Page 6 of Girl Code
“Do you trust me?”
It was a question he shouldn’t ask. Not of her. Not when he knew that breaking her trust was the one thing he could never take back. Not when he knew it was the thing that had ruined them for good. But still, he met her gaze and he waited.
Finally, finally, after what felt like an eternity, Mickey nodded and for the first time all day, for the first time in what felt like years, Dante took a deep breath of fresh air.
“Good. Now grab your stuff. We have to go.”
3
Mickey felt like she’d somehow woken up in a weird sort of alternate reality. One where Dante was back in her life and vowed to protect her with his own. One where danger lurked around every corner just because she’d left one stupid, ego-driven line of code in the system when she hacked Billy Keating. She knew better. In the real world, she knew better than to leave anything that could be traced behind, which was why this couldn’t be real. Maybe it was all just one big hallucination brought on by her lack of sleep.
Only, as Dante led her up the steps to her apartment, one hand on his hip where there was an honest to God gun, the other to his lips, and she noticed that the door to number 24, her apartment, had been kicked in, she realized this wasn’t a hallucination or an alternate reality.. this was hell.
“Oh my God! No!” She cried out and tried to rush past Dante to get to her apartment but with one big arm around her waist he held her back. “Let go! Let go! I need to see!”
“Shh!” Dante whispered near her ear, “Whoever did that might still be here.”
Those words stopped her cold. She stopped fighting him, going lax in his arms. All the strength went out of her and she barely stayed on her feet when Dante lowered her back to the ground and then released her. She vaguely registered him telling her to stay close behind him which seemed like a stupid thing to say considering she was now all but clinging to his back, following him step by slowly gained step towards her broken door.
Dante pulled his gun as he swept into the room and Mickey gasped as the remains of what had been her apartment, her home, her entire life in one studio room, came into focus. Tears filled her eyes as she took in the damage. She was vaguely aware of Dante saying something a moment before he stepped away from her, as he moved carefully through the space, checking to verify the person that had done this wasn’t hiding somewhere inside, waiting to pounce on them. Mickey stood stock still, her hand to her mouth, fighting back the sobs that threatened to come every time she took a new breath or noticed another broken piece of her world lying on the floor.
The huge desk she’d had custom made to fit against two walls of the apartment was splintered into pieces that were nearly unrecognizable as anything but wood. The multiple sets of monitors that had sat atop were shattered and strewn all over the floor. The hard drives had been ripped from their casing, piled onto the floor and then, it appeared as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to them before setting them on fire. The black spot on the floor was all that remained but her brain tried to reconcile how all of this could have happened in a matter of hours, in the small fraction of time since she’d left for work just this morning.
It wasn’t just her computers that had been assaulted either. Her couch had deep gouges cut into it, the stuffing ripped away. The same had been done to her mattress and pillows on her small bed in the corner. All of the cabinets and drawers in the kitchen area were open or pulled clean from their hinges, the items inside broken and overturned in random, haphazard messes.
“It’s like they were looking for something.” She muttered to herself as Dante came back towards her, his gun still in his hand but down by his side now.
“Maybe they thought you’d made a copy of what you found and hid it somewhere.” Dante scowled and then his expression softened and he pulled her closer, wiping at a stray tear she hadn’t realized was rolling down her cheek, “Hey. Hey. It’s going to be okay. All of this, it’s just stuff. We can replace it. I’m just so glad you weren’t here when whoever broke in came looking.”
Mickey felt his rough fingers on her face like a caress over her entire body and she shivered as much from the intimacy of the action as from the terror his words brought. Whoever had done this had come here looking for her and for the information she’d taken off Keating’s computers. If she’d been here, would they have left her as broken and shattered as they had these things that made up her life? She was scared to admit the little voice in the back of her head vehemently agreed with Dante that they would have and that she was indeed in danger and needed his help.
“Dante, I…” She started to tell him the truth but was cut off by the sound of her cell phone ringing in the purse she’d dragged back over her shoulder before he escorted her out of her office. “That’s my phone. I should get it. It’s probably work or…”
She paused as she reached inside the bag and pulled the buzzing phone out. Strange. It was an unknown number but more than that, the number didn’t show up at all. The caller had either paid a fair amount of money to have their number blocked or they were smart enough to do it themselves.
A chill went down her spine and Mickey held the phone out to Dante to show him.
He frowned but nodded, “Answer it.”
“But…”
“Answer it, Mick. We need to know what we’re dealing with.” He moved to her side, motioning for her to put it on speakerphone.
Her hand was shaking and her breath was coming too fast when Mickey finally managed to push the button to answer the phone. She tapped the speakerphone button as well and held the phone up to her mouth. She listened for a moment, both she and Dante straining to hear the person on the other end, but absolutely no sound came through and she forced herself to speak when Dante nudged her.
“H-hello?”
“Ms. Hill?” A strange voice filtered through the line along with cracks and squeaks that told her all she needed to know.
This wasn’t the real voice of the person on the other end of the phone line. They were using some sort of voice modification system. It was electronic, not the old-fashioned handheld kind. She glanced at Dante and his scowl all but confirmed he was noting as much too but he squeezed her elbow where he held her, reminding her she wasn’t alone so that she could keep going.
“Yes?”
“It’s so nice to speak with you, Ms. Hill. I do wish we’d been able to do this in person but alas, it wasn’t meant to be.” The strange voice cracked and sizzled and Mickey felt bile rise in her throat at the insinuation that the person on the phone was the same person who had been in her apartment. “I suppose by now you’ve seen what we were forced to do to your computer.”
How had this become her life? Yes, she was a hacker. She knew that danger sometimes came with the territory, but Dante had been right earlier when he said he thought she’d gone straight. She had, for the most part. She worked her nine to five job just like most other Americans. She didn’t break the law, not normally. Hacking Keating had been a favor for a friend, a one-off. It wasn’t her normal and having someone break into her home and destroy all of her equipment and furnishings certainly wasn’t normal. This was insane!
Mickey swallowed hard and tried to focus on the voice, “Y-yes.”
