Page 122 of Hide and Seek

“Cipher, a.k.a. Hunter Maxwell.” Jace nods. “The one and only.”

“How…”

“I’m going to have to do some digging to fill in some of the blanks with the story,” Jace says and kicks his feet up on the coffee table. “Those guys were very willing to talk when they realized I was dead serious about skinning them alive if they didn’t tell me what I wanted to know, but they didn’t know everything I wanted to know.”

The casual way he says that should freak me out, instead it makes me glad to have him in my corner.

“From what I could gather from their babbling, it seems your boy Cipher saw an offer on the dark web looking for information about the identities of the people who did your charity hack job. Guess the payout was worth it, because he squealed like a pig in a mud bath.”

“How much was the payout?” I ask before I can stop myself.

“Ten K.”

My jaw drops. One of my best friends sold me out and put a target on my head for ten thousand dollars?

“Yeah, I’m insulted for you. Dickhead should have known he could easily squeeze ten times that out of the fucker for that kind of information.” Jace shakes his head ruefully. “But he’s the leak. He’s the one who told the big bad, who told Jensen, who used it to blackmail you.”

“But what about the Kings?” I ask. “You said I wasn’t the reason they were able to track me.”

“Nope.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a pack of gum. “Do you remember that system you built so your boy Cipher could access his property manager’s files and download all the records when he was being threatened with eviction last year?”

My stomach drops. “I remember.”

“He gave Jensen a copy of that in case you decided to snoop around in the Kings’ system,” he says, and he looks genuinely sorry. Since it’s Jace, I have no idea if he’s actually sorry or just wants me to think he is because it’ll help me feel better, but it doesn’t matter. The fact that he cares enough to pretend means more than it probably should.

“Of course he did,” I say bitterly.

The system I built for him was just a slightly modified version of my basic pre-built that I use for easy hacks. Their security system would have flagged the similarities between the one I made for Cipher and the one I used to hack them the second I ran it.

“Did he at least get paid for betraying me again, or was that a freebie?”

“He got paid. Not sure how much, but I’ll find out once I go through his financials.”

“So all of this shit happened because one of my best friends decided to sell me out and kept playing me like a fiddle this entire time.” I shake my head. “Now I understand what happened earlier.”

“What do you mean?” Jax asks at the same time Jace says, “What happened earlier?”

“He was acting weird before the power went out,” I tell them. “Got all uppity about me spending time with you and kept asking where you were and just being a dick. Then he had a tantrum and logged off. Echo told me he was asking her about the deepfakes and Jacob before I got online.” I huff out a bitter laugh. “Even after that, I still didn’t believe that he was part of this. I thought maybe he was blackmailed into it like me and he was somehow involved because he was trying to save himself, but that asshole just wanted money. He sold me out and betrayed me for ten Gs. That’s what five years of friendship meant to him.”

Jax rubs my back in soothing circles.

“I have an idea that might make all this a bit easier to swallow,” Jace says, and the gleam in his eyes tells me that whatever he’s about to say will probably be diabolical.

“What’s that?”

“You know how you retired your old hacker name, the one you did that charity job, and the other jobs you think I don’t know about, under.” He shoots me a smirky grin. “I’m thinking that it would be pretty poetic if we revived that name and made it look like it’s been his all along.”

The corners of my mouth tip up in a smile. “Go on.”

“And we could embed a calling card into the code when we plant it into his system and blast that all over the dark web and see if anyone bites.”

“And if they do, they’ll assume he’s the one who did the hack jobs,” I say, unable to hide how much I like his plan.

“Exactly.” He grins. “And I can guarantee that someone will find him and they’ll enact their revenge on him. Once they do, everyone will assume you’re dead and no one will ever look for you again. Two birds, one stone.”

“Your brain is both terrifying and fascinating,” I tell him, grinning like a moron at how perfect his plan is.

“It’s a fun place to be.” He pops a piece of gum out of the pack and tosses the rest to me.