He Will be My Ruin

“So he’s a hacker.”

Zac chuckles. “A hacker? No. I’m a hacker. James Hartford is a fucking god. He goes by the name GenerationInvasion online. I’ve heard him speak at Def Con—that’s a hacker convention. He’s broken some of the biggest—”

“Yes. He’s a hacker.” Doug glares at Zac. “He enjoys breaching company networks and charging them big money to redesign and fortify their systems. He runs a business under his online name.”

Another monitor changes to a simple—and unimaginative—website. “Kind of basic, isn’t it?” Villages United’s website has more personality than this. I’d expect someone with his technical prowess to do better.

“It’s a me-myself-and-I operation. Some people have accused him of attacking systems anonymously and then strolling in to save the day, setting it up so companies feel it necessary to hire him. Either way, he’s made himself quite a name for solving security issues. A name he doesn’t seem to go by in everyday life for whatever reason, seeing as he’s adopted the name ‘James Grady’ and even has a credit card registered in that name.”

“That’s why I didn’t make the connection between his screen name and who he is right away,” Zac adds.

Thank God I’m sitting, because my knees are shaking. “So, he would probably know how to hack into Celine’s camera.”

Zac snorts. “In his sleep. Her camera, her computer. Everything.”

“You said she wasn’t very tech-saavy. She could have asked him to help set the camera up in the first place. Makes it even easier for him to get into the system,” Doug says.

Zac’s heavy almost-unibrow arches. “He could have been watching her for months, for all we know.”

Which means Grady could have been the one watching the night Jace came over, somehow figured out who he was, and seen an opportunity for blackmail.

My stomach sinks. “But why be a building super when he has this company? And why would he watch her like that? Who does these things?”

“Someone who had serious affection for the pretty tenant downstairs?” Doug must see the distress in my face—he’s figured out what kind of relationship I had going with Grady—because his harsh tone softens just slightly. “But we’re just spitballing here. We need to play out all the possible scenarios. Zac can’t get into his system remotely.”

“Fort Knox,” Zac confirms. “Ain’t happening from the outside.”

“But it got me thinking about Grady and Celine and the connection to Vanderpoel, from her diary. Zac started doing his thing.”

“I thought to myself, if I were stalking a chick . . .”

I cringe at Zac’s verb choice. Though, if Grady was monitoring Celine through her camera, then there isn’t a better word for it than that.

“. . . I’d be looking to run into her every chance I could, and make her think all these coincidences must add up to the universe’s grand scheme for me and her. I’ve already got the perfect connection at home—she’s only a floor below me, I can watch her in her apartment, I have keys to get into her apartment if I need to—but I need more. So I find a reason to be in her building. A legit reason, because I want her to know that I’m there. And what am I good at? Breaking into company systems.” Zac blows up the testimonial page of Grady’s website.

My heart sinks.

There’s the missing connection.

There’s the reason Celine wrote about running into Grady in her office building the same day she ended up sleeping with him for the first time.

CHAPTER 38

Celine

July 16, 2015

I smile at the middle-aged lady and take my place on the other side of the elevator, hiding my disappointment that it’s not Jace riding with me. I’ve gone months at a time without seeing him around the building. Of course I’m not going to share an elevator with him a mere hour after running into him at Hollingsworth.

We travel up in silence, stopping several times to let people off on their floors. I keep my eyes ahead, feeling the glances from men as they get on. Although it’s something I’ve become used to, I’m still not comfortable being stared at like that.

The doors open on my floor and I step out.

And I stop short, in surprise.

It takes me a moment of gawking at him—his typical jeans and T-shirt replaced by a suit, his scruff trimmed and his hair gelled back in a dark, loose wave—to accept that I’m not mistaken and this is in fact Grady, the same guy who I run into in the hallways of my apartment building on a semi-regular basis. We seem to have the same mail pickup and laundry schedule, and he’s always fixing something for Ruby. “Hey. What are you doing here?” At my place of work.

His hazel eyes crinkle with his smile. “Fixing your computer system. You guys were hacked a couple weeks ago.”

I frown. “Really? You know how to do that?”

Grady chuckles. “Yeah. It’s kind of a side business for me.”

“Wow, that’s . . .” My eyes trail over his appearance again.

He looks really different in a suit. Really attractive. It feels like I’m actually seeing him for the first time.

And if a company like Vanderpoel has hired him to fix their system, he must be really good at it. “That’s impressive. Do you do this for a lot of companies?”

“Just a few, here and there . . .” He sighs. “I’m not really into the corporate world.”

“But you could do really well. You wouldn’t have to—” I cut myself off before I say, fix toilets and trap mice.

He knows what I was getting at. “I like doing the building management stuff. It’s easy, low-stress, lets me work with my hands. That’s what I like. This is just easy money for me.”

My disappointment swells. Not very motivated is more like it.

The elevator doors open again and Vanderpoel employees filter out, forcing me to step closer to Grady. He doesn’t back up. “So, how long will you be here?”

“Just the afternoon. But do me a favor and don’t mention it to Ruby, or anyone else in our building. The owner’s weird about me working another job. I kind of promised him that I wouldn’t.”

I wink. “Your secret is safe with me.”

CHAPTER 39

Maggie