture with his hand.
Felix grins and pretends to zip his lips shut.
Jace chuckles affectionately. “Like I was saying, it should take him a while to figure out how I got into his system, which means it’ll take time for him to shut me out and trace the hack back to me. I’ll keep digging and see what he’s hiding so we can figure out how he got involved in this shit in the first place.”
“Good.” Killian nods and gently brushes his fingers through Felix’s hair. “Did you learn anything new from his student files?” he asks me.
I shake my head and lean back in my desk chair. “Nothing important. Myles Henderson, eighteen,” I recite, repeating what I learned when I pulled his files from the school’s admin system. “Son of Thomas and Abigail Henderson, has two younger siblings. Graduated from one of the best private schools in the country with a four-point-nine GPA and more medals in track than Felix has in swimming. He’s currently maintaining a five-point-oh here at Silvercrest, and he’s a first gen living in the Boondocks.”
The college we all attend is one of the most elite schools in the world, and it operates on an invite-only admission system. People whose families have attended for generations are considered legacies, while those who are the first of their families to attend are called first gens, or first-generation students.
Because of the unique nature of our school, the first gens live under much stricter rules than the rest of us. They’re not allowed to join any of the four frats on campus, including theRebels, which Jace, Killian, and I are members of, and they can only live in Boone House, or the Boondocks as we call it. It’s a nice enough building with all the same amenities as the rest of the houses, but they aren’t allowed to participate in any of the campus games or events, and most of the other houses, including ours, don’t allow first gens onto their grounds without special permission.
It's fucked up, but old money doesn’t like new money, and there’s a lot of old money on campus.
“His dad is a software engineer who jumped on the AI train early, and his mom is a data scientist,” I report. “They developed an AI screening system that was bought for billions about three years ago, and they went from barely comfortable to Scrooge McDuck status overnight. On paper, they’re exactly what you’d expect.”
“What about off paper? What did you learn from your deep dives?” Felix asks.
“Not a lot.” I spin back and forth in my chair, using my foot to move in a slow arc. “And that, in and of itself, is interesting.”
“What do you mean?” Jace blows a bubble with his gum.
“There’s almost no information about the family online. Not the buyout, their work before they struck gold, and even less since.”
“That is interesting,” Jace says. “Are you thinking NDAs and corporate secrecy, or did someone scrub their digital footprints?”
“Most likely scrubbing. Someone worked double time to make sure that any info about the family was either hard or impossible to find unless you know exactly where to look.”
“So you didn’t find anything that links him or his family to the plot against Felix?” Killian asks.
I shake my head.
“What I don’t understand is how an eighteen-year-old hacker got involved in a murder-for-hire plot in the first place,” Felix says. “Do you still think he was blackmailed into it?”
I nod. “My guess is that he either fucked up while he was messing around where he shouldn’t have been and someone found out what he can do, or he learned something he shouldn’t have and someone used that to pressure him into participating.” I shrug and stop spinning back and forth in my chair. “Or maybe I’m way off, and he’s just a moron who tried to play with the big boys and got his ass digitally handed to him when he messed with the wrong people.”
“What do you think?” Felix asks Jace.
“Don’t have enough data to say either way.” Jace blows another bubble with his gum. “But based on what I’ve seen so far, I’m thinking it’s the first. He’s good, like insanely good, but nothing about him seems malicious. He’s been active in the hacker scene for years, but I couldn’t find any evidence that links him to anything nefarious. If anything, he’s Robin Hood, not the Sheriff of Nottingham.”
“Robin Hood?” Felix sits up and scoots back so he’s leaning against Killian.
“About a year ago, a group of hackers targeted a non-profit that was laundering billions of dollars out of cancer research and into the pockets of the board of directors and their companies. The hack didn’t just expose their crimes; it decimated their internal systems and redirected all of their asset holdings into hundreds of other charities that actually donate to cancer research. And in an act of pettiness that I one day aspire to achieve, they released thousands of files to the public, exposing a full-ass ring of bogus charities all linked to five parent companies. No one took credit for the job because they knew it would put them on an instant death list, but he was part of it. The proof is in his system.”
“Jesus.” Killian lets out a low whistle. “That’s one way to make enemies.”
