“Well, it worked for you.” Frost’s eyebrows danced above his glasses. “You’ve been in town what, a few weeks, and already half the town is all googly-eyed for you. Even my sister.”

Charlie rolled his eyes. “Please tell me she’s not the one who keeps calling the office and then hanging up when I pick up the phone?” Frost laughed and shook his head. Charlie relaxed a little. The only person he hoped was googly-eyed for him was Lane Kent, and she seemed content to make him guess what those green eyes of hers were saying—or hiding. “How’d you get into computers?”

“I wasn’t a popular kid. Got picked on. Mom bought me a computer from a pawnshop and I spent a lot of time in my room. Taught myself how to use it. I figured I’d always be able to find a job if I could master the computer.”

Frost was humble and proving himself to be a man, albeit a young man, of character.

“When I was in high school, your aunt told me there are universities where I could study computer science, so I researched it.” Frost snorted. “MIT. Stanford. I’d have a better chance of getting Jennifer Aniston to be my girlfriend than getting into one of those schools.” Another snort.

Jennifer Aniston? Charlie imagined a poster from Friends tacked up on Frost’s bedroom wall. He seriously needed to update his crushes.

“Anyway, I kept searching and found a site. DEFCON Hacking Conference.” Frost’s lips slipped into a sly grin. “Pretty cool name, huh?”

“Very cool.” And highly suspicious.

“They hold a competition every year in Las Vegas. Well, I couldn’t afford to go, but I . . .” Frost shifted in his seat. “I sort of cheated my way into the contest.”

“How’d you do that?”

“I started following this guy on Facebook. He was going and we started chatting. I end up hacking into his computer and then mirrored his system so I could see exactly what he was seeing.”

“You mirrored his system?” It was like Frost was the Bobby Fischer of computer hacking.

“Yeah, remotely. Anyway, it caused a huge problem. The judges caught the anomaly and thought he was cheating. He wasn’t. I was just overriding his system.”

“What happened?”

“I got caught.” Frost shrugged. “A couple of government agencies came to town. They really do drive sedans with tinted windows. Just like in the movies.”

The whole thing sounded like it could’ve been in a movie. “Did you get in trouble?”

“No. That’s the best part. They wanted me to come work for them after I graduated high school. CIA wanted me to go to college first. They offered to pay, but the schools were out of state. I couldn’t leave my mom and sister.”

“So, you stayed here and became a deputy?”