He almost let it go to voicemail. Almost.
Instead, he thumbed the green button. “Hello?”
A low chuckle slid through the speaker. Smooth. Confident. Unbothered.
“Afternoon,Bing.”
Andy’s throat closed around the sudden rush of adrenaline. “How’d you get my number?”
“I have my sources.” Diego’s voice was slick as oil. The same voice that had taunted Andy on the sidewalk.
He swallowed hard. “What do you want?”
“Relax. I’m calling with an opportunity.” Diego’s tone changed. Now it was almost friendly, which sent an unwelcome shiver down Andy’s spine. “Heard you’re handy with a computer.”
Andy froze. “How do you know anything about me?”
“I told you. Sources.” The gang leader paused, letting the silence stretch into a threat. “Look, kid. I’ve got a little problem that needs solving. Quick job. Nothing illegal. You get it done, and I’ll put five hundred bucks in your pocket.”
His breath hitched.
Five hundreddollars?
That was enough to take Kelle somewhere nice. Like a real date. Not pizza and a soda. Maybe a seafood place by the water with actual tablecloths, cloth napkins, and candles. She deserved that.
He hesitated. “What’s the job?”
“Just rerouting an IP. Won’t even take you ten minutes. I’ll text instructions.”
Sure, rerouting an IP wasn’t illegal. But it wasn’t smart either. It was like helping someone break into a house and telling yourself that you weren’t involved because you only “held the ladder.” But the way Diego said it... the way he brushed it off like it was nothing...
And why ask Andy to do it?
His instincts screamed for him to hang up.
But the stupid part of him—the part that wanted to impress a girl, the part that wanted control after feeling powerless on the sidewalk—whisperedjust this once.
“And you’ll pay me in cash?” he asked, trying to sound bored, cool, and in control instead of sixteen and stupid.
Diego laughed. “You do the job, kid? I’ll take care of you.”
The line went dead.
The instructions came through in seconds.
A string of numbers. A temporary login. A short list of steps. It looked harmless. No transfers. No spoofing checks. Just redirecting a routing point through a masked node.
He could do it in his sleep.
Hands shaking a little, he settled his fingers on the keyboard and typed fast, letting muscle memory take over. He pulled up a script he’d thrown together a few months back, tweaked the parameters, and hit run. Lines of code streamed by. Ten minutes later, the job was done.
Clean. Simple. Harmless.
Probably.
He logged out of the remote session first. Deleted the temporary credentials. Closed every window. Cleared his history twice. Then ran a trace—just to confirm it wasn’t bouncing back to him.
Nothing. Clean through.
