Dark Secret - Avelyn Paige Page 0,15
at the head of the table. “Both of you. Sit down and shut the fuck up!”
I glare over at Stone Face as I sit down. This isn’t the end of this conversation. For a man of so few words, he sure has a lot to say about my ex, a woman he doesn’t know at all. Do I really even know her? Shelby isn’t mine. She doesn’t wear my patch. Am I really willing to put my own patch on the line to defend her?
“Now that you two have finished your pissing match, your request is denied, Hash.”
I start to argue, but Judge glares at me, lifting his palm in the air. “Do you know who has her? Any reason to believe it’s a club motivated kidnapping?”
Shit. I hadn’t even thought of that. “Doubtful they would know about her if I didn’t, but I can’t rule it out, Prez. Not until I access the laptop Shelby gave me.”
Judge nods. “See what you can find and report back. You may not want to involve the club, but I’m not giving you a choice. She’s your blood, and that makes her a part of our family.” He glances over at Stone Face. “We protect our own. If she’s really in trouble, we’ve got his back.”
“I appreciate that, Prez.”
“Anything else we need to discuss?” The room remains silent, and with a hit of his gavel against the table, we’re dismissed. A few of the guys offer their support as we file out of the room, while the rest of them return to the party. I head straight back to my room.
Stepping inside, I close the door behind me, eyeing Hayden’s pink laptop. Time to get to work and find my daughter. As I walk toward my work desk, I yell out a command to my voice-controlled sound system, and within a few seconds, Black Stone Cherry begins to pour out of my speakers.
Settling in for what could be a long night, I wait for the screen to load, type in the first command prompt, and hit the enter key. It buzzes at me. Denied.
“Okay,” I mutter under my breath. “Let’s try this one.” I type it in, and the second I hit enter, it buzzes again. Denied. “Third time’s the charm?” The third one goes in, and the wheel spins for a split second, giving me hope, until the same buzz greets me.
Fuck, she’s better than I was at her age, and that’s saying something. I was backdooring my way into my school’s aging servers to change my grades at her age. If she can do this, what else is she capable of? Pride would be swelling inside my gut again if I didn’t need to get into her laptop so badly.
I crack my knuckles before I key in a different prompt, one I haven’t used in years. “Come on, let me in,” I mutter, hitting the enter key one more time. This time, the home screen pops up.
“I’m in!”
Wasting no time, I start looking through her browsing history. Her Google searches are atypical of what I’d normally think a twelve-year-old would be interested in. Alienware computers and coding online courses litter her history. I’d half expected to see YouTube videos, and even that fucking TikTok app I keep seeing everywhere. Nothing is out of the ordinary. Well, except the one search for The Bachelor spoilers, but I ignore that. A few scrolls more and I hit pay dirt. A message board for an online video game starts showing up repeatedly. Clicking on the most recent link, I find a conversation about cheat codes for a game called Blox World.
I switch over to her desktop and find a link to the application there. Clicking it, the game begins to load, and while it does, I open up my cell phone and pull up the information about it. Blox World, it turns out, is an interactive game for kids with interests in game development and coding. They can create their own worlds, and allow other users to test out their creations. Its setup allows even the most uneducated kid the opportunity to dip their toes into creating a world of their own. I’d have loved this kind of thing growing up.
Peering back up at the computer screen, I see the game has finally loaded, thankfully logging directly into her own game without the need of another password. A few chat windows pop open.
BearClaw220: Nice world building.
DrewD21: Can you meet me tomorrow before summer camp?