Page 35 of Just My Luck

“We’re just taking you back to your hotel, don’t worry. I’m not kidnapping you.” Maureen fluffed her hair back into its preferred shape.

“Good to know.” He hadn’t enjoyed getting kidnapped the first time. “So how do you like being in charge?”

“Is that a joke? You’re just needling me, mocking me? Gloating?”

“Excuse me?” Maureen had always been touchy, but this was overkill. “You hunted me down, not the other way around.”

“Don’t pretend you don’t know why.”

He wondered how dangerous it would be to open the door and jump out. “I’m not in the mood, Maureen. What’s going on?”

Her expression shifted. “You really don’t know?”

“I really don’t. I’ve been minding my business, weeding the gardens, blowing the leaves. Recovering.”

“So…” She bit at the edge of her thumbnail, an old nervous habit. “You didn’t hack into our systems?”

He tensed against the cushy leather of the back seat. “I wouldn’t have to hack in. I know how to access everything.”

“Really? I thought they—” She didn’t finish that thought after he shot her a look. “Right. Of course you still know everything. Damn it. I was sort of hoping it was you.”

“So you could blame me and move on?”

“No,” she said, surprising him. “Because the other alternative is worse.”

“What’s the alternative?”

“That I have no earthly idea who it is.”

She pressed the heel of her hand into her forehead, looking so overwhelmed that his heart went out to her.

Was his father behind the hack? Lincoln had always suspected that KiYun Chun had people inside Kerr Enterprises to keep tabs on things. Or maybe Tanaka had done it?

“Was any damage done?”

“At first our tech team said they caught it in time. But ever since then, we’ve been getting messages at random times, on random computers throughout our system. They’re very odd, and none of us can make heads or tails out of them. Even though you’re irritating and arrogant, you are extremely smart, so maybe you can.”

She had the oddest way of asking for help, Lincoln thought dryly. The Mercedes turned onto the Queen Ka’ahumanu Highway. Floodwater was already flowing across it in the low spots.

“What do the messages say?”

“I took a picture of one on my phone. Sometimes they flash across the screen so fast you hardly have time to see them. But this one stayed long enough for me to capture it.”

She handed her phone to him. It was cued to a photo of a laptop screen. The image of a large bluish, jagged crystal filled the screen. Large block letters read, Can This Save the World? Solve the Mystery at FreeEnergyForAll dot com.

A chill ran down his spine. Someone was pushing that same meme into the Kerr computer system.

He squinted at the bottom of the meme. In much smaller print were the words “The Crystal Collective.” That was new.

If it was Tanaka, what motive would he have? Lincoln could understand some kind of espionage or sabotage. But this appeared to be neither.

Unless… Maybe Tanaka was trying to clue Maureen into the gem that she’d let go. She hadn’t fought him over Higher Ground because on paper it didn’t seem worth anything. She knew nothing about the missing CHUM sample or any of the rest of it. If she found out, she’d probably figure out a way to ruin it for him.

Show her nothing. He couldn’t trust Maureen, even if she did seem more vulnerable than she ever had before.

“What is it?” he asked, squinting as if he’d never seen the image before. “It just looks like a crackpot meme you might find on a subreddit.”

“Then why is it popping up in our system?”