Page 1 of Clean Hack
Prologue
Lucy
Three dead bodies.
I looked around the shitty motel room and even though I blinked my eyes several times, there were still three dead bodies there. Three men, all of them very much not alive.
I need to shut the door.
My brain tried to keep me focused but I couldn’t seem to get up from my position in the corner of the room. My shaky hands still had a death grip on the bat that I’d used to defend myself at one point. Oh, and there was a knife too, but that was lost somewhere on the other side of the room. Pretty sure it went under the bed, but my head was quite fuzzy at the moment from everything that just happened to recall where it had ended up. Truth was, I had been a bit too busy trying to keep myself alive so that when the damn thing got knocked out of my hand, I couldn’t exactly follow the path to where it might have landed.
I should find it. I need to get this place cleaned up.
I didn’t have the first clue what to do now. Not with the bodies. Not with the blood that was splattered all around the room. And not even with myself.
You shouldn’t have left your apartment.
“Yes, I know,” I snapped at the rational side of my brain.
Shit, now I was talking to myself. This was a lot to handle, for anyone, let alone me. I shouldn’t have left the security of my home. I shouldn’t have come here. But I did, and then this happened, and well, there was no going back now.
There were reasons that I never left my place—that I never stepped outside my front door, and the funny thing was, those were the same reasons that I ended up leaving.
After Allison was taken, I shut down. She was like a sister to me and well, I felt completely lost after she was gone. I would never forget that night as long as I lived, in fact, it haunted me every time I closed my eyes.
I had been there that night. I’d just hoisted myself up and into her window when I heard the yelling from the front of the house. And in a flash, my happy, excited mood of spending time with my best friend celebrating her seventeenth birthday eating junk food on her bed and watching movies, was gone. As I made my way out into the hall and saw the strange man take a hold of a panic-stricken Allison like he was never going to let her go, I knew that the best thing in my life was gone too.
I was about ready to lunge forward, to try and save her, when her father shut the front door behind them as the man dragged Allison away. The door closed with a soft clink that turned my gut. He let this happen. He let that man take his daughter away. And I knew right then that I couldn’t ever let him know that I’d seen it all.
So I left, back the way I came, unsure of how I was going to handle all of this. I sent a text to Allison’s phone. The message said I was really sick and sadly wasn’t going to be able to make it that night. But I promised I would make it up to her. I knew she’d probably never get that message. That was the point after all. Though the whole message had been a setup, I vowed to keep that promise I’d made to her. We would celebrate her birthday later. I would make it up to her.
Seven years later, I was still trying to keep that promise.
Phone. I needed to find my phone. There was one person I could call. One person that I knew would be able to get me out of this situation and make it look like nothing had ever happened in this room. As much as I knew he could take care of this, I was hesitant to call him. I’d been watching him for years now, calling him behind a disguise and pointing him in the direction I had a good guess would be his next job.
I sat behind those screens watching, observing, mapping patterns and categorizing situations. Yeah, seemed sad and pathetic. But in a way, I knew most of those people better than they knew themselves.
With no other option left, I unfolded my body and slowly crawled on my hands and knees to the door. I quickly scanned the area to make sure that there weren’t any more surprises lingering outside. Then I shut and locked the door, not even rising to my feet. And because I felt shaky, I turned around and crawled to where my phone had been knocked to the floor. My blood-spattered hand shook as I reached out for it.
With quick fingers, I unlocked the screen and hit the programmed number before I could change my mind.
“Hello.”
It wasn’t a surprise that he answered on the second ring. He always did for me.
I sucked in a deep breath.
“Sea Breeze Motel. Room 213. Wilmington,” I whispered out, feeling vulnerable and exposed without my disguise. I couldn’t stay in the dark anymore. And I knew it was a matter of time before I’d be face-to-face with the man I tried so hard to hide from.
Then I hung up. He had the address, he would come. I had no doubt about that.
It felt like an eternity that I sat there. So long that my legs became numb and the sweat started to dry on my skin. But I was hardly aware of anything beyond the constant pounding of my heart.
Then the door busted in. My eyes looked up, my body not moving from its tucked away position in the far corner. Only, the man that was standing there holding a gun and clearly ready to shoot wasn’t the one I was expecting. And I knew I was completely screwed now.
