Hacker (CENTURIES series: Book #5) (VERY SLOW UPDATES)

2

I hunched over in the alley, panting hard, my lungs burning. Staring down at the asphalt, I squeezed my eyes shut and roared. "FUCK!"

I screwed up. I didn't know how it happened, but it did. Fuck, and Eli... I left him there. I had fucking run and left him there.

"God, forgive me," I dropped to my knees and started hyperventilating. I pressed my hand to my heart and felt how it was beating out of control. My mind raced on adrenaline, and somewhere in the distance, I could hear the police sirens blare. Fuck, fuck, fuck, God please forgive me.

He had fought them off and told me to run—told me to fucking run, and like an idiot, I'd done it. I didn't work well on high pressure like he did, but what the fuck had I actually been thinking? He couldn't get caught. Eli couldn't get fucking caught. If he showed up in the system... if his face got recognized, it was only a matter of time before... "Shit!"

Breathe. Fucking breathe. This wasn't the time to panic or lose my cool. I needed to stay level so I could fix this. Had to... I needed to fix my mess. What came first?

"Focus, Caleb," I told myself, taking a couple of deep breaths. What came first? Think. "You need to... you need to open your... laptop."

Assuming they had arrested him by now, he was being driven to the nearest police station for booking and detention until his hearing and then... then I could bail him out. He had a clean slate, no priors, thanks to me. And them. He wasn't in the system, so he'd only get a minor punishment.

But I had to stop his arrest order before it even hit the servers.

Breathing out, I stood up and walked over to a dumpster, taking a seat up against it. With shaking hands I tried to stop them from trembling with adrenaline while pulling my laptop out of my bag which I had thankfully brought with me, thank my foresight. At least a bit of luck was on my side. I opened it and quickly entered my password before taking a deep breath.

Here we go. I was going to fix this.

My fingers flew across the keyboard as I started my search. Looking at the clock, I tried to determine how long it had been. I had run for about ten minutes. Wrestling and arresting Eli had probably taken as much. Then there was the drive to the station. Which one was the nearest? There were four stations nearby in this area, Google informed me. I set my program to watch all of them, hacking into their security footage from the station, checking who came in. Both me and Eli wore hoodies when we walked in public. Big Brother was watching, but as if that wasn't enough... Eli always had another shadow following him.

I keep taking controlled breaths as I worked. So far, the LAPD's criminal database hadn't gotten any new mugshots of an overly inked genius in. The wait was killing me. I kept my eyes peeled on the CCTV, but no sign of him. They would've taken his hoodie off for the pictures. Fuck, what was taking them so long?

I was so caught up in watching the cameras I hardly noticed the little notification suddenly winking by my email. It wasn't until I had been waiting for nearly ten more minutes, my eyes finally caught it and frowned. Glancing back to the cameras, I then slowly moved my mouse to the inbox. Fucking slow governmental protocols...

My mouth dropped. On my screen, I had a letter; not the letter I had been waiting for earlier, but another kind of letter that was just as remarkable, if not better. It was sent to my private encrypted email just one hour after I'd received my rejection letter. Sweet Christmas.