The Hack, page 6
Ari stepped onto the bed but he couldn’t quite reach the ceiling. He looked to the desk, but it was built into the wall cabinetry.
“Give me a boost,” Raya said as she rushed toward him, standing underneath the hatch.
Ari stepped back onto the floor beside her, and weaved his fingers together as she put her hands on his shoulders. She stepped onto his palms and he grunted, lifting her up. She pushed the hatch cover aside and grabbed the sides, hauling herself up.
Ari’s eyes darted to the door, but the house was still quiet.
He heard Raya cough and he imagined the ceiling was full of dust and probably some dead rodents.
“I can see it!” she yelled.
CHAPTER 9
Raya shone the torchlight on the laptop, reading the sticky note.
Trust no one, Raya.
She inhaled sharply. He’d known she’d come. She asked herself why but realized she already knew the answer: because he knew how invested in this information she was. He knew that for someone like her, this information would change her life.
Trust no one.
He knew Ari’s identity too. Why didn’t he trust Ari? She thought of the image of his father and still couldn’t make sense of it. What did his father have to do with this, if anything? Or maybe it was the Rossi name; they had a reputation for getting things done at any cost. Raya hadn’t seen that side of Ari, in fact she’d only seen the opposite, but how well did she really know him?
“Raya, are you okay?” Ari called out.
She snatched the sticky note from the laptop and scrunched it into a ball. She went to throw it into the depths of the ceiling but decided against it. It was unlikely anyone would search for a piece of crumpled pink paper up here, but she didn’t want her name on anything.
She tucked it into the coin pocket of her jeans, making a note to discard it at the first opportunity.
“I’m fine. I’ll be down in a second,” she said, her eyes on the computer. She wanted to look through it before she went back to Ari but she didn’t have time. If she stayed up here too long it would raise questions. She silently bemoaned her big mouth.
But maybe he was wrong about Ari. Maybe he was the one person in this world Raya could trust.
She tucked the laptop under her arm, squeezing it against her body as she crawled back toward the hatch. The dust made her nose tingle and she was grateful she could barely see up here because the smell was putrid, like there were ten dead rats inches from her.
She exhaled when she reached the hatch and gulped in some fresh air. She held the laptop in her hands, her eyes lingering on it.
“Pass it down, come on, let’s get out of here,” Ari said, looking over his shoulder like he expected someone to walk through the door any minute.
Trust no one, Raya.
But that was easier said than done. She passed Ari the laptop and he put it on the bed then reached up for her. “Slide out feet first, I’ll grab you,” he said with a nod. Raya looked into his blue eyes, searching them. He’d done nothing but protect her since they’d met, but the image of his father kept flashing in her mind like a warning sign.
She could deal with that later, though, because right now she needed to get out of the ceiling and look at that laptop. Raya turned around, kneeling on the edge of the hatch, then slowly lowered herself down. Ari’s hands tightened around her waist. “I’ve got you,” he said and she let go of the edge. Ari gently put her on the floor then released her. She grabbed the laptop and put it in her backpack beside the bed.
“I think we’ve found everything we were looking for here,” she said and he nodded. He moved toward the computer and ejected the drive he’d inserted. He quickly wiped over the keyboard and mouse. They couldn’t do much about her fingerprints on the papers, but Raya knew her prints weren’t in the system.
As they walked out of the room Raya looked to her left, down the hallway. The sight stole her breath yet again. In the eerie light, he looked like a ghost.
“Come on,” Ari said gently, his hand finding hers.
She nodded but her feet didn’t move. She couldn’t look away. It wasn’t the first dead body she’d seen, but there was something so haunting about him. The fact that he had a bullet hole in his forehead didn’t help.
Ari tugged her hand and she forced herself to look away. The best thing she could do now was find out what was on his computer because it was no longer only about exposing the project, it was about finding his killer. Raya felt eyes on her as she took the stairs down, but she was sure it was just her haunted mind playing tricks on her. Ari kept her hand in his, even when they reached the bottom of the stairs, and it felt nice to not be so alone in this world.
“Let’s go out the same way we came in,” Ari said as they moved toward the kitchen door. They were at the door when they heard a knock at the front door. Raya’s breath caught in her throat and Ari tugged her hand as they crouched low.
Another knock came harder and faster. “Justin! Justin, can you hear me?”
Raya squeezed her eyes shut as the man called for the hacker slumped in the chair upstairs.
“We need to move,” Ari urged in a hushed whisper.
Raya took a deep breath, calming her mind. “He might come around the back of the house,” she said when no further knocks followed.
“Behind those cabinets, now!” he said as they darted for them. Ari stood with his back against the wall and he pulled her in, wrapping his arms around her waist.
They didn’t have to wait long before they heard footsteps on the back porch.
“What the . . . Shit!” The door swung open, bouncing against the wall and Raya held her breath.
“Justin! Justin!” he called out. It was the same voice that had been at the front door moments before. Raya traced his footsteps and knew they would only get one opportunity to get out of there unseen because as soon as he went up the stairs he would see Justin.
Raya wiped her sweaty palms on her jeans and strained to hear the footsteps.
“As soon as he moves into the living room, head for the door,” Ari whispered in her ear, his voice barely audible.
She nodded and her temple brushed against his lips. She squeezed her eyes shut, forcing herself to concentrate. She heard the change in the echo, as the man stepped onto the wooden floorboards in the living room.
She ducked, moving silently across the kitchen. She heard him start on the stairs and Raya opened the back door and ran onto the porch.
“Run!” Ari said as they sprinted down the driveway. They were at the front of the house when they heard the bellowing scream from inside.
“Run!” Ari repeated as they headed for the car. Ari unlocked it as they were running and they jumped in, Ari’s foot on the accelerator before Raya had even closed the door.
Raya didn’t say a word as Ari drove but her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She felt terrible the man had to find his friend like that, but she couldn’t think about it now. They could hardly have stopped him at the door and told him not to go upstairs.
She shuddered, knowing that if she hadn’t received the warning message that she could’ve shared the same fate—slumped in a chair for days before anyone found her.
“Start looking through that computer in case anything happens,” Ari said quickly, his eyes on the road.
“Like what?” Raya asked, panicked as she looked over her shoulder but she didn’t see anyone following them.
“I don’t know, just look, Raya. Find out why he hid it,” Ari said, picking up speed.
Raya pulled the laptop from her bag, the balled-up pink note burning a hole in her pocket. She turned on the computer but it was locked. “I need the drive,” she said, holding out her hand. Ari passed it to her and began to tell her the lines of code but she didn’t need it, she’d been paying attention when he’d typed them at the house and she’d memorized it.
She waited, then the box popped up.
“How do you do that?” Ari asked.
“Do what?” she asked, her eyes on the computer as she began searching through files.
“Memorize code like that,” he said. “You have a photographic memory.”
She shook her head. “I don’t. I can only memorize things I’m interested in. I failed history at school . . . I could never remember dates and significant timelines because I wasn’t interested in it. But code sequences . . . that’s my specialty,” she said, typing more code.
She felt his eyes on her but she didn’t look up because her eyes were on a file named Synthesis Incorporated.
Raya frowned.
Why had Justin been looking into the company her mother had worked for?
CHAPTER 10
Ari exhaled a long breath as he tried to think calmly. Suddenly going back to his house didn’t feel like an option. They needed a place to lie low.
“I don’t think we should go back to my house,” Ari said. “We’ll go to a motel, the kind that doesn’t ask for identification.” He knew exactly the place because his uncle used it from time to time when he wanted to discreetly meet with people—and he knew that because he’d followed him there—but it wasn’t the kind of place his uncle would think to look for him. “I know one that’s a twenty-minute drive from here.”
“Okay,” Raya said like she’d barely heard him.
“What is it?” he asked, stealing glances between Raya, the laptop, and the road ahead.
“That’s him!” she said, clicking on another folder. A photograph of a man Ari had never seen before popped up on the screen.
“Who?” Ari asked, having a hard time concentrating on the road while looking at the image, but he didn’t want to pull over. He needed to put more distance between them and the house. He also thought they needed to change cars in case their plate was visible on a neighbor’s security footage if the police were diligent enough to investigate it.
“The man who came to my apartment. He had a scar, exactly like this!” she said, pointing to the man’s eyebrow. “How did Justin have this information? What did he know that I don’t?” Raya asked, seemingly to herself. Her tone was laced with frustration.
“Fargo Security,” she said, looking at him. “Does that name mean anything to you?”
His eyes jumped between the road and Raya. “No,” he eventually said but the words tasted like poison in his mouth because they were a lie. His first instinct had been to protect his father, as if he could piece things together before Raya so that he had a rational reason why his father’s photo was on the computer and Fargo Security was being mentioned before she thought the worst of the person he admired most in the world.
Fargo Security had run his father’s security until his accident. The new guys his uncle hired were from another company. But it couldn’t be a coincidence Raya was asking about them now and Ari felt like he was going to break into a cold sweat as a wave of nausea rolled through him.
“Does this guy work for them?” Ari asked, trying to get a read on Raya but her eyes were down, focused on the laptop.
“I don’t know,” she said vaguely as more files loaded on her screen. The need to pull over and view what Raya was looking at clouded his judgement but the sight of car lights in the rearview mirror snapped his focus back into place. He changed lanes, but the car didn’t follow him.
The highway was ahead, and Ari couldn’t decide if he should take it or stick to the streets. He didn’t know if it was the files on the computer or the car behind them, but Ari had never felt so anxious—so out of control. He didn’t like the growing connections to his family.
At the last moment, Ari veered onto the highway and the car behind him continued down the street.
Raya paused every so often, looking to the rearview mirror and then back to the computer. Ari stole glances at her when he could. He couldn’t shake the feeling that she knew he’d just lied to her, but he wasn’t sure if that was reality or his guilt manifesting.
His temple ached and he craved a hot shower and a decent night’s sleep but he doubted sleep would come tonight.
Ari pulled the car to a stop on a side street a few blocks from the motel. “Can I look at that photograph again?” he asked, relieved he could finally stop driving and concentrate on one thing at a time.
Raya raised an eyebrow before loading the photograph. She angled the laptop toward him but kept it firmly in her hands. He studied the photograph, but he hadn’t seen the man before, however, he trusted Raya—if she said it was him, he believed her. That was the kind of detail her mind would remember, he was sure.
He shook his head. “He doesn’t look familiar to me.”
Raya chewed on her cheek, her eyes on him, watching him like she wasn’t sure if she believed that or not.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” he asked but he already knew the reason, he could see it in her eyes.
“I’m surprised Fargo Security doesn’t mean anything to you, Ari,” she said, her eyes locked on his.
He swallowed hard. He could tell from the piercing tone of her voice, let alone the look in her eyes, that she knew.
“Raya . . .” he said like a warning.
She tilted her head, lifting her eyebrows higher. “Don’t Raya me. Does, or does not, Fargo Security mean anything to you?”
“Yes, it was the security company my father used. My uncle changed it when he took over. It means nothing to me now,” Ari said quickly, defensively.
“I didn’t ask you if it meant something to you now,” she said, her words sharp.
“I don’t understand what this has to do with my family! Why is my father’s photograph on that computer? Why is Fargo Security involved? My father was a good man, Raya!” Ari said, adamant.
“No one has said otherwise,” she said, shaking her head. “This information could be on the laptop purely because Justin was researching you. But it’s good to know we’re completely honest with each other.”
“What have I done in the past few hours to show you I’m not on your side? I didn’t have to get involved in this,” he said, almost yelling.
She gave a sad smile. “Maybe, or maybe you decided to get involved because you were worried about what I’d find and you wanted to make sure you knew about it so you could do damage control,” she said and his jaw fell open.
“Don’t do this, Raya,” he said, his voice sounding tired even to his own ears.
“Don’t do what? Be difficult? Ask for the truth? Wow, how dare I?” she asked, her tone biting.
He exhaled, pressing a finger to his temple. “What else is on that computer? Ask me anything and I’ll tell you,” he said, closing his eyes briefly. The headache he’d felt earlier now felt like a sledgehammer pounding against his skull.
Ari’s eyes snapped to the rearview mirror when the sound of a car caught his attention. He blew out a frustrated breath, forcing himself to calm down. An argument was the last thing they needed right now. What they needed was to be focused and united.
He unclenched his hands from the steering wheel and rested them on his thighs, angling toward her. Ari checked the rearview mirror again but it was clear.
“I’m sorry, Raya,” he said, waiting until she looked at him to continue. “I’m defensive when it comes to my family . . .” He paused, struggling to find the words. “My father was all about legacy; he told me it was the most important thing in the world. He consistently told me all that mattered was to touch the lives of other people . . . to make people feel like they were important. No matter how busy my father was, he was the kind of person who always stopped to talk to someone—he never made people feel like he was rushed or too busy, despite his demanding schedule. He made people feel important, to feel seen; it was what he did best. And then my uncle came in, and he started making deals with anyone who would make him rich,” Ari said, swallowing the lump in his throat. He looked into her eyes. “The Mafia rumors, they’re true. The rumors about dealings with corrupt politicians, they’re also true. Everything my father built that mattered—the name, the reputation, the legacy—my uncle destroyed. That’s why I’m defensive and why I said it meant nothing to me. I’m sorry I wasn’t honest . . . but my first reaction is always to play defense because I feel like I’m the only person my father has to even attempt to protect what is left of his legacy . . . and I keep failing him with every year that passes.” He looked away, swallowing hard. He’d never talked about this to anyone, never uttered these words even to his mother. But it was easier with Raya, maybe because she’d been vulnerable he felt he could be too. “It’s not about hiding dirty secrets, Raya, it’s about trying to undo them and right the wrongs. But my uncle is moving faster than I can and he holds the power so it’s a game I can’t win.”
“How about we make a deal,” she said, and he hesitated to look toward her, but she didn’t continue so eventually he turned his head toward her, his eyes locking on hers.
“What kind of deal?” he asked, struggling to hold her gaze. He didn’t like being vulnerable—he felt exposed and it made him uneasy.
Raya chewed on her cheek, seeming to choose her words. “From this point forward, we’re completely honest. We keep each other’s dirty secrets and we protect each other. Because if I can’t trust you, there’s no point even going back to the motel. I’ll go my separate way and I’ll find the information I need and sort this out myself. I’ll buy safety for the both of us, because I owe you that for saving my life but—”
“Don’t,” he said, holding out a hand, shaking his head. He couldn’t stand the thought of her going out on her own. He wanted to watch her back and help her figure this out. He didn’t want her to do this alone; he didn’t want to not know where she was and what she was doing. He extended his hand and said, “Deal.”
Her chest rose as she inhaled deeply before taking his hand, shaking it. “No more secrets.”
Ari nodded as they shook on it. “No secrets.”
Raya squeezed his hand and gave him a small smile before dropping it.
