by a couple of midsize firms that kept his company on retainer to monitor their systems for signs of hacking.
He had an entire database of larger corporate accounts, too. Ones that called him when they suspected suspicious activity. Some that needed him to underwrite antivirus fixes. Or override system takeovers.
And then there were the housewives who were afraid their inordinately rich husbands were cheating on them, or husbands who wanted to know what their wives were doing online. Mike didn’t cover those jobs himself. He had a staff of four highly trained and trusted employees who did most of that work.
And that morning, for a friend, he was checking out an address from which an account had been set up with a private email account.
The IP address that had posted the Photoshopped picture of Kacey came from an internet café that was known for serving great coffee. The place hosted four public computers. Users paid for computer time by the half hour. Most paid cash. The shop’s manager, upon seeing Mike’s credentials, allowed him to take a look at all four machines and copy what he needed onto a flash drive.
As he left, Mike was toying with the idea of texting Kacey to see if she had a break for lunch so he could give her an update.
The fact that all he could tell her was that he’d checked out her sister’s home computer, and had information to peruse from the computer that had been used to send out her altered photo, gave him pause.
He’d never report back to a client with so little to offer.
He wasn’t meeting with Lacey to go through her work computer until after the office closed at five, so he had some time...
Phone in hand, pretty much convinced a text wouldn’t hurt—they sent them pretty much every day anyway, though always at her instigation—Mike felt the vibration just before his phone rang.
And switched gears completely when he saw the picture that flashed up on his screen.
“What’s up?” he answered immediately, all systems on alert, as they always were where Willie was concerned. At seventeen, the baby of the family had not yet grown up.
Or rather, he’d grown up too quickly and struggled to maintain homeostasis with a mind that didn’t quit and demons that wouldn’t let go.
“Hey, bro, not much. What’s up with you?”
He’d already glanced at his watch. “Just finished with a job. Why aren’t you in class?” Should be trigonometry. He knew Willie’s schedule down to the second.
“Yeah, well, there was a bit of a situation, bro. I was hoping maybe you could head Mom and Dad off at the pass?”
Shrugging out of his suit coat, Mike threw it on the backseat of his black BMW. “Where are you?”
“Right now?”
“Yeah, right now.” In the driver’s seat, he loosened his tie, started the car and waited for the factory-installed phone system to pick up the call.
“Right now I’m in the john.”
“What john? Where?”
“I’m at the beach, Mike. But I didn’t cut school to come here.”
“No? You just thought you had a vacation day today?”
“No.” The succinct answer, the change of tone, was a signal of its own. Turning the BMW toward the freeway heading north to Santa Raquel, Mike focused his thoughts. First things first.
“You were suspended again.”
“Yeah.”
“What for this time?”
“I told my teacher to go fuck himself.” Willie knew better than to lie to Mike. He’d give whoppers to everyone else—including their parents and school officials—but he never lied to Mike.
He always called him, too. Just not soon enough.
“Why did you do that?”
“I aced a test. He said I cheated and gave me a zero. I fail the class, I don’t graduate.”
“Did you cheat?” It wouldn’t be the first time.
“No. It was biology. I like that class.”
Though the Valentines didn’t raise any stupid kids, Willie was by far the one with the highest IQ.
“So why’d he think you cheated?” Pedal to the metal, Mike kept an eye out for cops. He did not need the time waste that would occur if he got a speeding ticket.
“Because someone else cheated off me.”
“Did you know it at the time?”
“I suspected.”
“So you made your answers accessible?”
“No. I just saw her looking over and thought she might be trying to cheat. I didn’t move to make it easier, or harder. I just kept doing what I was doing.”
Good. This one wouldn’t be too bad.
“Stay put until I get there,” he said into the phone. “And I mean put. You sit on the bench that backs up to the men’s restroom and you do not move.”
“I got it already. I wasn’t planning to go surfing, dude.”
Hanging up with Willie, he called his mother at work. After Charlie got married and then Dennis left for college, leaving only Willie at home, Darlene had gone to work full-time. She had a law degree and had worked part-time, doing research for other lawyers, but now she had her own office and a paralegal, still doing case law research for a host of firms.
He could call his father first. Matt, an architect who designed kitchens, he could be reached pretty much anytime. But when it came to Willie, Mike needed his mother to work on his father.
Besides, the school would have called her already.
“I assume you’re with him?” Darlene asked as she picked up the phone.
“I’m on my way,” Mike told her. “I was in LA.”
“I can get him.” She would. If he asked.
And Willie would cop an attitude with her. If they were lucky, he’d remain sullenly silent. If not, he’d give her a piece of his mind before she could get hers on the table.
She went too easy on him. Let him talk her down.
Both Mike and his father had told her so.
But she was a mother who understood her baby boy. She knew that his behavior stemmed from a self-hatred that tore his heart apart, and hers, as well. She couldn’t seem to get really angry with him.
His father didn’t have that problem, which made the situation that much worse. No matter how much their dad had tried to show Willie that he loved him, the boy
