Hacker: The Outlaw Chronicles Read Online Free PDF Page B

a lie. What if they grabbed him? What if they’ve done something to him?”
    Jill was silent, her mind grinding away. I knew in my heart the man in the black suit had Pixel. That’s why he’d mentioned him, to scare me. To pressure me and let me know that he held all the cards.
    “What if they hurt him?” I said.
    “At this moment we have no reason to believe anyone at BlakBox would harm either you or your friend. They’re a corporation, not the mafia. Walter Bell is a lot of things, but stupid isn’t one of them. Holding a kid is too risky.”
    “Risky?” I threw up my hands. “They locked me in a concrete room in their basement and sent a man to interrogate me. Do you really think they were just going to call the police? If you hadn’t come for me there’s no telling what they would’ve done. They were just going to deal with it themselves and make me disappear quietly. And Pixel too.”
    “That’s an assumption. We don’t know that.”
    “Then where is he?” The words came out sharper than I’d meant, and more desperate.
    “I don’t know.” She stopped. “But we’ll find him, I promise.”
    “Not sitting here we won’t.”
    My words hung in the air as Jill settled into the seat next to me and leaned close. “I know you’re upset. I would be too. I want to help you, but you’re not giving me much to go on.”
    “These people are dangerous,” I said. “I’m scared.”
    “You should be. Remember, you’re the one who crossed the line here, not Bell. I should be investigating you.”
    “But the pictures, the things I saw on their server . . . I don’t know, it was like something straight out of a spy movie. Something isn’t right there. I mean, how many companies have an interrogation room?”
    “More than you realize,” Jill said.
    A thick, dark cloud descended on my mind. Every moment that passed without word from Pixel lowered the odds of finding him safe. Everyone knew that. Plus, time gave BlakBox the advantage of covering their tracks—masking whatever it was I’d seen on their servers and whatever they’d done with Pixel.
    “You have to raid that place before they move everything off their servers,” I said. “It’s all right there; you just have to go get it.”
    Jill shook her head. “I can’t do that, not on the word of a teenage girl.”
    “Don’t you believe me?”
    “I don’t know.” She was quiet for a moment. “I don’t know.”
    Her words stung. “Jill . . .”
    “I trust you far more than I do Walter Bell, but that’s not enough. I need evidence.”
    “Then find Pixel. Find his laptop. I transferred the files from BlakBox’s server to it.”
    “Could he have sent the data somewhere?” she asked. “As a . . . I don’t know . . . a precaution? An e-mail account, a cloud backup service, anything?”
    “Yeah, if he had time. The plan was for him to upload the files to an encrypted site on the Internet, which I’d then give BlakBox access to after they hired me.”
    “And?”
    “It’s not there. I checked the account using my phone. I was the last person to log into it, and that was last night.”
    “What about e-mail? Could he have sent it to you?”
    “I checked that too. I’ve gotten nothing from him.” I shook my head. “They have him, I know it. And the data too. If that’s the case it’s their word against mine.”
    Jill reached out and put her hand on top of mine. “We’ll find Pixel and we’ll figure this out.”
    I felt the tears welling, but I shoved them down. I didn’t say anything.
    “I had your car towed to impound. It’s waiting for you downstairs. Now I want you to go home,” Jill said. “Get some rest. We’ll look at this with fresh eyes tomorrow. My people will keep looking for Pixel, all right?”
    “You’re letting me go?”
    “It took some work on my part, but yes, for now. You have to promise me you’ll keep your head down. And if the thought crosses your mind to go anywhere near BlakBox, don’t.