Dark by Erin M. Leaf Page A

hacker,” she said louder.
    Lucy looked at her then burst out laughing. “What? That’s the
stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
    Eva nodded and pointed at her friend. “You tell him that.”
    Lucy leaned back, clearly horrified. “Uh, no thank you. He might
decide to eat me for breakfast.”
    “Yeah, well, that’s why I have to figure this out,” Eva said,
clicking through her files. She hadn’t even set up wireless yet in the house,
let alone network access. How could her computer be the source? When her cell phone
rang, she jumped.
    “That’ll be your Sentry,” Lucy said, a note of panic in her voice.
    Eva glared at her and dug her phone out of her pocket to look at
the display. “Huh.” Fear congealed at the base of her spine. She hadn’t wanted
Greyson to be right, but there was no denying it now.
    “Not Greyson then?” Lucy asked. “Who is it?”
    Eva glanced at her friend. “My stepfather.” She tapped the screen, setting it on speaker. “John? It’s the middle of the
night. Is everything okay?”
    Lucy gave her crazy-eye, but Eva waved at her to be silent.
    “I could ask you the same question, Eva,” John replied. His voice
sounded weird.
    Stressed or something , she thought. Not a good sign.
    She frowned. “Is my mom there?”
    “She’s in Florida, visiting with friends. You know that.”
    “Why are you calling me then?” Eva held her breath.
    John sighed theatrically. “I think you already know the answer to
that, my dear.”
    Lucy grabbed her arm and dug her fingers in. What. The. Hell, she mouthed, soundlessly.
    Eva shook her off. “What? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
She faked a yawn. “You woke me up.”
    “Turn off the computer and get out of there, Eva. Do it right now.
I love your mother and I like you a lot,” he said, as if he weren’t completely
insane.
    “I like you too, John,” Eva lied. She squashed the part of her
heart that felt a pang of grief for the man who’d made her mother happy. He
wasn’t real. Apparently, he’d never been real, or he wouldn’t have
called her the moment she turned on her laptop tonight. “John, I don’t
understand. What’s going on?”
    “Are we really going to play this game, Eva?” he asked, suddenly
sounding angry.
    “This isn’t a game to me.”
    He made a disgusted sound.
    She took a deep breath to keep her temper under wraps and locked
eyes with Lucy. “Fine, if that’s how you want to do this. Why did you do it,
John? You know that the Stronghold tech is off limits. And what possible reason
could you have had for using my laptop to mess around with the Sentries’ stuff?”
    He laughed. “Hmm, so you do know what’s going on. Surprising, really. I didn’t think you were that perceptive.”
    What an asshole, Eva thought, glaring at her phone. “The Stronghold net is the
only protection we have to keep those things away from Earth,” she said, voice
shaking. “And you screwed with it.”
    “The Sentries want you to believe that, Eva, but how do we know it’s
true? The Spiders, as you call them, are nothing but non-intelligent bugs. They
pose no threat to us. The Sentries are lying to us all. That’s what men with
power do, not that I’d expect you to understand that, at your age.”
    His tone set her teeth on edge. “You’ve never seen one of the
Spiders up close. I have. The Sentries are trying to keep us alive, John. Those
things are dangerous. I have the scars to prove it.”
    Lucy’s eyes were wide as saucers. Eva nodded grimly at her friend,
but then John spoke again and her attention went back to her phone.
    “Turn off the computer and get out of there. This is my last
warning. If you don’t, well…” He paused. “On your head be it.”
    Eva stared at the phone as the line went dead.
    “Shit, shit!” Lucy grabbed Eva’s leg. “Did what I think happen
just happen?” she said, voice rising. “Your stepfather hacked into the Sentries’
tech? Is he crazy?”
    Eva laughed