White-Hot Hack (Kate and Ian #2)(81)
Diane and Steve returned to their hotel at night to sleep, but Ian wouldn’t leave Kate’s side during the three days she spent in the hospital. He slept only when she slept, in a chair pulled up next to the bed. Sometimes he would dream he’d gotten it all wrong and Kate had been behind the wheel of the Spyder, not Zach, and that it had been her seat belt and air bag he’d disabled.
On the second night, when her pain medication didn’t seem to be working as well as it had been and the guilt threatened to swallow him if he didn’t let it out, he said, “I should have let you go. I should have let you have a normal life.”
“That’s not what I wanted. I can handle whatever life throws at us, but I can’t handle hearing you say something like that.”
“I don’t deserve you.”
“That’s not how we measure love,” she said, reaching for his hand.
He squeezed it gently, and when the hospital discharged her, he chartered a plane and flew home with her to Indiana.
CHAPTER FORTY-ONE
CODA
One month after the cyberattack on the Eastern Interconnection, in a medium-security federal prison in Oklahoma, a cell door opened on its own, as if an invisible man held a remote control. This should have sounded an alarm, but no noise rang out in the quiet hallway. The video surveillance feed should have picked up on it, but the image on the screen in front of the security guard responsible for monitoring this particular area showed an exterior shot. Then—although there was no fire—the sprinkler system went off and everyone’s focus shifted to stopping the water before they had a mess on their hands.
And Joshua Morrison, the man Ian Bradshaw had once sent to prison, a black hat hacker in every sense of the word, waltzed right out the door and into a waiting car.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
EPILOGUE
The sound of a young child singing, her voice pure and clear, floated on the breeze. Ian drew closer so he could listen to his daughter’s song and stopped just short of the hammock stretched between the two pillars that supported the deck’s overhang. It was Shelby’s favorite spot, and he could often find her here because she liked to pretend the monkeys that lived in the trees were her audience. Not that she lacked admirers, because at four years old she already possessed the kind of voice that made strangers in the village stop what they were doing to seek out its source.
“Hey, sweet girl. Want to go fishin’?”
“Is Grandpa coming?”
“Yep. And Uncle Chad.”
“Okay.” She reached for him and he swung her up in his arms.
“I like the song you were singing. Is that a new one?”
She beamed. “Yes. I made it up for Grandma Ellen.”
That hit him right in his heart, but it was a good feeling. “Something tells me she’s going to love it.”
Once they’d boarded the twenty-four-foot Panga fishing boat, Ian slathered Shelby’s exposed skin liberally with sunscreen and pulled the straps tight on her life jacket. He fired up the Yamaha outboard motor and pointed the boat in the direction of the fishing grounds of Cabo Blanco. Steve liked to troll along the surface using live bait, but Chad and Ian preferred casting their lures close to the rock formations where the tuna and snapper were most plentiful.
Shelby scanned the water. “Look, Daddy! I spy with my little eye a dolphin.”
“Way to go, Shelby. Let’s see if you can spy a turtle.”
The fish were biting, which was a good thing because Kate wanted to serve the fresh catch to their party guests that evening. “What if we come back empty-handed?” he’d asked, coming up behind her to nuzzle her neck.
She laughed. “Then I’ll send you back out again.”
Steve pulled in a giant snapper, and Shelby squealed as it flopped around on the floor of the boat until Chad put it on ice.
“Kate will be happy to see that one,” Ian said.
“I’ll be happy to eat it as long as you’re the one who’s going to clean it,” Steve said good-naturedly.
“That’s me: boat driver and fish cleaner.”
After the accident, it had been hard for Ian to be in the same room as Steve because he hadn’t been angry the way he’d been after Ian had faked his death. Ian would have welcomed the anger because the silence was worse. Steve hadn’t spoken to him at all for a while, which had bothered Kate and Diane immensely, but he understood. Steve needed time to process what had happened, and nothing he could have said or done would even begin to touch the anguish and remorse Ian carried around in his head and his heart for a good long time. Eventually, both of them learned to let go of the negative emotions associated with the crash, and their relationship knitted itself back together in the way it often did with men.
Ian never returned to the task force after the blackout.
“What do you think Mommy’s doing?” Ian asked when they got home two hours later, hungry, hot, and ready for lunch.
“Probably feeding the baby. She’s always feeding him.”
He tugged gently on one of Shelby’s long brown braids. “Maybe we should feed you.”
“I’m starving for ice cream.”
Diane came outside. “Oh, you’re back. Are you hungry, Shelby?”