The Revenge by Tijan

One was of her in the backseat. Okay, it was more an image of a woman in the backseat of the SUV. But I knew it was her, so I was counting it as one of them. The second one was pure luck. Kash came over once to refill my coffee and he pointed it out. “Reflection.”

One word. That was it.

Mind blown.

I completely forgot about reflections, and then I was cursing myself because I had to backtrack over all the work I had already went through.

I found one, but it wasn’t enough. She was blurry. Too many shadows. It was just a glimmer, a hint of who was inside that SUV. I recognized her. I knew that was my mother, but no one else would, and that’s why I was doing this. I had to find proof. I had to ramp up the fight for her.

Four blocks around the club and I was able to find the SUV’s trail. Then I just kept doing that. Over and over and over again. I worked every single system in a four-block radius, mapping out the SUV’s path until they hit the interstate. After that, it was the street cams, and thank goodness, they were so much easier. I panned out, and once the SUV stopped showing up, I rerouted back to the last exits, from where I lost them to where I last saw them. It took me twenty minutes to find them, because the first turn did have a camera but the second turn didn’t. It wasn’t working. So after that, I had to redo all the same work I’d already done. I panned out in a four-block radius until, an hour later, I found them.

After that, it was hit and miss.

And slow. So much slower.

They were getting into suburb territory. The street cams were more sparse, with a few on the major streets. I hit those first. Hacking in. Scanning. Not finding anything. So I had to go back, again. I took each street, in every single way they could’ve gone.

Chicago suburbs had a lot of streets.

Four hours.

Four freaking hours.

I was getting a headache, and I didn’t want to count how many personal systems I had hacked, because by then some of the guilt was trickling in. Some. Not a lot. I reminded myself who I was looking for—Chrissy Fucking Hayes.

My focus grew firm again. Crystal clear.

I was back on it.

I was being Kash with his business deals. Ruthless and calculating.

It was another two hours later when I got a hit, and I cried out, because I couldn’t help it.

“You found her?”

Oh. That’s right. Kash had no idea what I was doing.

I shook my head. “I’m still trailing the SUV.”

He came to stand next to me. “Give me the license plate number. I have another team on standby. They can help you.”

Another team?

I frowned up at him. “What? Who?”

He was scanning the video feeds I had up on the screen and, distracted, he replied, “I have two teams working for me. One does computer stuff like this.”

My mouth dropped. “You’re telling me this now?”

“Yeah.” He glanced down, back to the screen, and did a double take back to me. His eyes narrowed. “What? What’s wrong?”

“Who’s doing the computer stuff? Do you know them personally? Do you trust them? Why haven’t you told me any of this?”

He took a step back, straightening up. Both his eyebrows arched up. “Uh.” He shook his head, his eyes blinking a few times. “I—I didn’t know you wanted to know this stuff.”

“Of course I do! Why wouldn’t I?”

His mouth opened, hung there, then closed. He lifted up a shoulder. “I don’t know. You were adamant about only doing grad school—”

I shoved back my chair, and my hand flew out. “That was last semester! Things were different last semester.”

“Uh. Yeah…” He frowned, then scowled, then just looked confused. He raked his hand through his hair, and when it fell to the side, he did it again. His whole palm ran down over his face. “I’m sorry. When was I supposed to fill you in on all this?”

“From the beginning.” I huffed that out.

“The beginning?”

“Yeah. The beginning.”

“You were in counseling, trying to process the second kidnapping attempt…”

He was muddling things for me, and I shook both my hands in the air. “Stop trying to rationalize things.”

He bit out a laugh. “It’s called rationalizing things.”

“Oh!” Now my eyebrows went up and both my hands were in the air, palms turned toward him. I leaned back. “Now I’m being irrational?”

“What?” His mouth hung open again. “Wait. What?” He was shaking his head. “I’m lost here.”

“Well, that makes two of us.” I crossed my arms over my chest, one more huff coming from me. I was all heated. My blood was rolling, but damn. I should’ve known. So I told him that. “You should’ve told me.”

“One, I think I actually did. Two, when? You went from only focusing on grad school, trying to bury yourself in your schoolwork, to then mourning your mother and trying to process witnessing her murder!”

I flinched.

“Okay!” My hands flung up in the air and I sat down, whipping my chair back around to the computer screen. “I got it. I was a mess.”

He was quiet behind me.

I didn’t care. Or I was telling myself I didn’t care?

I went back to work, pulling up another security system, until I realized that there was a camera at the intersection, smack above the stoplights. I’d missed that one, so I started working to get into that one, too.