All That Remains - R.J. Scott Page 0,6

that uncool.

There was no way I was failing at cracking whatever the client gave me to do. I worked for SentryLine Security, SLS, off-the-books most of the time, hacking into systems that were deemed impenetrable, and I proved or disproved that someone with skills could get past even the tightest of systems. Sometimes I failed. Then I got to keep half the money, as SLS had proved to the people who mattered that their system was robust. I had years of practice now. The world had changed, but I needed one or two more jobs like this one, and perhaps I could stop doing it altogether. All I needed to do was get the hotel working well, and then that nebulous thought I had about selling it might come to fruition. It was a money pit, but it was stability for Harry.

And Harry was my everything.

I was good at code, I was a freaking genius at finding back doors into software, and I was ultimately self-taught. No one would look at the happy-go-lucky guy who owned the hotel as having a freaky hidden side that made untraceable money to keep open the hotel that was killing him. Anyone who checked on me would see a devoted dad, a town resident who'd been born here and had never left, who volunteered to organize town events, and who had a smile for everyone. They couldn’t know what else I did, because then Harry would know, and right now, despite the young-kid-old-dad bickering thing we had going on, he respected me.

“DAD!”

I winced and jumped out of my skin all at the same time. Harry hadn’t quite learned that he didn’t have to shout so loud that the door rattled. A knock would do, but then I smiled because this was just part of my son, and it was him and me together against the entire world. “Out in five!” I called back, meticulously shutting down applications, covering my tracks, I ran several backup protocols, and fastened the screens that hid the computers in place.

Within five minutes, I was out of my office, locking the door, and limping to reception. My knee hurt today; too much sitting at monitors and not enough exercise on a football injury that would haunt me forever. Fucking obligatory school sports. Why they couldn’t have had a math club, I’ll never know. I wouldn’t have hurt my knee solving theorems and enjoying algebra.

Harry was at the window, staring at his phone.

“What’s up, Hazmat?” I ruffled his hair, which he ducked away on instinct. He fussed with it and smoothed it back into place, even as he waved his phone with palpable excitement.

“Stop calling me Hazmat.”

“Sorry, Hubble.”

“And that.”

I ruffled his hair again, but this time I got a grin from him, so I called that a win.

“Something’s going down,” Harry announced, and I peered out the window at the car, a new-looking nondescript black SUV, and saw a man standing outside talking to Heather. He wasn’t parking anywhere he shouldn’t have been, but Heather appeared agitated and was pointing down the road. I attempted to lip-read, but that wasn’t in my skillset, so instead, I focused on the driver. Slim, blond hair, he shook his head at something Heather said, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out an ID. Whatever he showed her made her step back from him, and she looked surprised, but she was still telling him to move on. I could tell that was the issue when she waved toward the next block down.

“They found a hand,” Harry announced and held up his phone which had a picture zoomed in next to the nose of a scruffy terrier.

“Huh?”

“Marco was down there with Uncle Luca, and this dog brought a hand and dropped it right outside the library. It’s been chopped off. Look.” He thrust the phone closer, but that just made my eyes cross, so I gestured for the phone to check the image. He wrinkled his nose. “No swiping my photos,” he warned, and I rolled my eyes theatrically. I hated to think what a teenager would have on his phone, and carefully avoided swiping anything at all. I peered at the picture, pinching it in to see the whole of the scene, focusing in on what looked like a fake hand. I even began to form the words to explain that this was nothing, but then the tall blond dude, who was way this side of gorgeous, strode past the hotel, and he gave