He ignored me, clicked on the vid-box, fast-forwarding a few hours to when Tessa returned the laptop to its original place on the shelf behind him.

A few hours. That’s it.

I wondered how bad the “crime” actually was. Hell, when Sean had been a senior, a bunch of them had stolen Tanner’s car and put it on the football field. No one went to jail over that, so why should Tessa over this?

He didn’t press charges.

Not like he would now. Because he needed something from me.

“Please feel free to set up your work station here,” he said, motioning to the wide-open space on the opposite side of his desk.

“What?”

“You’ve been excused from classes for the remainder of the day,” he said, exiting out of the vid-box and inadvertently revealing where he kept it stored.

Perfect. I’ll get that later.

He leaned back in his seat as I rolled my eyes, reluctantly slipping my laptop out of its bag. “You know that’s illegal, right?” I spared a glance at the camera hidden in the plant before cracking open my screen.

Tanner grumbled. “The person behind this blog is harming people.”

“Is it, though?”

He raked his hands over his slick hair. “The parents are calling for action. Protests have been held, and there is talk of pulling students from school and enrolling them elsewhere next year—”

“Ahh,” I cut him off. I didn’t bother to look up from my screen as I talked. “So that’s it. Forget about the content and how it bugs you, it’s actually about you getting docked points from your precious ranking. Which,” I said, finally meeting his gaze, “no doubt will lose you any bonuses or grants or awards. Perhaps even your job?”

“My first concern is this school and the students’ education within it,” he said through clenched teeth.

I scanned his walls, noting the various awards he’d had custom-framed. The pictures of his father and grandfather before him, plaques with their names and their tenure years at Wilmont engraved upon them. “Right,” I said. “It doesn’t make what you’re asking me to do any less illegal.”

“And how is that different than any other time you’re doing…whatever it is you hackers do?”

I choked out a dark laugh. He was right about there being plenty of rules we bent, vulnerabilities we exploited—but I always patched those vulnerabilities behind me. I never allowed anyone to follow my tracks and I was responsible enough to never use it for black hat stuff. I had a code and I abided by it, but each word out of Tanner’s mouth made me want to take my code and set it on fire. Show him just how many things I could do.