Still Waters (Lover's Lake)

“I’ve actually been after that syndicate for years. No one was able to get in the ransomware, until you came along. You’re the superstar here, I’m just coming along for the ride. And hoping you’ll give me some tips or maybe even show me what you used to break down their firewalls.”

“I cam-girled. It was easy,” I told him. I followed the guy down the hall and into the room that housed his equipment.

He turned around and stared at me like he couldn’t fucking believe his own ears.

“You’re not gonna kill me now, Rafa? Since you know my secret?”

“Are you fucking serious?”

“That’s how they get their targets. When girls sign up for their cam-scam, they voluntarily hand over all of their info. Then the Gabriellis steal their identity, they unregister them from school, cancel their credit cards and leases, trash their health insurance and their driver’s license—they co-opt their identities and then they ruin everything the girl has. I should say kid, because the Gabrielis traffic boys too. So the kids have no money, no safety net, no one to turn to and the syndicate sends out a scout to befriend them in exchange for a little work. They can never escape after that.”

“How the fuck did you figure that out?”

“I had a friend who fell into their trap. I saw what they did to her and it became obvious to me that they’d literally kidnapped her and hijacked her whole life. So I broke into her apartment one night and I stole her hard drive. Then retraced what had happened and I knew if I could phish them as a cam girl, I’d have an in to their system.”

Rafa stared at me with his mouth agape, not saying anything.

“Now you really know my secrets. I just ask that you don’t kill me while I’m sleeping. I’ve always had an irrational fear of dying in my sleep. I’d rather be fully awake and present for my own final bow, you know what I mean?”

He stepped closer to me, so close that I could smell him. He didn’t wear cologne, his scent was natural and not sprayed on. It reminded me of Ivory soap and freshly mowed grass. He bent down, until his lips were nearly touching my ear, “Tatum O’ Geary, if I wanted you dead, you’d already be underground.”

I took a deep breath and swallowed. Reminded myself that Rafa was Ragnar and Ragnar was good.

He pulled back, the darkness in his eyes shrouding the blue in his irises. “Let’s go.”

Any sane person would have run, hard and fast, but not me, I just walked down the hall beside a man who’d told me he could kill me if he wanted to. Sometimes, it was difficult to tell the good guys from the bad. I’d learned from my years of hacking that appearances meant nothing, you had to go with your gut.

And my gut told me that even though something about Rafa scared the hell out of me, I could trust this man not to hurt me.

Chapter 3

RAFA

“Oh my God, your setup is so sick,” Tatum said. Her fingers sliding along the computers like they were shiny new sports cars. I shook my head, desperate to clear the fog of this girl posing as a cam girl. The image was so sexy to me that I knew I was ridiculously hard in my jeans.

“You do some impressive shit with just a laptop. Get a job with the government and they’ll give you whatever you want.”

“ I’m lucky I could even afford that. My first machine was a second hand brick that I had to actually build up from scratch to give it the capabilities it needed.”

“How old were you?”

Tatum’s head shot up and her eyes were wide. “I was ten.”

“Hol’ up, you were ten when you built your first computer?”

“Yeah,” Tatum said as she shrugged. “I wasn’t like other kids. I always wanted to know how things worked. I’d fixed my mom’s vacuum, and then I fixed the boiler when it broke. I re-wired some old light fixtures and then I moved on to engines. I was around nine when I really started getting into hardware and I never looked back after that.”

The girl was more impressive than I thought. She didn’t know just how much I already knew about her—minus her gender, I’d been keeping close tabs on Fio because I admired their work.

“You’re pretty fucking incredible,” I told her.

“Thanks!” she said smiling. Her smile was intoxicating. I felt like my whole head was buzzing just standing next to her. I’d never wanted to know another hacker personally, but Tatum made me feel differently. I wanted to know everything about this girl. Make her sing, and laugh, and cry and come. I wanted to know her brain and her body, and her soul and her heart.