Heart-Shaped Hack(88)

“They launch denial-of-service attacks, which send so much traffic to a website that it crashes. They help themselves to confidential information because they believe very strongly in free speech. Government agencies are frequent targets, which is why Phillip asked me to do the pentesting. He doesn’t feel the current systems are as secure as they need to be.”

“What do you think?”

“I think he’s right to be worried.”

“Sounds like it’ll be quite a challenge,” Kate said.

“I’m looking forward to it. I’ve never gone this long without hacking into something.”

“Frankly I’m surprised you don’t have the shakes.”

“When did that mouth get so smart?” he asked, grinning and pulling her toward him for a kiss.

They’d brought their laptops to the island, and Ian had secured an anonymous network connection for them. Kate had been relieved to learn that he could no longer detect the presence of a backdoor on her computer, but she still felt uncomfortable using it.

“The longer you use it, the more convincing it will seem, in case they check back,” Ian said. “We’ll gradually phase it out and I’ll set you up with a new one.”

They were planning on returning to Washington a few days after the wedding, having decided that a summer on Roanoke Island was the perfect honeymoon and neither of them minding that they’d done things out of order. “Let’s go someplace tropical in January,” Ian had said. “I’ll be itching to get out of the cold by then.”

Kate was looking forward to the next phase of their lives, and she knew Ian was eager to get back to work. Though he swore to Kate that the time they were spending at the cottage was everything he wanted and needed, it was the most idle he’d ever been in his life. He was ready to buy a house and wanted to connect with a Realtor as soon as possible; in the meantime, they’d live in Phillip and Susan’s guesthouse, which did not thrill him.

“It won’t be long before we have our own place,” she reassured him. She didn’t mind the guesthouse for the same reason she didn’t mind the small cottage they were currently living in. She needed closeness more than she needed space. For a little while longer at least.



Kate’s family and Phillip and Susan were due to arrive on the island the next morning, and Kate and Ian had booked them rooms at the Tranquil House Inn. Ian had invited his mother, but she’d left a voice mail saying she’d be unable to attend and hadn’t given a reason. Ian shrugged it off, and Kate didn’t press him about how he really felt. Someday maybe she’d be able to facilitate a reconciliation between the two of them.

Kate had expected to be busy, maybe even a little stressed out, but Diane had triple-checked every detail, leaving Kate with nothing to do but relax.

“I’m going out to get a haircut,” Ian said.

Kate looked up. “You don’t have to do that.”

“I would expect any man marrying my daughter to get his hair cut before the most important day of his life.”

“This is the second time you’ve mentioned your daughter.”

“Shelby is our daughter.”

“You’ve already named her?”

“You can name our son.”

“William.”

“Oh, sweetness. How long have you had that picked out?”

“Since I was about twenty-three. William Ian Bradshaw has a nice ring to it, don’t you think? We can call him Will for short.”

“William was my dad’s name, but everyone called him Bill.”

“Then William would be a perfect name for our son.”

Ian nodded and smiled, looking quite touched. “What name did you have picked out for a girl?”

Kate shrugged her shoulders. “I can’t remember. What name did you have picked out for a boy?”

“Didn’t have one.”

She smiled.

Ian enveloped her in a bear hug. “We are such a good team, Katie.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”





CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

Ian was waiting for Kate at the end of the makeshift aisle on the deck overlooking Shallowbag Bay. Phillip and Chad stood next to him, all of them sweltering a bit in their tuxedos. An August wedding might not have been their best move, but neither he nor Kate wanted to wait for cooler weather.

Kate and Steve’s arms were linked, and she held a bouquet of raspberry-colored roses in her left hand as they waited for the ceremony to begin. Ian had never seen anything more breathtaking than Kate in her wedding gown. Three months of lying on a beach and swimming in the ocean had turned her skin golden brown. The diamond headpiece he’d surprised her with, which had made her cry, shot out brilliant prisms of light and only added to her radiance. Looking at her reminded him how close he’d come to losing the best thing that had ever happened to him, and he was going to get choked up if he thought about it for too long. There weren’t many things that scared him, but not having Kate by his side was one of them.

There had been moments during their stay on Roanoke Island that had sliced through his heart, like the time Kate burst into tears after saying she liked the confines of their cottage and the island because she always knew where he was. Before he’d received the tear-filled voice mail she’d left him on his birthday, he’d never heard her cry. Before she’d stepped onto that plane and realized he was alive, he’d never seen her cry. Every single one of the tears she’d shed had been his fault, and he vowed not to ever make her cry again unless they were happy tears.