He had gone with Tr0lz to her apartment, partly of out curiosity, partly to figure out his next move.

The computer script he had written blurred on the laptop screen. Yet his mind buzzed with the thought of half a million dollars. When Harry Owen had texted him with a promise to pay the money, he could barely hide his glee from Tr0lz. He was so close he could almost taste it—provided Condor didn’t doxx Harry Owen before then. Because if Condor doxxed Harry, the MP would be completely exposed, and would have no reason to pay Aiden the money.

The thought made his palms sweat. Just a few hours. That’s all he needed. And he would be home free. He could take a cab straight to the airport and catch the first flight out of Halifax. He’d have screwed Harry Owen completely.

And he would be free of Tr0lz. Months ago, he had been excited by her plan to hack into a major transportation system that would not only rock Halifax, but the world. But then she upped the ante.

“I have an idea,” she had said as soon as they arrived at her apartment. “Let’s take this a step further. Let’s hack into the system and cause a collision with Harry’s US captain.” She had a gleam in her eyes that made his stomach tighten. He had had to cover his shock.

Should he bail on her right now?

Or go along with it?

Tr0lz scared him. She was not what she seemed. And what she had revealed so far sent his juvie-honed instincts into alert.

He sensed she could hurt him.

And she knew he sensed that.

He would play along. After all, he had little to lose. As long as Harry Owen’s files remained off the Internet for the next few hours, his blackmail would be successful—and he’d be on a plane at six in the morning with half a mil of BitCoin in his bank account.

And if he could figure out the hack into the GPS system that Tr0lz had set her sights on, he’d settle the score with his father, with Harry, with the whole goddamned world.

So he got to work.

But the hack was complex. Much more complex than he had thought.

As he scanned the code for the umpteenth time, his phone had vibrated in his pocket.

It was a text message. From Condor.

He had read it, his excitement mounting. Condor wanted to meet with him at midnight. Which meant that he could force him to give Aiden the laptop—and ensure that Harry Owen wasn’t doxxed before he paid out the blackmail money.

Everything had fallen into place. He couldn’t believe it.

Except for the code. Every time he tried to run the script, he got an error. He was so tired, the sequence no longer made sense.