Page 60 of Made of Steel (Made of Steel 1)

She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose. "He has been. I'm trying to figure out why."

"What do you mean he has been?"

"He hacks my computers." She walked over to her monitors. "Well, I should say that I let him hack them. If I didn't want him to be able to, I could block him. His hacking skills aren't exactly great."

I didn't know anything about hacking. My mind was still fixated on the fact that she said he'd been watching me. "But how do you know what he sees?"

She stared at me blankly. "I'm good at what I do. For example, you just started school at Eastern University. Which just so happened to be one day before the vigilante's first appearance. And he was at the bank where all your money is. Which is a lot for someone your age. It's all connected somehow, I just don't know how. Your appearance set off this timeline of events. It jumpstarted something. He was waiting for you."

I shook my head. "None of this makes sense."

"It's basic cause and effect."

"No, I mean...I'm not involved in this. I don't even know who he is."

"That doesn't mean you didn't cause it. Look." She pointed to one of the monitors. The imaging was rotating, giving another view of the street. "He's looking for you."

A chill ran down my spine. "He's looking for what to do next. It has nothing to do with me."

"It has everything to do with you."

I stared at the monitor. This crazy girl wasn't touching anything. It was almost like a ghost was controlling it. Was he really looking for me? It should have scared me. But I wasn't scared of him. I knew he wouldn't hurt me.

"You have virtually no cyber footprint except for the information about your school enrollment and your bank account," the girl continued. "Which means you're not really who you say you are."

"I don't know what you're talking about. I'm Sadie Davis."

"And I'm the Queen of England."

I laughed.

She didn't look like she thought it was funny.

"I just don't like computers. That's why you couldn't find much on me."

"Who doesn't like computers?"

"I didn't grow up with one. I..."

"What kind of person who has 3 million dollars sitting in their bank account doesn't have a computer growing up?"

It was strange. But not as strange as the fact that she had hacked into my bank account. "I..."

"Why are you here, Sadie?" She put Sadie in air quotes. "In your email, you said you knew why the vigilante had broken his usual MO. So tell me why."

I shook my head. "Honestly, I thought maybe you were the vigilante. I just wanted to meet you. I didn't understand how you knew that it was him that had turned in that convict. It didn't fit his MO. So I thought maybe you were him. Because you had to be watching me."

She shook her head. "I wasn't watching you. It was the sedative the vigilante used. It's an odd mixture of ingredients. It's easy to trace the connection after you hack into the files from the NYPD."

"You hacked into the NYPD computers?"

"Yeah. It was easy." She sat down in the chair and swiveled to face her computers. "You just..."

"You don't have to show me."

She shrugged her shoulders and turned back around. She just stared at me, like she was waiting for me to answer a question she hadn't asked.

"What's your name?" I finally said, breaking the awkward silence.

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