The Life - Rebirth (The Life 4)

“Is that why that mutt’s been in here every damn day? You’ve got the dog spying?”

“No, it’s not Bunny.” I looked at Mancini, who shrugged. Lying ass, I wouldn’t put it past him to have let her back in.

“Thanks for your help. Go play hopscotch or something.” I waved her off.

“If this works, do we get a prize, daddy?” You see, this is how she keeps roping me back in. One minute she’s Marie Curie, and the next, she’s freaking Bambi.

“Yeah, baby, you can have a prize.” She skipped and hopped her manipulative ass out of the room.

“So, I see the shame on your faces. Why didn’t any of you think of this?”

“Well, Nia is a level ten; they don’t think like us. Plus, how do we know the boy’s been to Sicily before?” There was a crackling sound over the PA system that piped into the room.

“He wouldn’t go there for the first time to commit murder. He’d have scoped out the area himself, not trusting anyone else to do it.”

Every man in the room ran to their computers while Mancini did one of his scanning shits. “Nia, how did you know what we were talking about?” She hung up.

“Mancini, did she hack your shit?”

“No. Guys?” There was a ring of all-clear going around the room. No one had been hacked by the ten-year-old Asian ninja.

“You, out!” I grabbed Mengele’s two-hundred-pound snitch and put his ass outside. “Go hang with the women.” Fucker turned and headed in the direction of the lounge where the girls hang out. What the fuck has Mengele been teaching this damn dog?

“Anything?” I asked Mancini, who'd already plugged the stick into his secure computer.

“There’s only one name, Russo, twice in the last year.”

“Well, let’s see who we got.”

GABRIEL

“Who are you? why are you trying to hack into my system?” I pressed some keys quickly to stop the hacker from getting any further.

“So, you’ve seen me. Pretty good.”

“You’re not bad yourself; now answer the question.” I was calm and cold as ice.

“I’m someone who is trying to save you from yourself.”

“I don’t compute.”

“You know exactly what I’m talking about. That road you’re about to take, it’s a dead end. You shouldn’t be so quick to give up on yourself. I don’t want to see someone with your capabilities wasted. Stay safe!” And he’s gone.

Who the hell was that? Whoever he is, he’s good, very good. I almost didn’t see him until it was too late. I shut down and reworked some stuff on my end to safeguard myself even further. I’m not exactly nervous, but this is the first time something like this has happened. Trying to save me from myself. Memnon? No, it wasn’t his crawlers, so who?

I could run a reverse hack, but I get the feeling this person is too good, and I’ll only be exposing myself. He was nonthreatening in his verbiage, but that was too close for comfort. With more secure measures in place, I went back to what I was doing, certain that he won’t get back in, but the almost successful attack stayed on my mind. Where’s the connection?

This person is most likely referring to my trip to Sicily, but how do they know what I’m planning? The only one I’ve ever hinted at my plans to is Memnon. Could he have spoken to someone? Not likely; it’s not like him. I tried to remember if I’d tipped my hand since that day so many years ago or given anything away in the last little while since we’d been in contact more often than usual, but nothing came to mind.

My mind kept going back to Mem, but if I contacted him now, wouldn’t that be opening myself up to more attacks? Whatever! I just had to keep reminding myself that I’d stopped him in his tracks. I’m confident in my equipment and the things I’ve put in place to keep myself protected.

Since leaving high school, I haven’t had to hide, not while living in the guesthouse, but I’d gone ahead and put in security measures all the same. I have my system rigged to combat anything thrown at it and keep it up to date always. It’s not so much what the person said, but the fact that they’d searched me out and almost found me.

There’s nothing in there that would find me, except for an IP, and mine leads back to Switzerland then zings off Uzbekistan and some other not-so-nice places. I change it up every so often just to be safe, and it would take monumental effort to crack, but he’d been so close. It couldn’t have been a Trojan horse; I never open emails or anything else on this computer, for that matter. This is strictly used to hack into other people’s shit. I guess it’s apropos that it had almost been done to me.