AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Henry looks at me and then to Mali. “Um, there’s the matter of payment.”
“What?”
Mali nudges me. “You’ve got to pay the man.”
You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.“For what? He didn’tdoanything!”
Henry gets indignant, straightening his shoulders. “I made your firewall almost impenetrable.”
“From what? A kindergartener with an iPad?” I scoff. “Get the fuck out of here.”
Laiken turns around with an unsure look on her face. “Babe, with everything we’re dealing with right now, do you really want to be on the wrong side of a pissed-off hacker?”
My shoulders sag, and I start to consider whether or not Mali really needs the protection we keep giving her as I pull out my wallet. I mean, working a shift by herself isn’tthatdangerous, and a walk down a dark alley at night? That’s child’s play for her.
“How much?”
“Two-fifty,” Henry answers.
I turn to glare at Mali and she quickly looks away. Pulling out half my tips from today, I count it to make sure it’s right and hand it to him.
“There,” I say, not masking the sarcasm from my tone. “You have a good night.”
Henry happily takes it, telling Mali and Laiken that it was nice meeting them as I follow him to the door. Once he’s gone, I can finally drop the fucking nice guy act. I turn around and mentally shoot daggers into Mali.
“Well, he was nice,” she says.
“Hewas a fucking scam,” I tell her. “What the fuck were you thinking? You don’t go on the dark web and you sure as shit don’t invite random people from it to the damn house! Are you trying to get yourself killed? Should we just hand you over now?”
She looks me up and down and crosses her arms over her chest. “It was a solid idea, and he was a very reputable hacker.”
“He was a glorified geek squad!” I shout. “That guy couldn’t hack his way into a public library.”
But just like we talked about the other day, getting angry at each other isn’t going to fix anything. That’s what they want. We’re weaker when we’re apart, and if I’m pissed off at them, it puts us all at risk.
It would just be a lot fucking easier if they weren’t testing my damn patience at every turn.
“It may not have been so pointless after all,” Laiken calls out. “Did any of us look into Riley?”
Riley?Cam nods. “I did. Why?”
She hits a couple buttons on my laptop and restarts the last video we watched. “While everyone was watching the code, I was watching the video, and I couldn’t help but notice her face when Hayes comes over to talk to me.”
We watch as I look over at Laiken and start getting her a drink before walking over to the corner. Right as I get up to her, she pauses the video and zooms in on Riley. She’s glaring at us, sure, but I’m not sure that proves anything.
“I mean, with the way she wants in Hayes’s pants, I don’t see how this is out of the norm,” Cam says, speaking the thoughts I was going to keep to myself.
Laiken nods and grabs her phone. “Yeah, but look at the background of this picture from my birthday.”
She shows us a picture Mali took, from the moment it hit midnight, and Riley is in the background with the same look on her face.
“She looks like she wants me dead,” Laiken says.
Mali’s facial expression tells me her ego is growing as we speak. “I never did like that bitch.”
I roll my eyes and focus on Laiken. “Babe, I get it. I do. And we’ll keep it in mind, but I don’t think it’s Riley. I really don’t.”
“Sorry, sis,” Cam says. “I have to agree. She wants him. Has for over a year now with no luck. I wouldn’t expect her to ever be happy when she looks at you two. Especially when he looks at you the way he does. God, it even makes me nauseous.”
