And the truth was that Matt wanted to expose the Honorable Harry Owen and his garbage buddies. What Leah had revealed to the Forum was too big a story—and too big a strike against everything they stood for.

But now he was scared that Leah had paid too big a price.

Chapter 9

Chapter 9

3:35 a.m.

Aiden staggered up the fire escape of his rooming house. He lifted the window sash outside his room, slipped inside, and collapsed on the mattress on his floor.

Thank God.

The dog didn’t get a piece of me. The cops can’t find me.

Unless—or until—Leah tells them.

He shot up from the mattress, yanked off his balaclava, and forced his trembling fingers to search for the tiny flash drive that he had zipped inside his jacket pocket. It was smaller than his thumb. He knew it could easily fall out of his pocket. Even though it had served its purpose, he could not lose it. His digital fingerprints were all over it.

His hand relaxed. The small, U-shaped plastic stick was still there.

He perched on the edge of the moldy plastic lawn chair that served as his computer chair and booted up his system.

His computer network, stacked on two planks draped across sawhorses, had been patched together from a laptop his parents bought for him in violation of his sentencing conditions, and a router that he stole from a nursing home. His landlord had Wi-Fi that had been a no-brainer to hack into.

His fingers had finally stopped trembling. But his heart rate accelerated as he logged onto his computer.

Had the exploit worked?

All those months of meticulous planning. And it came down to this.

He hunched over the laptop, typing furiously.

Then he sat back and held his breath. He watched the script scrolling down the screen.

“Hack-a-fucking-lujah.”

Leah really was brilliant.

Even if she was easily fooled. She had fallen for his persona of romantic rebel hacktivist Aiden Boyne without question. If Aiden had been able to grow beard scruff without it being all patchy, he would have ticked off every box of her ideal hacktivist fantasy lover.

It was Tr0lz who had suggested that he seek out Leah at a hacktivist conference six months ago. Tr0lz had somehow discovered that Leah worked for KryptoCyber, and suggested that she would be a good recruit for their team. They needed someone with better hacking skills than they possessed to make their Dark Web venture successful. And Leah would be perfect. Given her background, no one would suspect her.

It had taken a bit of work to penetrate Leah’s reserve. But the fact that they both grew up in the same city was a good starting point, even though they hadn’t crossed paths. Aiden explained that he had gone to a private boarding school outside of the city—when, in fact, he had been incarcerated.