Page 28 of A Deadly Game of Cat and Mouse

“That inept moron? Please. I’d rather swallow a syphilis ridden slug.”

I laughed as I again slapped the guy on the back.

Told you. Me, light side, Darth Vader over there, dark side.

***

Two hours later, Gabe frowned at his phone as a girl balanced herself precariously on his lap.

The party going on was wild. Inviting the boys over meant the girls followed and pretty soon, there were over a hundred kids at Primrose Hall.

Winthrop didn’t care. His dad was out of town, and he basically had the run of the place even though he was only fourteen. I’m sure there was a nanny here somewhere, but I had no idea who she was.

Should my father ask you the question, however, her name is Marie, all right?

“What’s wrong?” I inquired, but he didn’t answer with this many people around.

Gabe was a vault. The only reason I knew as much about him as I did was because of my stubbornness. That, and the fact that I was at the wrong place at the wrong time.

When I met my, hum, friendly neighbor for the first time, I stumbled upon him with his dad, and witnessed the strange dynamic between the two of them.

It wasn’t inappropriate or anything, just really weird. Even looking back on it now, I still couldn’t put my finger on what bothered me about it. But something was off for sure, because the nut job tried to bash my head in the next day.

I didn’t let him, obviously. Instead, I told him he had nothing to worry about. That I saw nothing, and even if I had, I’d take it to the grave with me.

That was seven years ago, we’ve been friends since.

When he excused himself from the girl, whose name I couldn’t remember for the life of me, I knew something was wrong. So, I followed him to his secret room.

Yeah, the kid had a bat cave, and only three people knew about it. Him, his brother Mace, and yours truly (technically, you now know about it too, but don’t tell Winthrop, or he’ll skin me alive).

“Someone is trying to access Winthrop Financials mainframe.”

“And? Hundreds of people do that every minute of the day. What’s special about this one?”

“They passed through the first level of security.”

My eyes widened at that because the thing had so many traps and fail-safes on it, it made the ones at the White House look like child’s play.

Not that I knew anything about it. Gabe tried to teach me the art of hacking once, and I literally fell asleep on his ass watching the damn program decrypt the data for hours.

Let’s just say it’s nothing like what you see on television.

“I thought the system was impossible to breach?”

“It is.”

“Then how?”

“That’s what we’re about to find out.”

Another thing that separates me from Darth Vader was our brains.

I was smart. I worked hard, and on a 4.0 GPA scale, mine was a solid 3.3.

Gabe, however, was in the genius level IQ. He kept it a secret from everyone, but never did so with me.

I mean, come on, with the amount of time we spent together, did you really think I’d miss those advanced postgraduate books on quantum mechanics he hid in his room or the books in Latin no one could read but him?

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