The Insiders Read online

  And last, clothes.

  I was going the comfy route. Soft athletic pants, a tank top, sports bra, and my hair pulled back in a messy bun. It was the best uniform.

  After that, the internet connection.

  Pulling up the networks, I could guess which was the main security one, the one Kash might use as his own, and a few other aliases. Who knew the landscaping department for my father had its own internet connection. The kitchen staff, too.

  Skimming down the line, I clicked on Hotboi2012. Gut was telling me that little Cyclone had his own network, and as I right-clicked on that bitch, I was right about another thing. He hadn’t secured it. I was able to connect the backpath.

  I shook my head, tsking, “Little boy, little boy. You’ve got some things to learn still.” I took his IP address, because he let that sit out there all unattended. Anything I did, they’d think it was him. That didn’t feel right. Crap. I was moving the mouse before I thought about it, and I clicked into the network I was pretty sure Marie used. I’d use her IP address, even though I had plans to hack her. I’d just deal with it.

  Once I was connected, I sat back.

  A satisfied smile on my face.

  I got to work.

  Mrs. Quinn Francis was first up, just because she was the last person I saw. She wasn’t a soft target, and it wasn’t long before I got into her social media accounts, saved half her emails to my online drive, and went through her private messages. A nagging voice was whispering that this was wrong, but I shushed them. They weren’t that damn loud, and it’d been way too long since I’d been around a computer.

  The next target was still soft—or the next three targets. All of my siblings.

  I only skimmed their stuff. By then the voice was speaking up a bit louder and I had a little twist in my stomach, thinking of going through little Cyclone’s emails. But damn, that kid had a lot of them. I wasn’t surprised, if he was building a robot rabbit. I found his computer and saved that file to my phone. The rest went to my online drive.

  I was going to help him. That’s what I was telling myself.

  Seraphina was up, and I didn’t see anything interesting there. Conversations with her friends. Complete files dedicated to male models. One of her friends had a mean girls book, and clicking through, I saw that the little shits were vicious to their classmates. Christ. They rated each person based on clothes, hair, manners, associations, personality, and intelligence. There was an overall cool level assigned at the end, and—surprise, surprise—only the girls who were moderators for the file got the highest cool score.

  I went down Seraphina’s own rating and paused at her overall score.

  She got a ten for clothes, for hair, for manners, for associations. She got a four for personality and a six for intelligence. Her cool level was five.

  I reared back at that. She could see this. This was on her network. Those girls did that to her, knowing she would see it.

  I hadn’t met my sister, but by God, blood stood for something with me. All those little bitches just got on my medium-core target list.

  I didn’t snoop in Matthew’s social media accounts and emails. Those were all I could find on him, but I was assuming he had a remote computer at his own place.

  There was one more family member, but I paused. He was the big bang. He was the ultimate hit, and because of that he was saved for last. Now it was time for my hard target: Marie.

  Hacking into the Chesapeake administration network, it didn’t take long for me to find Marie’s files. From there, I tunneled my way to her personal computer. If she was there, she could see someone had access.

  Going through all of this, I’d lost track of time. I knew it was longer than I thought, because I recognized the stiffness in my back and neck. My ass was protesting, and I hadn’t gone to the bathroom in—I had no clue, but my bladder was screaming at me.

  I shoved it all down and got to work.

  I took all of Marie’s files. All. Of. Them. And there was no voice telling me this was wrong. That woman had hurt me. I didn’t care, at that moment, if she meant well. She had filleted me, saying I was a fraud. Well, honey, let’s see who the fraud is after this evening—

  Shut down!

  My screen froze, fritzed, and it began to shut down immediately.

  No, no, no.

  I was scrambling, my pulse picking up.

  They found me. That was fast. I was good—damn good. I could cover my tracks. I went through back doors they didn’t know were there. Unless … Fuck. I gulped. Unless my father himself wrote his own security measures, but who actually did that? He was too big-time now.

  Still. My screen was flashing at me now. I had only seconds to erase my final trail.

  Four.

  Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  Three.

  I screamed, shoving back the chair and typing faster than I had in ages.

  Two.

  “No!” I was up, and I yanked on the cord, cutting the connection, and once that was done—I couldn’t move.

  What had I just done?

  I raised a hand to my forehead, feeling the sweat up there. I’d been in the zone. I’d been doing things I hadn’t even realized I was doing. Shame was spreading through me at an alarming rate, and I fell to my knees, my mouth gaping.

  What had I done? Oh my God. What had I done?

  I was hurt. I took it. I digested it. And then seeing my stepmother had been too much for me, knowing my mother would’ve compared herself to that woman. I’d been blind in my need to strike back.

  I hadn’t—I hadn’t been thinking. Walking from that house, feeling a bombshell going off in me, I only reacted. I needed to do what I did, and the computer was it for me.

  But damn.

  My hands were trembling. My knees too. I couldn’t even get up.

  They would know it was me. There was no way they wouldn’t. One alert to Kash and he would know immediately.

  I looked around. I had to get out of here. Where, I had no clue, but I had to go. Now.

  Pushing to my feet, I grabbed some clothes from the closet and stuffed them in a bag. I had shoes and sneakers already on. Purse. My wallet. I had a few essentials with me. The phone, I took it out and gazed at it mournfully. I’d miss the guy, but that was the easiest way to track me.

  How to get out without them realizing?

  Cyclone said there was an event going on. I’d just go and hitch a ride in someone’s trunk. Once I was gone, I’d figure it out from there. On the bright side, I could see my mom again.

  I couldn’t believe I was doing this, but after the security breach I just performed, they couldn’t keep me here. They wouldn’t. I’d punched a hole the size of a fist in their system. They shouldn’t have found it right away, but it was there.

  Looking at the clock, seeing it was almost six by now—the time had gone by that fast? Wow. But when I was in the zone, I could lose entire days.

  Didn’t matter.

  It was time to go.

  Six steps. That’s how far I got. I glanced back to make sure the door closed, but I didn’t complete that last step before I hit a hard chest and two hands grabbed my shoulders. The whole Uh-oh voice went off in my head, and I looked up.

  Blistering and furious eyes glared down at me. Yep. I should have listened to that voice earlier.

  Kash clipped out, “Inside. Now.”

  I was going to jail.

  SIXTEEN

  “She hacked into all of our hard drives! “All of them!”

  I was sitting outside an office in a separate section of the estate, and I could hear Quinn Francis screaming from inside. After meeting her in the hallway, I wouldn’t have imagined this side of her.

  But there it was.

  Kash was saying something.

  “I don’t care!”

  I winced. To give her credit, I thought most of this was the mama bear coming out. She was upset when she talked about her files. Her voice rose another decibel when it came to Seraphina. I heard M
att’s name mentioned and it went up again, but when she got Cyclone’s … Full. On. Screaming. I couldn’t tell if it was because he was the baby or because he was her favorite. My guess is that it was a mix of both.

  “… get it all back.”

  “You’re damn straight you’ll get them all back,” she snapped. My chair wasn’t even right next to the door. There was about five yards separating me from the door, and when someone walked inside and I glimpsed her, I saw that she was completely on the other side of the room. Her heated level was impressive. She had to be close to boiling.

  Kash was talking again. I couldn’t make out the words. He was being more discreet, but I could hear his own frustration. Judging by how he’d handled me when he caught me, he was as pissed as she was. He was just keeping it together. After sitting here, I knew another reaming was coming, once he got me alone. That was, if he got me alone again; if they reported me or kicked me out, I was sure Kash Colello would find time to kick my ass. I had a gut feeling that if anyone did any of his charges wrong, he annihilated them.

  I let out a sigh, resting my head back against the wall.

  There were two security guards standing at the ready, one at each end of the hall. It was because of them that I wasn’t paying attention until I heard, “A friend of Kash’s, huh?”

  Aw, not good.

  Matthew Francis was coming my way, his hands in his pockets and his eyes fixed right on me. He was dressed in trendy skinny jeans, a black long-sleeve hooded shirt, and a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead.

  I didn’t know what lie to go with, so I kept silent, watching him warily.

  Instead of sitting, he grabbed the chair next to me and turned it around so he was facing me. He sat down, straddling it, and folded his arms over the back, his head leaning forward to scrutinize me better.

  I looked down.

  He was studying me way too intensely.

  “Bullshit,” he breathed out.

  “What?” I looked back up.

  His nostrils flared. “I say bullshit. If Kash walks out of that room—”

  “I don’t care whose daughter she is, I want her gone!”

  “You don’t have the authority to make that demand.”

  It wasn’t Quinn’s scream that startled us, though the scream took precedence. It was Kash’s calm retort that had both my brother and me rearing back in surprise.

  We could hear her gasp from inside.

  “No offense,” Kash snapped, “but her placement isn’t up to you, Peter, or anyone else. It’s up to me, me alone. And I say she stays here.”

  “Kash—”

  “Enough, Quinn.” He was walking to the door. His voice was getting louder, clearer. “I’ll get her to erase everything she took, but she stays where she is. That’s final.”

  “Kash! Do not walk out that door, not like that, not after what she’s done. Kash—”

  He shoved open the door, took in the sight of me, took in Matt’s presence, and raked a hand through his hair. “Fuck me.” Then he was off. He snapped his fingers, pointed at me, and barked, “Follow. Now.” And he didn’t stop.

  Matt hopped up from his chair, hurrying after us. “Hey, Kashy. How’s it going?” He snickered under his breath, shoving his hands back in his pockets.

  “Not now, Matt.”

  Coming up to the door leading outside, Kash turned, grabbed for my arm, and used his back to slam the door open. It was one of those that could be pressed and shoved open. He pulled me with him without missing a beat, and once we were outside, he urged me next to him. His hand came to the small of my back, but once he saw that I was keeping up with him, his hand fell away. He leaned forward a little, his shoulders hunching forward, and he shoved his hands in his pockets almost the same way Matt had as he walked toward me in the hallway.

  My brother wasn’t walking that way now. He jogged to catch up, moving past us and turning to dart backward. His eyes were dancing, sparking even, and half of his mouth was up in a grin. “So. Can we talk about the elephant on the estate here?”

  “Matt,” Kash warned. “Don’t start.”

  Ignoring him, Matt smirked at me. “Can we make this all official? Is she my full-blooded sister or half-blooded? What are we talking about here?”

  “Matt,” Kash growled in warning.

  Matt got too close to Kash, veering over, and instead of going around him, Kash lifted up a hand and pushed him aside. All without breaking stride, just like inside.

  Laughing, Matt started walking sideways, his long legs crossing over each other. “Come on, Kash. She’s here. No one comes here. What she did, the secrecy about who she is … I might be going out on a limb, but it’s obvious who her father is. I’m shocked more haven’t figured it out.” Matt narrowed his eyes on me. “She looks my age, so sometime around the end of Dad’s divorce coming through? Maybe in that whole middle time after I was born? I heard there was a five-year period where it was just messy between the two. You know, my mom suffering postpartum and Dad just straight cheating. Nasty, nasty time for both of them.”

  His mom suffered postpartum?

  “Stop, Matt. I mean it.” We were nearing the sidewalk just outside of the villa. I didn’t know how we got there so fast, but I was guessing Kash knew some shortcuts. Coming up to the door now, he led the way. Opening it, he went in first, stepped back. I ducked inside, and he had a hand out, stepping behind me to meet with Matt. “I said no.” His tone returned to the authoritative command he used when talking to Quinn earlier. Without another word, as Matt stepped back from reflex, Kash stepped inside, shutting and locking the glass doors.

  Matt’s mouth dropped open. “Come on! Are you serious?” His hands went up in frustration. “Come on!”

  Kash hit a button on the wall and two curtains flew down, shutting Matt out completely from seeing inside. Then it was just him and me, and he turned that furious gaze on me.

  My stomach slipped to my feet.

  This was not going to be good.

  “I’m sorry—”

  He shot a hand up, his other rubbing at his forehead. “Save it.”

  I did. Closing my mouth, I sank down on one of his couches and saved it.

  His hands went to his hips and he continued to look down at the floor. He hadn’t moved from the door, and when he started, his voice was low. “You have no idea what I was in the middle of when I got the call two hours ago. There was an online security breach. They found it and began tracing it back to the location it was coming from. We’ve had breaches before, and just shutting them out isn’t usually what we do. We like to eliminate the risks completely. That’s what they did. But while they usually move faster, get a location quicker, they were stalled because this hacker … this one had put up security walls behind her. Behind ‘them.’ That’s what they called you, these computer specialists that are some of the best in the world. They work for your father, who is the best, and I quote, they said, ‘These guys have to be a team collective. They’re moving fast and at the same time putting up firewalls behind their tracks at a speed that no one person could manage.’ Not one person. A team. And one reported to me that this must have been in the planning for months, not at the fucking sudden whim of a pissed-off child—”

  I shoved to my feet. “I’m not a child!”

  “You’re acting like one!”

  I had no comeback. He was right. So I just sighed. “I’m out of my depth here. I’m—”

  “I get it. I do!” He started to pace now, his head still bent forward, one hand rubbing at the back of his neck.

  The exhaustion came off of him in waves now. Exhaustion and frustration. It was then that I took in his clothing. Black. All black. Black shoes. Black pants. Black long-sleeve shirt. All. Black. Familiarity teased me. There was something, something about him, about how he was standing, about his voice, about his clothes … I couldn’t place it, though.

  “Christ, Bailey!” He stopped, his head up and his eyes blazing at me, piercing me. “One day.
One fucking day and you rip through their online security like it’s candy. Like it’s Halloween and all you have to do is put on a costume, knock on a door, and you get the treats handed to you. One person. One fucking afternoon! It took them three hours to locate you. Three hours. Your walls were so good that they had to keep shutting down their own programs because your viruses were that good. This is one of the best in the world, and you crumbled them to their knees in a day. Not even a day.”

  I hadn’t realized I’d done that much damage.

  “I’m sorry.” My voice was a hoarse whisper as I sat down.

  “What were you thinking?” He stepped closer to me. “Did you want attention? Your dad’s not here. He’s in New Zealand. Did you want payback? You said people had said some messed up shit to you—was it them that you wanted to hurt? You went through your siblings’ social media, their emails. You downloaded a copy of Seraphina’s online journal. Why would you do that? She’s in tears. Tears! I heard her crying when Quinn called me. She’s humiliated by whatever you found in there.

  “Marie—” He stopped, taking a deep breath. He started again, calmer, but only slightly. “Marie said she’s completely wiped out of her computer. She said it’s all gone. You took everything and you left a blinking middle finger icon as her wallpaper. It pops up every time she tries to put a password in.”

  I mashed my lips together at that one.

  It wasn’t funny.

  It wasn’t. Nope.

  I started coughing, remembering how I had laughed to myself when I programmed that in. Hearing it from Kash now, it was so totally not funny.

  But it was. It was hilarious.

  I coughed some more, pushing that tickle away. No good would come if I let that out.

  “Yes. I…”

  Kash snorted. “You don’t even sound remorseful. You sound like you’re about to apologize for being thirty minutes late for curfew. I’m not your father. This isn’t a situation where you merely get grounded. The shit we have on you, you could do prison. It’s that bad. Your father has files on those computers. National security files. You launched an attack that could’ve compromised those files. I say the word, give my go-ahead, and your father’s lawyers could make this go all the way in the black. You could be hauled off and never see your mother again.”