“You’re going to meet back up with her for a ride home?”
“Maybe. Maybe I’ll run away. Or maybe I’ll hitchhike home. I’ve heard that’s safe.”
Blair had been back in his life for ten minutes, and she was already giving him a migraine. He went to his bedroom and pulled on boots. It was cold enough for a jacket, but forget it. He wasn’t going to walk around town near her wearing a jacket that matched hers—
Actually, it washerjacket that matched his. He’d had his jacket almost as long as she’d been alive.
Without a word, he walked past her to the front door and held it open.
She faked excitement. “Are you taking me to get ice cream cones?”
He didn’t like her attitude. At all. “I don’t trust you, so I’m going to keep an eye on you until you meet back up with Mom.”
“Can we hold hands?”
“I’m not even going to walk beside you. I’m going to follow from several yards away. You won’t even know I’m there.”
“So ... pretty much like my whole life so far?” She stomped down the staircase.
Late the following night, Luke had just exited the shower and was drying off when he saw an alert on his phone.
His forehead knit as he wrapped the towel around his waist and stared at the message. The alert informed him that someone had been trying to force a password through his remote access software in order to gain control over his computers. They’d input the wrong information too many times and been locked out.
A bead of water ran down the skin between his shoulder blades.
The alert provided one other piece of information. The hacker’s IP address.
Moving quickly, he pulled on pajama pants and a hoodie. He strode to the kitchen table and his laptop. Ignoring Agatha’s attempts to steal his attention, he went to work, testing to see if he could use the IP address to learn the identity of the person who’d attempted to hack his system.
Hold up,” Finley said to him the next morning when he told her about the attempted breach. She sat behind her desk, beautiful in a loose white shirt and about fifteen bracelets.
He stood facing her.
“I speak Animal,” she said, “but I don’t speak Computer. What’s remote access software?”
“It’s a plug-in that enables me to use my phone or secondary computer to check information or run programs on my main computer.” Luke nudged his chin in the direction of the workroom. “The one here.”
“If they wanted information off this computer, why wouldn’t they try to hack into this one directly?”
“With all the firewalls and security these days, it’s hard to do that. So they try to get in through remote access software.”
“But it turned out that they couldn’t get in that way, either.”
“Correct.”
“Because, like my dad believed, you’re a tech genius.”
He let that go. “I chased down the hacker’s IP address, but they were using a virtual private network. In short, they covered their tracks. I can’t use that IP address to figure out who they are.”
“So we didn’t learn much.”
“We learned one very important thing. We learned that your dad’s worries about the treasure hunt were valid.”
“You believe this proves that someone else is after the treasure?”
“I do.”
“But the fact that a hacker tried to snoop inside your computer could be completely disconnected from the hunt.”
