The Hacker (The Dregs #6)

by Leslie Georgeson

The General allowed me to visit the electronics room for several hours each day, always under observation. Nothing I did ever went unnoticed. I was constantly monitored. Kept under close watch. And my abilities were honed, strengthened, and put to The General’s use. I soon became one of the best hackers in the world. The General never expected my abilities to come back to haunt him. He never expected me to use my dreg talent against him. The day the dregs escaped, I hacked into The General’s server and transferred twenty million dollars into another account. I stole most of his fortune and shared it with my dreg brothers. If I’d had time and the means, I would have also stolen all The Company data, but we’d been fighting for our lives that day, and escaping was our main priority.

I understood how a woman could become a man’s biggest weakness. And also his greatest strength.

man in approximately his late twenties with spiky, sandy-brown hair and vibrant aqua-colored eyes

Six-foot-four. Two hundred and twenty pounds. Sandy-brown hair. Blue-green eyes. Known as The Hacker. A dreg.

This guy was called The Hacker. What did that mean? Did he hack off people’s heads?

I was embarrassed to admit that a horror movie I’d seen when I was twelve had traumatized me to the point that I now had an unnatural fear of the woods and all creatures living in it. I was a city girl through and through.

I would have to read the file first to determine my next step. I prayed my research wouldn’t involve the forest. Or any non-human beasts.

A sudden breathlessness hit me. Was he chewing gum? Sucking on a mint? The mint smell caught my attention the most. He smelled good and he had nice breath?

While it was true that I was part beast, the human in me wouldn’t allow me to ignore Shannon’s plight.

I’d used my hacking skills many times in the past to delve into the criminal world, finding monsters and exposing their identities to the FBI via anonymous tip. I’d also helped the FBI catch over sixty criminals and wanted felons who were now locked up behind bars. I alone had helped the FBI bring down many illegal websites, child pornography rings, gambling sites, illegal sex, drug, and weapons sites, and other criminal webpages that the FBI wouldn’t have been able to uncover on their own. I spent a lot of my spare time searching for criminals on the web and helping the FBI take them down.

“Then why are you still alive?” I whispered. “Because on the day of our execution, the dregs fought back. Nine of us escaped that day. That’s why we have bounties on our heads.”

When I take a woman into my bed, it’s not casual, it’s not a one-time thing. I give as much as I take… I expect her to be with me, and me alone, for as long as we are together. I expect exclusivity.

“I’m The Extractor. My dreg talent is a sexual pheromone that drives women wild and makes them loose lipped. While they are in a sexual haze, I extract information from them.”

I was certainly getting a bigger story than I’d bargained for. In fact, it was no longer just a story. It was very real. And I was now a major player. I’d become what I despised most in stories. The damsel in distress.