Page 9 of Hacking His Code

“Good point.”

“I know your past, and even though you haven’t been hacking recently, you were doing skip tracing with a credit card company last summer, not that I think that will help much.”

“Yeah, if you’re relying on my skip tracing capabilities to solve a twenty-year cold case, you’re sorely out of luck.”

I clear my throat, buying myself a moment to carefully phrase what I need to say. “What you did in your past, it spoke to me.”

She downcast her eyes. “The hacking? It was amateur.”

“Actually, it was quite genius. It wasn’t the hacking that got you caught. It was your drive to bring the culprits to justice that did you in.”

“Did me in and cost me damn near everything. I wouldn’t be in the mountain of debt I’m in now if I had just made better choices.”

“Who knows, maybe those choices have a late payoff.”

“So, let me see if I have the terms right. You want me to locate your aunt, who’s been missing for twenty-four years, and if I succeed, you’ll pay me one-million-dollars.”

“That about sums it up.”

“And what do I get if I fail?”

“Nothing.”

“But—”

“You just admitted to having a mountain of debt. This is your only chance. How else are you going to come up with your tuition, let alone pay your bills?”

“How do you know so much about me?” she asks, her voice tense and full of anger.

“I come from money, and all knowledge can be bought.”

She straightens her hair again, a wasted effort with how unruly it’s been, but somehow, it only makes her more alluring. Her beauty is organic compared to the plastic princesses I’m used to entertaining. Everything about her feels real, and completely foreign.

There’s not even a trace of makeup on her face, and it doesn’t seem to bother her. Almost every woman in my orbit dresses in high-end fashion, never a nail unpolished. Arinessa is almost primal looking with her short shorts and her hair fighting its way out of her poorly-done up ponytail, but instead of being put off, I find myself imagining the caress of her thighs around my waist.

“I have school—”

“Hopefully, you’ll be done before it begins. We have seven days, and I have the case files collected for you and scanned onto a computer. The hard copies are available as well. I have the numbers for every single person that worked the case.”

Her mouth gapes open. “You expect me to find a missing person in a week? Someone who’s been gone for twenty-plus years?”

“Yes.”

“Do you think I’ll succeed?”

I exhale a breath, choosing my words carefully. “For the past twenty-four years, my mother has been a shell of herself. I’ve heard stories of what she was like before, but I can’t remember ever experiencing the carefree look in her eyes I see in any of the movies she’s made. Any chance of finding Lucy is worth the effort.”

“So you don’t think I’ll find her then. You expect me to waste a precious week of my life for nothing.”

“Oh, I think you’ll succeed. We have better technology than we did back then, and if she was kidnapped, whoever did it has probably let their guard down. I’m just careful about giving false hope.”

“How did you find me? My name was never released because I was a minor when I committed my crime, and the records were sealed. You said something about money, but who did you pay off?”

“That is a story for another time. Right now, I need to know if you’re in. You’ll be expected to be on call twenty-four-seven, from start to finish. If you succeed, you go home with one-million-dollars.”

“And I get nothing if I fail.”

“Not exactly.”