Shay…
“You’re crushing me,” I muttered as I wriggled out of Ben’s death-hold.
But when I glanced up, my heart ached for him.
The poor guy looked ready to crack.
A deep wrinkle creased between his brows. That dark bearded jaw clenched. Without me under his arm as a human stress-ball, his hands fisted, then relaxed, then fisted again.
He’d obviously stepped out of his comfort zone the moment we walked into the gaming center.
Try again. He’d stepped out of the safety of his world the moment he met me.
Still, he’d learned of the danger, then the increased risks, and kept walking by my side anyway.
I took his hand and gave it a solid squeeze.
He squeezed back, then exhaled, muscles relaxing a degree. He needed to be grounded, remember why we’d come. Not to break the law. To help those in need. By giving them back their own damn money.
A teenaged boy burst into the room with a tray of four to-go coffee cups. He pulled out each cup, lining them up in front of chairs that were tucked under a long, narrow worktable. “Here you go, Heart.”
“Heart?” I glanced at our hacker.
“Harriet.” She grabbed the coffee nearest the wall and swept a pointed finger at the three of us, then toward the remaining cups. “After my grandmother. But everybody calls me Heart.”
Ben hooked a thumb toward his chest. “I’m—”
“No,” Heart interrupted. “No names. Better that way.”
“Got it.” Ben lifted one of the cups, took a sip, then nodded toward the far wall. “What are all those?”
I lifted my coffee and turned toward the wall. Rafe grabbed the last cup, cocked a chair out and took a seat, then leaned back, watching the rest of us.
Large wire cubbies stretched from corner to corner, floor to ceiling, on that wall. In each cubby of the top seven rows, various-sized laptops leaned at an angle against one another. The bottom few rows had a crate in each cubby, each crate filled with like-kind items: electronics, cords, smaller memory sticks, external hard drives. A library ladder hooked onto a rail three-quarters of the way up.
“Burner supplies.” She scanned across her impressive hardware collection, searching, focusing either on some actual cataloging system or a mental list she’d committed to memory. With a nod, she planted her coffee on the worktable. She then glided the library ladder over to the far right, climbed up to the top row, and grabbed one of the laptops. With a waggle of the laptop, she glanced down at Ben. “I’ve preprogrammed each one for specific tasks. This one’s got a worm that’ll break down their walls.”
Ben and I took seats in the padded folding chairs while she returned, took her own chair, then plugged in his dad’s drive. Fingers flew over keys with muted clicks. The screen flashed from one data set to the next.
“This is gonna be a while.” Heart didn’t glance up...or stop typing.
But an enormous flat screen on the wall suddenly illuminated to life, mirroring what Heart’s laptop showed. Numbers began to scroll up the screen in columns and rows faster and faster, each growing indistinguishable as it morphed into a pulsing dance of bright green pixels.
After another few minutes of tense silence, Rafe stood. “Yeah, I’m out.” He downed the rest of his coffee, crumpled the cup, then tossed it into the trashcan by the door. He planted one hand on the door and the other half-turned the knob before he paused. He glanced over his shoulder at me, then shifted his gaze to Ben. “Gotta open the club. We good?”
Ben stood and crossed the room. The two clasped and embraced in a half-hug with a clap on each other’s backs.
When they parted, they stared hard at each other for a long moment. Ben gave a single nod. “More than good.”
Then Rafe slipped out the door.
Ben turned and stared at the giant screen of dancing numbers. Arms crossed, shoulders set, feet planted shoulder width apart, he dropped his head a fraction.
Tension vibrated into the air as Heart clicked away, oblivious to all the heavy emotion behind her.
But I wasn’t oblivious. His discomfort hit me hard, dead center in the chest.
“You okay?” Dumb question. He wasn’t. But stupid-obvious seemed the best place to start.
“Yeah.”
Liar.
He gusted out a sigh. “No.”
Better. I’d almost called him on it. But he knew the harsh truth. What we were doing wasn’t easy. And it was hard as hell for someone like him, a guy who’d been battered by those who hadn’t given enough of a damn about him, one who had a lot to lose—for himself and many others who depended on him—if he ever got caught.
I got up and walked over to where he still stood near the door. He didn’t register my presence, just stared blankly up at that big screen with a doom-and-gloom expression, as if hell itself had entranced him.
“Hey.” I slid my hand into his and gripped hard until he finally stared at me. “C’mere.” With a gentle tug, I dragged him away from the visual evidence, distanced ourselves from the flash drive, our accomplice, and the felony taking place—little keystrokes, big money.
I led him to the far back of the room, where a low black sectional commanded the corner, then pulled him down onto the soft cushions. He didn’t resist, willingly toppled down with me. We lay in a heap for a few moments, my arms wrapped around him, a heavy leg draped over mine, his left cheek resting on my chest, right above my heart. His back rose and fell in quick tempo with every shallow breath. But as the seconds ticked by, his breaths grew deeper, slower.
Not one word left my lips as I held him. Wasn’t my struggle. And nothing could be said to lessen the pain.
After a couple of calming minutes, he drew in a deep breath, gave me a light squeeze, then leaned back and claimed his own separate cushion. He glanced up at the screen, at the digital maze that led to our stolen pot of gold.
“It’s killing me that I have to get my hands dirty to make this right.”
I know. Nothing I could do. He’d already decided to fight, my way.
But maybe he needed to talk it out.
I could play therapist. “Two wrongs don’t make a right?”
“Something like that.” He heaved out another sigh. “Wish there was another way.”
“Me too.” For him, anyway. To spare him the grief and turmoil.
“How do you do it so easily?”
“Simple. For me, there was never one way or another way. There was the only way. Not hard to take the only option you’ve got.”
“You have options now.”
“I know. Why I ended up at Loading Zone in the first place. I wanted to give a go at being normal, earning money the old-fashioned way, hard work for a paycheck.”
He let out a dry laugh. “Till I went and fucked that up royally.”
“No you didn’t. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“Not without a valiant fight.”
“Nah.” I shrugged. “That’s just attitudinal me. We’re always where we’re supposed to be.”
“You must believe in destiny.”
Huh. “Maybe I do.”
One thing eventually led to another. We chose a simple path, then jerked a hard left to an easier route whenever a roadblock appeared. The question was, after all the twists and turns, did we end up in the same place we’d always been headed toward? Or did we find ourselves in a new and unexpected place, then decide to stay there?
“Actually, being here at Heart’s place makes me want to do more than steal for others.”
“It does?” Ben’s expression had suddenly gone blank, flat—and unworried.
Good. Anything to distract him from the emotional hole he’d plummeted down. Not a damn thing useful in that bottomless pit of regret.
“Yeah.” I thought of everything younger stubborn-ass me had missed out on. “She’s helping so many kids. Giving them a family, a home, a sense of belonging and purpose.”
“You’d want to do that?” His voice had gone soft with wonder, like he’d discovered some new facet about me.
If he’d looked harder, or if I’d let him get closer than I had, he would’ve seen the real me there all along. But instead of being offended that he hadn’t rooted out what really made me tick—even though I’d expertly hidden it—I shrugged. Then I lied. “No big.”
And then all of a sudden, because I’d never had anyone to share my darkest secrets with, and front-and-center sat a captive audience and someone who seemed to care, I decided to lay it all out on the table.
When I looked up though, he stared at me intently. Like he wanted to know me. As if he cared on a level deeper than I’d ever expected.
The words got locked up in my throat. I swallowed hard. Took a deep breath. Tried again.
“That’s all I’ve ever wanted. A real family. A real home...one filled with people who belong to you and you belong to them.”
He’d already said I had family in him, his friends, but he needed to know how much it’d meant to me, that it’d been my everything. For years.
Compassion filled his eyes. “Not an empty house for a week, left with only a dog or cat.”
“Or fish.”
His hand went to my knee and gave a gentle squeeze. Only a few minutes ago, I had pulled him over to the private corner to comfort him. And yet, I’d been the one that needed consoling.
We made a hell of a pair. A law-abiding bar owner, who had trouble swallowing down his felony, and his sidekick criminal, who struggled to find her way of going legit.
“Do you think it’s possible for someone like me?” My voice sounded quiet to my ears. I cleared my throat and spoke with more force. “To quit a life of crime completely? Will I be able to give up what’s come so easily?”
“I dunno. You get a rush off it?”
I had to think about it. There’d always been a thrill, excitement from breaking the rules. And even though I’d broken the law thousands of times, every time I did, my heart raced at the point of greatest risk. “Yeah, I do. Think I’m addicted?”
He cocked his head. “Maybe. Doesn’t mean you can’t sweat it out, quit cold turkey.”
Wouldn’t be too hard. I’d done eight years of crime, alone. By the time I’d gone to his bar, I’d already had enough. Things had gotten lonely. Dogs and cats and fish only went so far. People needed people.
“You have family now,” he repeated. “And a home.”
“I do?” I found it hard to believe in, even though he’d said it a couple of times. But he really hadn’t known me. You’re still barely scratching the surface of learning who I am now.
“Yeah, you do.” His hand and arm looped through the crook of my elbow, and he tugged me onto his lap. “You’ve got me. I’m your family and your home.”
Settling against the warmth of his body, I pressed my ear to his chest, found comfort in the steady beat of his heart. And still, my mind couldn’t fully accept it. I let out a shaky breath, wondering when the rug would be pulled out from under my feet again.
But for how long are you mine? Nothing lasted forever. Life had taught me that.
With a shaky exhale, I gave him a nod anyway. I’d heard him, even if I couldn’t completely believe what he’d said—hardened my heart a little because the survivor in me refused to trust it.
Better to have more than one family, just in case. I had Bear, in a way. And Rafe had always had my back. And maybe Kiki, someone new. But she belonged to Ben first, would remain loyal to him if that rug got pulled out again.
“What did you have in mind?” He rubbed his fingers over my back in lazy circles, pulling me out of my own emotional hole. “What more would you want to do for kids like Heart’s?”
I relaxed a little and opened my mind. “I’m not sure. The naughty-shirt idea with Kiki is my first attempt at a business. Maybe we can hire some at-risk kids. Donate profits.”
“Those are great ideas.”
“They’re a start. I want to go bigger. Give kids a place to stay, something for them to learn, like Heart has.”
“You know a lot about housesitting.”
“Don’t you mean house-trespassing?” I teased. Then a sudden brilliant thought hit me, and I pushed off from his chest and sat upright, staring down at him with widened eyes. “Wait. What if it’s not one thing? What if it’s a lot of things? Like how to be an entrepreneur? For each kid to figure out their strengths, or develop the skill sets, to be able to start their own business.”
“You could teach them, lead them, maybe have a support network where everyone helped each other out.”
“Like a business family.”
“Doesn’t have to be all business. Friends made along the way. But yeah, a business family, like Loading Zo—”
“Ka-ching!” Heart shouted and pumped a fist in the air.
We startled at her sudden excitement, nearly tumbling off the sectional together. I grabbed his hand as our feet hit the floor, then we jogged across the room.
The big monitor on the wall had gone dark. No idea what we’d expected to see on her tinier screen, but we hovered near where the action was.
Ben stared at her laptop, then glanced at her. “Are we in?”
“To your dad’s accounts? Yeah. I’m under the freeze layer. Not sure how long it’s gonna last, don’t know if the Feds have any kind of additional background alarms on this, but we’re here for the moment.”
“Now what?” Ben looked at me.
Easy. “Rob from the rich. Give to the poor.”
“Robin Hood.” Heart grinned wide at me, then Ben. “I like it.”
I gripped Ben’s hand a little tighter. He gave a light squeeze back. Then he glanced at me with a slight nod.
Got it. The whole thing had been my idea. And he wanted me share in its execution. “We want it all to go from the frozen accounts to the smaller accounts, where each transfer originally came from. All the information to be able to do that’s on the drive, right?”
“Yeah.” Heart frowned as she clicked into another area of her computer, opened another file from the flash drive. “Problem, though. Not enough money. Looks like ninety-seven million swam upstream. We’ll be lucky if we can get half that to flow back down.”
“So, what do we do?” I knew nothing about finances, not a damn thing about bank accounts and hedge fund investments. The money I touched was the physical kind, green and stuck to my fingers easily. “Some to everyone?”
“No.” Ben gave a stern headshake. “Not all are the same. Some of those accounts could be rich friends of my dad’s, the country-club crowd.”
“Others might be retirees, mom-and-pop businesses.” Like Tony.
Ben stared hard at me, eyes glittering, jaw clenched. He sucked in a slow breath. It hit him like a sledgehammer, imagining the actual people his dad had callously sucked dry. The kind of people I rubbed elbows with every day, victims of the system.
But the ones on that drive were people Ben could help—with one word from him and a few keystrokes from Heart.
“Could you find those kinds of accounts?” His arms folded over his chest as he stared at the flash drive stuck into the side of the laptop, an electronic nut we still needed to crack.
“Depends. What am I looking for?”
“Smaller monthly amounts, I think. Like the same dollars from every paycheck.”
“Okay.” Heart’s fingers flew over the keyboard. The screen flashed white and black as she danced in and out of various files. Inside five minutes, she shook her head. “No dice. I’ve isolated fifty accounts so far, no standard monthly amounts. This wasn’t set up like a typical 401(k).”
He glared at the laptop, as if willing it to give up his father’s secrets. “What did you see?”
“Couple of them had transfers in the tens of thousands. One, over a hundred thousand.”
“And the rest?” His brows hiked a fraction, a first glimmer of hope.
Because she didn’t have to say it. Ben thought it. I thought it. The remaining accounts had to be what we were looking for.
Heart tilted her head as she scanned through the section again. “A thousand here, a few thousand there. A handful of fives, one for ten thousand.”
“And you sampled fifty accounts.” She’d only scrolled down a page and a half. “How many accounts are there?”
Heart pointed a finger at the bottom of the window she’d pulled up. “Five thousand four hundred and seventy-two.”
“Jesus.” Ben gave a heavy blink. “Can we do that?”
That many files, so many transfers.
“Wait a minute, guys.” Heart glanced at me, then Ben. “What if a mom-and-pop investor did a one-time transfer with their entire life savings? Unless you know exactly who the rich entitled guys are, we might be screwing over the mom-and-pops.” She stared at her laptop screen for a few silent moments. “I can calculate what everyone put in percentage-wise and reverse it. Everyone will get their original share of what’s left over.”
Ben gave a hard nod. “That’s fair. Do it.”
“Better buckle up, kids” —she laced her fingers together, inverted her locked hands, then extended her arms out, stretching them away from her— “it’s gonna be a wild-and-hairy nail-biter afternoon.”
Heart clicked away, then paused and closed her eyes. “Okay, Heart. Here’s your shot,” she murmured to herself. “Be the ghost and make a political statement.” She stared up at the ceiling a few seconds, then glanced at us with a smirk. “I’ll use the bank president’s authorization code to turn off the frozen account’s alarm system and disable the federally mandated transfer limits. Then I’ll customize an auto-exec program that will activate when the bank prez logs into their system. A microsecond later, all the smaller accounts will have their money back, as much as we can give ’em.”
“Impressive. How do you get paid for this?” Ben asked.
“For this job? Not in dollars. Robin Hood wouldn’t pocket a single coin off this, and I won’t either. Besides, good Karma points go a long way.”
“So does brain food: giant espressos and loaded pizzas.” Ben clapped his hands then rubbed them together. “What’ll it be, ladies? I’m buying.”
Ben’s guilty conscience? That struggle with getting his hands dirty, even to right the wrong his father hadn’t thought twice about? Gone.
Oh, how easily the mighty fall.
And yet, he’d gotten to where he needed to be with it all. No regrets. No looking back.
But a heavy question nagged at the back of my brain as I stepped into his arms and gave him a much-needed hug...for him, for me.
How will you feel when it’s all over?