Was Maddie still at home? It was a Friday morning. Did she have classes? His mind raced. He’d tell her that he needed the spare gaming console that Leah had in her closet.

His breathing restored, he knocked softly on Leah’s apartment door.

No answer.

He quickly unlocked the door and slipped into the apartment.

“Hello?” he called. “Maddie?”

No answer. Judging by the empty lasagna tray by the sink, and the scarf that had been discarded by the door, he guessed that Maddie had been in a hurry when she left.

A black cat ran over to him and wound itself around his legs. “Hey, Spook,” he said, scratching the cat’s ears. It meowed in response.

He eyed the cat’s bowl. Had Maddie remembered to feed him?

He doubted it.

He opened the fridge door and pulled out a half-empty can of food. Spook sat by the counter, tail twitching, as he dumped the remainder of the tin into the cat’s bowl. “Here you go,” Joey said. Out of habit, he rinsed the can and threw it into the recycling bin behind the pantry door.

Then he froze.

He heard footsteps. On the stairwell outside Leah’s apartment. Was that the cops? If they found him in Leah’s apartment…

The front door slammed. It was just another tenant. “Phew.”

He hurried into Leah’s bedroom. The blinds were still drawn, blocking the morning light. He flipped on the switch and looked around. The sight of Leah’s bed—empty and unslept-in—and her old toy elephant stuffed behind a pillow, made tears prick behind his eyes. Leah. What did you do?

He knew why she did it. She didn’t know that he knew. She had no idea he’d been creeping her hacktivist forum.

He’d discovered her secret a few months ago, when she’d left her laptop open and gone to answer the front door. A message scrolled across the top of her screen. Then another, and another. A group of hacktivists with screen names like Condor, PillBaby and MotherDoxxer were chatting idly about SQL, the software language that was used in data management systems. MotherDoxxer described in great detail the most recent successful doxxes posted on an online site called Pastebin. It was a well-known site favored by hacktivists because they could post online the text of the documents they had hacked.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out these guys were all hacktivists. And that they were finding weak spots in the SQL data management programming software, and then creating hacks to illegally access files. Once they pasted the hacked documents on Pastebin, it was easy to tell the media where to find them.