Heart-Shaped Hack(76)

Susan walked into the room and announced that dinner would be ready soon. Kate had no appetite, but Susan was kind so Kate smiled and gave her a slight nod.

“We’ll have to handle your move from Minneapolis a bit differently than Ian had planned,” Phillip said.

Kate looked away. They’d assumed she would go along with their plan for moving forward now that they’d brought her into the fold, but all she could think was no.

Because now that she’d recovered slightly from the initial shock, other thoughts had started to materialize.

Emotions were starting to bubble their way to the surface.

What Ian had done was not on the same level as hacking her credit card and computer or walking in on her in the bathtub.

He had let her think he was dead, which was the worst kind of hell you could put anyone through, and she was not done processing it.

Philip was too focused on what would happen next to notice Kate’s reaction. But Ian—a man who missed nothing—sure had. She could feel the weight of his stare, and as soon as she looked up, he locked eyes with her, comprehending.

“I need some time alone with Kate,” Ian said.

“Of course,” Phillip said. “I’ll call down when dinner is ready.”



A small guesthouse sat behind the main property. Ian carried Kate’s bag as they made their way along the flagstone path, neither of them speaking. Once they were inside, there was no mistaking the fact that the space belonged to Ian. The main room had a couch and a coffee table on which sat a laptop computer and an empty coffee mug. His tennis shoes were on the floor, and his favorite MIT sweatshirt, the one that was faded red and soft and that Kate had sometimes worn, was lying across the arm of the couch.

“How could you do something like that to me?” Kate said as soon as Ian shut the door and turned around. Her face crumpled as she started to cry. “You promised you wouldn’t leave without telling me, but you did it anyway!”

“I couldn’t tell you. If they saw you looking like your world had ended, they’d leave you alone. But if they spotted you walking down the street just once, laughing, wearing a smile, it would only draw them in closer, and I wouldn’t have been able to protect you. If I thought I could have done it any other way, I would have.”

“You left me behind,” she said.

“Would you have come? If I told you we had to leave immediately, no good-byes, no time to submit your resignation, no preparation, would you have done it? Lived on the run? How long would it have been before someone decided to start watching your family, Kate? All those texts I got, all that time I spent on my computer the day I discovered they’d hacked you? I was trying to come up with another way to pull this off, and I couldn’t. They found my weakness and named their price. I paid it, but I paid it on my terms.”

“I paid too,” she cried, “and it would have been easier to bear if I’d known about it. Because of you, I experienced the worst pain I have ever felt in my life. How can we be a team if only one of us knows what’s going on?”

Tears rolled down Kate’s face. Ian led her to the couch and held her as she cried. He waited until her tears had tapered off and she’d gone limp in his arms.

Stroking her head tenderly, he began to speak. “Leaving you behind was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, but I did it because I thought it was the only way to solve the problem permanently. Phillip made me promise that I’d wait until things died down and it was safe to contact you. In the meantime, I made those agents tell me about every single observation they made. I knew all about your tears and your shell-shocked expression, and it killed me.”

Kate’s mind was racing and her thoughts were jumbled. She was torn between the comfort his arms provided and the turmoil his actions had caused. His phone rang, and Kate lifted her head off his chest.

“That’ll be Phillip,” Ian said. “He’s the only one besides you who has this number.” He reached out and wiped away her tears. “We don’t have to go up there if you’d rather not.”

“You still have the same phone?”

He nodded.

“I left you a message on your birthday.”

“I know. I listen to it every day so I can hear your voice, and every single time I think about what I did to you and wonder if it was the biggest mistake I’ve ever made. I know you paid, but I wouldn’t have asked it of you if I didn’t think you were strong enough to handle it. I’m so sorry, Kate. I’m sorry for the pain I caused you. I’m sorry for what you went through. I’m sorry for all of it.”



During dinner, everyone tried to pretend there was nothing out of the ordinary about the circumstances that had brought the four of them together. Susan fretted over her and Ian, offering more salmon, more rice and vegetables, even though they’d yet to finish what was already on their plates. For the first time, Kate noticed how thin Ian looked. She’d dropped at least ten pounds herself and appeared worn and drawn, as if she’d recently suffered an illness and hadn’t fully recovered.

“Our home is open to you for as long as you’d like to stay,” Phillip said.

“I’d like to leave tomorrow, please,” Kate replied. As much as she hated the thought of being separated from Ian again, he’d raised the stakes and she needed time to contemplate what a future with him would truly be like.