Chapter 12 A

"Guys?" I ask as Ryder looks up at me. He has his calm demeanor and walks towards me abruptly.

"How did it go?" Ryder asks, running his hand down the back of my head. "Maddison gave you a clean bill of health?"

I half-smile at him. "Yes, and she left. Did you tell her I was in an accident? Because of her?"

Ryder tucks a strand of my hair behind my ear, looking ashamed.

"I didn't have to, "Ryder says, crossing his arms and leaning against the kitchen island. "I told her you were in a car accident leaving the mall. She blurted out the truth. She kept apologizing. I told her if you were severely hurt or killed, she would have been on my list. She knew exactly what that meant," he smirks.

I don't know why that makes me happy. I guess Dr. Packard needs a good scare to stay the hell away from us.

"So what else did she tell you?" Ryder asks with a look of concern.

I don't think it's an appropriate time to bring up the specialist. I decide to change the conversation.

"Wait, what are you guys staring at over there?" I step around Ryder and go to the table.

LeAnn gives Ryder a weird look. "Maybe it's not the smartest idea to let Sam look."

I ignore her and stand behind Freddie, looking at the laptop screen. I don't know what any of the pictures are. Shrugging my shoulders, I look at LeAnn. "What is this?"

It looks like four dirt, covered logs laying on the grass. Two of them are twice the size of the other two.

Bending over Freddie, I get a closer look. It's then that I notice one of the smaller objects looks like it has a face. It also has a hand.

"Oh, my God!" I yell, throwing my hands over my mouth.

Those logs are the severely burned bodies of two adults and two children.

I turn and bump into Ryder, sobbing. He throws his arms around me and hugs me tightly.

Why are they even looking at that?!

"Freddie, what else did Tommy say?" Ryder asks as he runs his hand up and down my back to calm me down.

"He said he had been trying to contact Jose for months now. After what happened to Connie, there was a chance the same thing could've happened to Jose."

I remember him! He was the guy that would cut up the so-called proof of death and deliver it to the payee. When I snuck into the basement back in New Jersey, I followed one of the maids, and she gave Jose a severed hand. He cut the pinky of the hand and kept a masonic ring on the finger. I hug Ryder tightly, trying to forget the memory, as Freddie continues to talk.

"He said everyone knew Jose was fired for working with Max."

Max and Jose?!

I wipe my tears and turn to look at Freddie.

Max had someone on the inside helping him? Why didn't Ryder tell me?

Freddie continues. "Tommy, however, wanted to make sure everyone was safe, even Jose and his family. He was able to hack into the Moorestown Police Department's network and even the F.B.I. He dug until he found this. They can't pinpoint Jose's exact cause of death, but they know he was dead before the fire."

Why did Moorestown sound so familiar? Then it hit me! Moorestown is a town near Ryder's home. His house is actually in Mount Laurel.

When Ryder first kidnapped me, that's where he hid me. We decided to move after the whole Max thing. He still owns the house, but he let everyone go for their safety and ours.

"Jose also has what looks like cuts all over the back of his arms. The rest of his body is charcoal. The cause of death for his wife and kids are single gunshot wounds to the head. The entire house with the family inside was set on fire."

"Talk about overkill," LeAnn says in disbelief.

"What kind of monster would do that?" I whisper.

Ryder gives all the employees big checks. He told them that as long as they didn't say a word about what happened in that house, they would receive more checks—one hundred thousand dollars every year for the rest of their lives.

"What is going on?" I ask in horror as I look up at Ryder. Why was this family brutally killed?

Didn't we leave all this craziness behind us?!

He looks down at me and hugs me. Tears are still rolling down my face.

"Someone has been targeting the employees from the other house. It's easy to speculate that they are after me." Ryder clears his throat and continues, "so far, everyone has been accounted for except for three employees. Jose, Connie, and Elaine. No one, not even her family, knows where Elaine went. Connie and Jose, along with their families, have been murdered."

I step away from Ryder in disbelief. "What?! Why didn't you tell me?"

LeAnn hops off the kitchen island. "So it's safe to say that anyone working for you is in danger." She looks at Ryder. Freddie does the same.

"Yes. We can't take any chances. Freddie, I know the system is backing up, but I need you to send a system-wide text once it's back up. Let's everyone know that code: C.U.R.R.E. has been initiated."

"Cure?" I ask, sounding out the word he spells out.

"It's Curre. It means run in Latin." Freddie says as he begins typing a mile a minute.

I feel goosebumps all over my body. Ryder sees the alarm in my face and pulls me into him. I honestly don't blame him for not telling me anything. I am still processing Max and what he did to my family. Ryder is doing what he's done for me since the beginning, protect me.

It suddenly dawns on me that Freddie got into the office. The electricity is back on.

"Did you find anything out in the office?"

Ryder nods. "Thanks to LeAnn and her homemade bomb, we were able to get the cap off the generator. However, she destroyed the generator and anything vital that may have been left in it."

LeAnn clears her throat, looking uncomfortable. She pulls out her phone and pretends to text.

"Bomb?" I look around at everyone.

"While you were snoozing," Freddie says as he looks back at me.

"Anyways, our entire network was wiped clean by the person hacking it. "Ryder continues. "No traces of them anywhere. Freddie is downloading it again. All the surveillance recordings from the past couple of months are gone. There's no way to retrieve it. The hacker deleted it."

Freddie interrupts. "We won't be able to see who killed Fallon either. Someone was poking and prodding into our network. It's just a question of who and why?"

"Where's Fallon's body?" I ask as Ryder lets me go. He looks ashamed of his next answer.

"We got rid of it," he says as he lets me go.