Southern Heat (Southern 6)

The whole back wall is filled with five big screens side by side. Five desks are on each side of the room with full computers on them. “Oh my God,” I say, looking around. “This looks like the headquarters to the FBI.”

Mayson laughs beside me. “The FBI wishes they had this system.” He walks in, and I follow him to the front of the room. My eyes are focused on the screens in front of me when we come to this big square table that sits in front of the big screens. There are screens built into the desk, and it’s all touchscreen. A yellow pad sits on the digital desk. “Let me go find Quinn,” Mayson says to me, and he turns to walk out of the room.

My legs walk toward the digital desk as I look down and see that someone was trying to do something. I look down at the paper seeing all this script on it.

I look down at the screen on the table and see that there is a mistake in the coding in one sentence. My hand moves before I can yell at myself to stop.

My eyes move as fast as my hand, the green cursor blinking the whole time I type. It takes me less than three minutes, and I have the system up and running. I look up at the big screen seeing it, and then I hear a voice behind me. I smile and fold my hands over my chest, seeing what I just did.

The sound of the door clicking has me turning around. My hands start to shake when I see Casey standing there looking at me. His eyes go to me and then the screen. He does it two times before he whispers the three words I wanted no one to know. “It was you?”

Chapter 31

Quinn

I pull open the door to the room when I hear my father talking. “It was you?” I walk into the room and stop moving.

My father is standing by the door that leads outside and in the middle of the room right in front of the big desk. The tears are running down her face as her hands shake. “It was you all along, wasn’t it?” He puts down his coffee, and Willow looks at me.

“I’m so, so sorry,” she says to me, making my heart speed up in my chest.

“What the fuck is going on?” I shout, putting my hands on my hips, feeling Mayson walk to my side, looking at Willow and then my father.

“It was me,” she says, trying to stand tall. “I was the reason that your father found you.” She looks over at Mayson. “He asked me to see if I could find you. He said that you were his long-lost child.” Her voice quivers. “That was when we first met. I found your name change a week later. I found you two days later, but I never told him. I pretended I couldn’t find you.” Her hands shake, and I want to walk over to her and put my hand around her, but I know she won’t want me. I know she doesn’t want me. “I never meant for any of this to happen. Never.”

“The surveillance feed,” my father says, looking at her.

“I hacked your firewall and replayed a loop of when the room was empty,” she admits. “But I left a trail.” She taps her hand on her leg, “I made the video jump at the end of the loop. I was hoping that you would see it.” She uses the same finger she was tapping on her leg to wipe the tear away when it escapes from her eye. “I was hoping that anyone watching the feed would know it was a recording. I never ever wanted anyone to get hurt,” she says and looks over at Mayson. “Through all this I just wanted it to end. I wanted you to find him, find us and end it.”

“You had no choice,” Mayson says. “I can’t even imagine what he did to make you do it.”

“Behind the computer I could be someone else,” she start to tell us. “It made me be invisible. It was just for fun at first but.” Willow looks down, and you can tell she has a hard time swallowing. “The minute he found out how good I was is the minute my life really became hell. He made me do things I hated doing. To the point where I never wanted to look at another computer again.” She looks down, avoiding my eyes. She’s avoided me ever since I walked into the room. She looks up at me. “I’ll be out of the house in an hour,” she says and then looks at Mayson. “I am so, so sorry for all the hurt and pain I caused you this whole time.” She looks at my father. “You had one extra space in the third row, and then in the fifth row, you needed a semicolon.” He just looks at her, and she makes a beeline for the door.