Page 1 of Hung Up on the Hacker

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Tennessee: The Volunteer State Welcomes You

As the sign flashed by on I-81, Cash Grantham hit the voice controls on his steering wheel. “Call Hadley Steele.”

The call connected, and the phone rang. And rang. And rang. Until her voicemail picked up. Again.

So, thirty-six hours hadn’t been enough time for her to cool off. She could’ve been in the middle of work, but he knew her routine pretty well by now. After five phone calls, if she’d wanted to talk to him, she’d have picked up.

“Look, Hadley, I know you’re pissed. I know you don’t think this is necessary. But I swear to you, in the grand scheme of things, this is the right move. I’ll come find you when I get back to town. Assuming your brother doesn’t put me in the ground first.”

It wasn’t an unrealistic outcome. Cash had chosen to drive the seven-odd hours down from Baltimore to give himself time to consider his approach to this conversation, in hopes that it would remain civilized.

Holt Steele was one of his best friends. His brother in all but blood. The man was the main reason Cash had survived growing up as the only child in an abusive, single-parent household. Holt had given him a safe place to land, when his mother couldn’t be bothered to give a shit—which had been most of the time. She hadn’t wanted him and had never made a secret of the fact that she hadn’t been given a choice. She’d resented every second of his presence, every penny he’d cost. Cash didn’t like thinking about where he’d have ended up without the Steele siblings. He knew well enough the horrors that had visited others in similar positions. Holt had always had his back. And Hadley… Hadley had given him a light in the darkness of a very grim childhood.

Cash didn’t know exactly when things had changed. He’d always loved her, even when that bold, fiery spirit landed her in trouble that they’d had to bail her out from. Which had been often. But it had been the love of a brother. A friend. He wasn’t sure precisely when he’d fallen for her. It was sometime after they’d reconnected, and he’d become aware that little Hadley Steele was all grown up and just as much of a ball buster as she’d always been. Damn, if he hadn’t found that hot as hell.

He’d never intended to lay a hand on her. Best friend rules and all that. But she’d had other ideas, and he’d been powerless to resist her. He wasn’t proud of how he’d justified it to himself, saying it was okay because they’d planned for their affair to be temporary. They’d both thought the heat between them would burn out and they’d move on, with Holt being none the wiser.

But Cash had gone and fallen in love with her.

He’d known it for a while and hadn’t said a word. Hadley would probably bolt if he dropped the L-word. It was one thing for them to have fallen into something more serious. It was another thing to label it. She didn’t trust in permanent relationships of a romantic variety. And why should she, after seeing her mom go through a parade of men, while more or less forgetting the fact she’d had two kids? So he’d put off dealing with the whole situation. But every day that passed, he’d felt more and more like shit that they were actively hiding their relationship from her brother. He’d finally hit his limit and put them on pause until he could talk to Holt.

Hadley hadn’t taken it well. She was justifiably pissed at the idea that he was headed to Tennessee to get her brother’s permission. She wasn’t a possession. Wasn’t Holt’s to control. Cash understood that. But because of who Holt was to him, anything less than this was a betrayal. Really, the last six months of lies were already a massive breach of trust. Cash needed to make it right, and he could only hope like hell that the ring in his pocket would help them both forgive him.

But damn, he had no idea how he was going to bring up the topic with her incredibly overprotective brother—the former Army Ranger who knew a lot of ways to kill a man. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if Holt wanted to kick his ass. It wasn’t like Cash couldn’t take on his buddy. He’d been Army Intelligence for a lot of years and was highly trained in his own way. Not to mention, they’d fought side-by-side for years growing up, so he knew how his friend moved. But if Holt needed to pound on him, Cash had no intention of stopping him. A bruising seemed like the least he owed his friend for the deception of the past six months. Then maybe Holt would actually give Cash the chance to explain that this wasn’t a fleeting thing. He truly was in love with Hadley and wanted to make a life with her.

Would Holt think he was good enough for her? The stability Cash had created, the company he’d built using the skills he’d honed in the Army, and the money he’d accrued weren’t the kind of things his friend gave a good damn about. They weren’t the measure of a man. Not when you’d lived through hell together.

By the time he rolled into Eden’s Ridge, Cash hadn’t settled on any answers. It wasn’t the first mission he’d worked with insufficient intel. He’d just have to play the whole damned thing by ear.

He hated playing things by ear.

Following the directions on his GPS, Cash drove to Bad Boy Bakers. It was a hell of a thing, knowing his friend had found a new purpose in opening a bakery with two other graduates from an experimental therapy program. But Holt was happy, and that was the only thing that mattered in the end.

Clad in dark green siding, the building itself sat partway up a hill, with the forested mountains stretching up behind it. Late autumn sun glinted off the tin roof. A few patrons sat on the wraparound porch, proving that winter was a long way from arriving here in East Tennessee. It was a little weird to see the place in person, since he was familiar with every angle of surveillance they had on the place, inside and out. But this was his first time actually visiting, despite repeated invitations from all three of the bakery’s owners.

Cash climbed out of the car and headed for the door. A few more patrons occupied four-top tables inside. Courtesy of interior surveillance footage, he recognized the old geezers as regulars who liked to camp out and visit several times a week. They had the look of veterans about them, even without the trucker hat one of them sported with the Marine Corps coat of arms. Behind the counter, he spotted Jonah Ferguson and Brax Whitmore, both of Holt’s business partners. They’d never met in person, but Cash was accustomed to being in situations where he knew more than everyone else in the room.

Jonah nodded a greeting. “Hey. Can we help you?”

Stuffing his hand into the pocket of his peacoat, Cash wrapped his fingers around the ring box. “Yeah. Holt here?”

The former SEAL didn’t lose the friendly smile, but Cash saw the sharpening of his gaze and approved. “Who’s asking?”

“Cash Grantham.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Jonah skirted out from behind the counter and came straight over, his hand extended. “It’s good to finally meet you in person.” The man’s shake was firm.

“Likewise.”

“We can’t thank you enough for your help over the last year,” Brax added, stepping up to offer his own hand.

Cash had turned his skills at espionage and hacking toward helping the three of them uncover who was behind a long string of harassment that had threatened the bakery and each of the women the bakers had fallen for. It had been a small thing in the scope of the sort of operations he ran most of the time. “Happy to help.”

“Holt!” Jonah shouted. “Get out here.”

The door that separated the kitchen from the front swung open, and Holt’s familiar figure strode through. His smile spread wide at the sight of Cash. Unlike his partners, he didn’t stop with just a handshake, pulling Cash in for a back-thumping hug.

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