Shaw (Alpha Geek #6) - Milly Taiden

Chapter One

Shaw

There was nothing like it.

The feeling of his fingers flying on the keys as he tapped out a code. It made his skin tingle and his heart soar to think of all the things he could do with just a few keystrokes. Even the clickety-clack of the keys was somehow comforting.

In front of his computer screens, Shaw Eagan was the master of the world.

He could change traffic light signal patterns. He could hack into any bank. He could spy on air travel. He could even hack into a car’s GPS system and change its route.

He was that good.

The world wasn’t his oyster, it was his playground. Not that Shaw was in the habit of doing bad things with his hacking skills. He was more of a gray hat than a flat-out menace to the fabric of society. But there was only so much abuse a man could take before he used his exceptional skills to his advantage.

If others didn’t play fair, why should he?

Shaw wasn’t a bad person. Not in the least, but there was only so much embarrassment a man could take before he genuinely snapped. He volunteered at the nursing homes, teaching little tiny grandmas and grandpas how to use email and how to video chat with grown kids and grandchildren who couldn’t be bothered to visit. Why? Because he wanted those nice folks to get a chance at communicating with those they loved. The online community was a great place to feel connected, and the elderly needed that. More than anyone else in the world, the abandoned nanas and pops needed to be linked into the big wide world.

What Shaw was doing at that very moment was something else entirely.

The Cain boys had been causing him nothing but pain since grade school. Carl had given him his first swirly in the first grade. Carson had beaten him up during a field trip in the second grade. Curtis had poured water on him on the bus in third grade and told everyone Shaw had peed his pants. He was called Shaw Wet-Pants for years. Well into high school.

And so, it had gone on until Shaw had graduated. Not quite valedictorian, but only barely. He had spent too much time with his computers to get the perfect 4.0 GPA.

Throughout all of their school years, the three Cain brothers had taken turns torturing him, egging each other on in a way only absolute meatheads could.

What one did, the others had to top, and their favorite victim had always been Shaw.

At long last, Shaw had been free of the terrible trio when he had gone off to college. But the second he had come back into town to take care of his nana, the Cains had been right there. They owned most of the rental properties in the city, and that included his grandmother’s apartment building. They had bullied her into another five-year lease at a rate that she just couldn’t afford.

The penalty for breaking her lease agreement was so high, it would be impossible for Shaw to come up with the money. More than that, they had put in some dingy clauses, making it damn well airtight. Breaking the lease would just not be happening. Not on the right side of the law, anyway.

To add insult to injury, the Cains refused to fix the leaky faucet in the bathroom and the shattered balcony window. Shaw had boarded it up while he waited for a new window to be delivered and installed.

The Cains didn’t care that the elevator was broken all the time. They said the stairs were there for a reason. Like Shaw’s eighty-year-old sweet, wonderful nana could go up and down five flights of stairs with her lousy hip and shaky hands.

The Cain trio’s latest move was truly disgusting.

There was a cockroach infestation in the building, and they were asking every resident to pay a grand each to treat their apartment. Even if treatments weren’t even close to being that expensive. It was a crocked cash grab. Shaw had the proof, too. He had looked at the lease agreement, and the legal document clearly stated that any pest or rodent problem was the owner’s responsibility.

It didn’t matter, though.

The Cains were well connected. They were panther shifters who ran the city’s seedy underbelly. He couldn’t make one single move against them with legal recourse. They could—and had—paid off every judge and sheriff in town.

It was a bad scene.

But Shaw had a plan. A good one.

Well, strictly speaking, it was a