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SIXTEEN
No.”
Mackenzie palmed her eyes. Please, no...
She’d worked hard to put the past behind her, but the words he’d spoken long ago now haunted her.
“I’ll come for you when you least expect it.”
Nebulous 2.0’s words had driven fear all the way to her bones—back then.
The Feds never pinpointed whether Nebulous 2.0 was a person or a group masquerading as a person. But she’d always thought the cybercriminal was just an individual working alone. Regardless, she’d been told repeatedly by agents that they would find and incarcerate Nebulous 2.0 or shut the group down. Told not to be concerned about the threats ever again. It was all out of her hands. Believing them was the only way she was able to move forward with her life.
She was warned not to communicate with 4PP3R1710N—Apparition—ever again. Julian. To move on, she’d had to push both Julian and Nebulous 2.0 out of her mind.
They were no longer her concern.
But given the lengths Julian had gone to reach out to her, she should have suspected the past had caught up to them. And if that was the case ... her greatest fear—that she could never escape the mistake she’d made, the crime she’d committed—had chased her back to Montana.
“Mackenzie, did you hear me? Who’s behind this? I think you know.”
“I don’t know!” Her pulse rose with her panic.
“Breathe, Mackenzie. Just calm down. We need to figure this out.”
She drew in a long breath, then another ... Of course he was right. She couldn’t let fear control her.
Dropping her hands, she looked at Alex and steadied her voice. “Even if it’s him, I don’t know his actual name.” God, please don’t let it be him. “That was so long ago, and the FBI agent who initially handled the case told me not to worry about him. Not to be scared anymore.”
Alex studied her. “I can see why the agent tried to remove some of the burden and fear. He wanted to reassure you that they would find the person or persons behind the cyberattacks. The question is—”
“Did they? Is he locked up somewhere, unable to access the Internet to commit crimes?”
“I’ll see what I can find out through my connections.”
His intense gaze remained locked on her. What was he thinking?
She’d kept so much from him already, and she was the one who’d asked for his help. “I thought you weren’t going to get too involved.”
He barked an incredulous laugh. “We both know I’m already in deep. In fact, I’m in it up to my neck.”
But his eyes held warmth, not contempt or resentment. As if he wanted to be in this with her and, in an inexplicable way, enjoyed every minute of it. She was imagining things and had to admit that exhaustion was making her irrational.
Still ... should she tell him the rest? Since Alex had come this far with her, she shouldn’t hold back. “The cybercriminal told me he would come for me when I least expected it.” A chill crawled over her, and she hugged herself. “Now I wish I hadn’t said the words out loud. It makes it seem too real. I don’t want it to be him.”
“And you certainly didn’t expect this to happen. Even if it’s him, this has to be about more than personal vengeance. What did you cost him before?”
Mackenzie cleared her throat. “Millions of dollars.” Nausea erupted at the confession, the reminder. She pressed her hand against her midsection. “I had to end it, and I convinced my friend that we should go to the Feds, and he agreed. Things had taken a wrong turn and gone too far.”
Actually, they’d gone too far the moment she illegally hacked. Alex eased into the chair at the kitchen table. Yeah, now it seemed like he was getting it. She was accepting what she hadn’t wanted to think about.
“He went by Nebulous 2.0,” she said. “We used leetspeak to spell our names. His is complicated, so I won’t bother.”
“I know enough to know that leetspeak is a coded language. And you guys didn’t think you should stay away from someone who called themselves Nebulous 2.0?”
“We didn’t choose to work with him. He forced us into letting him join because he found us and threatened to expose us. So we didn’t have a choice.”
“It’s obvious he thought you were good, because he brought you into his grand scheme. And I’m leaning toward his involvement. I can easily understand why he doesn’t want you blocking his efforts now.”
