Page 29 of Second Chance At Love

He frowned as he looked at the phone number.

“Who is it?” curiously asked Henry.

Ben got up, shutting the door of the private room before returning to the chair and answering the call. “Ben. You are on speakerand my brother Henry is here. I can’t guarantee the room as it is a public place.”

“I already swept the room. There are no bugs,” dryly mentioned a man’s voice. “I hired a friend of a friend to be sure.”

“You always were paranoid,” sighed Ben.

“You were never paranoid enough. You should update your phones. The Feds can almost hack them now. The reason I am calling you is because I have put two and two together and come up with a pretty interesting answer,” stated the voice.

“Plus I left you a message asking why you torched the systems in my hotel,” came Ben’s terse reply.

“This is the hacker? The one who got in our computers?” questioned Henry with interest. He sat up a little straighter in the bed, intently watching Ben.

“The very same,” proudly declared the man over the phone. “Look. I didn’t realize it was your set up. I should have. I know that now, but Ben, it’s been so long since you and I have had any coding contact.”

“Mostly because I’m legal,” dryly mentioned Ben.

“And I sometimes blur lines. I get it, we drifted apart. Now, I’m guessing you want to know what happened,” easily replied the voice.

“You owe me so yes, I do want to know what happened. More than that, I want a name and a way to find the person behind all of the things that have been happening to the Ramesly family,” declared Ben.

“I don’t know if I can give you a name,” demurred the hacker.

“If you want your routers to keep functioning, you will cooperate,” parried Ben.

“You’re legal. You can’t do that and keep clean. The alphabet agencies would be after you and stuff you in a dusty basement somewhere to work for them,” responded the voice. “There is no way you are doing anything to my systems.”

“Try me. This guy tried to blow up my entire family. I’m not feeling charitable,” stated Ben firmly. When Henry was about to say something, Ben put up his hand, forestalling him.

“It was the same hotel as the bomb scare? I saw that on the news,” the hacker had a laugh. “Oh boy. I’m in deep trouble. I didn’t know he was after you. You are an old friend so I’ll level with you. I don’t know his name. He acted through a company based out of the Cayman Islands. The guy knows enough to cover his tracks business wise, but is a crazy psycho. He kept saying he was going to inherit some mega pharmacy company. Then he was going to take out everyone in the family and get their companies too because he deserved it. He was bragging about being the biggest billionaire ever. Dude needed to chill.”

“How did he hire you? There has to be a payment trail I can follow,” Ben tried to keep the conversation on track.

“He gave me a farm.”

“What?” questioned Henry, wondering if that was some sort of computer code.

“The psycho gave me a farm. Land, crops, house, barn, equipment, all lock stock and barrel. He signed over a deed to me. It was in a company name, again through the Cayman Islands, but I’m betting his former neighbors might know who he is. That sort of crazy doesn’t go unnoticed,” suggested the hacker. “I’ll forward you the address. You can come down for the housewarming party I’m having in a couple of weekends, talk to the neighbors yourself.”

Ben and Henry looked at each other in disbelief.

Chapter Ten

“I can make it up a few steps,” protested Henry as he sat in the chair they had purloined from the kitchen table as soon as Ben had driven into the driveway. This was his first time out of the hospital since the sickness that had gripped him after finding Holly. During his hospital stay, Ben and Cora had moved him into her guest room and he finally was getting a look at the house she had purchased. Henry found he rather liked the old building.

“We know you can. However, you don’t have to and all of us are just dying to show off how much we have been working out at the gym,” Max tried to keep his voice reasonable as he hefted his corner of Henry’s chair. Everett was on the other side and Ben was holding up the back of the chair as they climbed the few steps onto the porch of Cora’s home.

Kitty held open the door for them. “Welcome home, Henry. I hope you don’t mind putting up with us all for a little while but we wanted to have a housewarming and baby shower for Cora and it just worked out that it’s the same day as you coming out of the hospital.”

“It’s a nice idea and I’m glad I’m here for it.” Henry grabbed the oxygen canister a little tighter as they tried to maneuver through the door. “Really guys. I can take some steps. I might get a little winded but I can still walk.”

“We got you,” insisted Everett. “Where are we taking Henry? Living room, his bedroom, where?”

“The living room,” firmly stated Henry. “I really am tired of everyone hovering around my bed.”

“Living room it is,” agreed Max.