“Okay…” He dragged out the word as if he were calculating it in his head. “If it were me,” he said, “and I was searching for something but struggling…I’d probably hit up Tor or a similar place. That’s where things are usually buried.”

“Perfect!” I’d thought about using Tor—one of the dark webs—to carry out my plan, too, but I needed to be absolutely certain. I’d never messed around there much, so I had to make sure there weren’t other options. Normally I’d avoid it, but this wasn’t a normal challenge.

“But,” he added, “nothing is completely dark. If someone digs deep and hard enough, there is always a trace.”

A risk, but I doubted my idea would stir up enough interest to result in someone actually hunting for the source. No, it’d be just enough to act like a thorn in Tanner’s side. A piece of reality to counter his fantasyland perfect-boasting website. And, hopefully, a safe space for my classmates at Wilmont.

“Amber?” Dean said my name, and I snapped out of my thoughts.

“Sorry,” I said.

“It’s okay. I get it. Just don’t think too hard on it, okay?”

“Why?”

“Because,” he said, a laugh in his tone. “I’m not prepared to lose to you.”

I grinned, biting on my lower lip. “Well, you better get prepared because you’re going down.”

“Not a chance.”

“Thanks for the advice,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

“Can’t wait.”

The response made my stomach flip, and I quickly hung up the phone. What was wrong with me? I’d sworn off boys after Brandon. Not that Dean was Brandon, but what did I really know? I thought I’d known the type of guy Brandon was, and that all changed in the course of one night.

The butterflies in my stomach took a nosedive into a crashing wave of acid, and I huffed out a breath.

Damn him. I wished I could delete him from my mind. Erase every date, every hour I spent with him. It didn’t matter that we’d had fun in most of those memories—the worst one was enough to taint them all.

Hands everywhere, greedy lips, demands.

No.

I wasn’t going there again.

I had work to do.

Work was always the best distraction, and this would be the biggest challenge to date for my hacker career. I needed 100 percent focus.

I rolled my neck, grabbed my headphones, and sank in front of my computer.

First, I had to write up a rough draft.

Second, I had to take a swim in the deep end of the dark web and make sure an average person—i.e., Principal Tanner—couldn’t find it. No cracks. No way to trace this back to me.

And third?

I had to stop thinking about how good Dean would look in a deadmau5 shirt if he beat me.

…