Page 10 of Hacked For Love
It’s too dangerous…but on the other hand, if I just robbed someone who’s relatively innocent, he at least deserves an explanation. Doesn’the?
I send him back a short note, knowing that the mail server I’m using can’t be traced back to me. The whole time, I feel tugged in two different directions. And yet somehow, though it takes me twenty minutes to write and send a few short lines, I feel better for sendingit.
That money is pocket change to a man like you, but I’m going to use it to save seven thousandlives.
I just don’t want you dying because of all this. The other two might deserve it, but I have my doubts about younow.
I sit back, closing my eyes. Suddenly the walls of the apartment seem to be squeezing together around me. I need to get out of here, rain ornot.
My boot heels clack on the wet sidewalk as I walk up the street toward the closest corner shop, four blocks away. After the icy cold and snow, Seattle’s version of a January thaw has filled the air with swirling mist. I pass the burned-out building, turning my face away from it, my head throbbing with myfailure.
At least the survivors will have enough money to start their lives over. But nothing I do will feel like enough. Not after we lost fivelives.
I try to block those thoughts and think of Drake Steele instead. I can’t get him out of my head—his good looks, his self-assurance, how fast he caught on to who sent him that message, his audacity in writing me back and expecting ananswer.
And then I went and gave him one, just like he wanted.What the hell is wrong with me?This man is dangerous; I can feel it in my bones. He’s already gotten me to do things against my betterjudgment.
He’s trouble. He’d be trouble even if he didn’t mean to be. Why is he having this much of an effect onme?
I’m actually getting a little scared now, the fear seeping past my exhausted resignation.Whatever happens, I have to stay focused on helping those people. Nothing is more important thanthat.
The corner store shares the first floor of a nice old building with a coffee shop on one side and a used book shop on the other. Inside is a typical Seattle compromise: one wall full of produce and healthy snacks, the other wall full of salt, sugar, andgrease.
The chubby little Persian guy behind the counter is listening patiently to a customer’s request for more varieties of tofu. He gives me a resigned little smile, and we nod at each other as I walk in. He sees me every couple of days and always seems a little relieved at the sight of a customer who won’t twitter odd requests at him in too-rapidEnglish.
I get a big bottle of premixed nutritional shake, a thick organic glop of an unpleasant mossy color thanks to lots of spirulina. I know I don’t eat or sleep enough, so hopefully choices like this will help make up thedifference.
I pay the cashier in exact change, and he smiles as we exchange well-wishes, and I walk back out. I think he believes I’m much younger than I am. He’s asked me more than once where my motheris.
I think he’d cringe if I told him thetruth.
My body must crave something in the shake, because the smell when I open it has me gulping it down greedily even as I make my way back down the street.If Drake wants his money back, then he can go directly and ask for it back from each person I’ve helped—and preferably face-to-face.
But even though I talk tough in my head as I march back to my apartment, my resolve crumbles when I sit down at my screen and see he’s written back.Again.
You fascinate me. If you tell me about these seven thousand people you’re saving with my money, I’ll let you keep it all with no furthertrouble.
There’s just one catch. I want to hear it from you in person—and I want you to bring some form of documentation on these guerrilla charity acts of yours that I canverify.
I push away from my desk so suddenly that I almost knock my chair over. “Oh no. No, no, no, no, that is a bad idea.” And probably atrap.
I write himback.
I’ll give you all pertinent details on how the money was used, but I don’t meet. It’s a matter of personalsafety.
I switch windows resolutely and force myself to go back to solving people’s problems with that stolen money. Candace Whitman: hospital bills, $48,000. The Rodriguez family: overdue mortgage, $40,000.
Purple Heart recipient Aisha Michaels: vet bills for her service dog, changes to her house to accommodate her new disabilities, $37,000.
It only takes an average year’s pay to change someone’s life forever. Anyone who says that money can’t buy happiness has never known the misery of not havingenough.
I’m ten families into the day’s “customers” when I hear the beep of a reply e-mail. I stop, and my heart starts to pound again. “Shit.”
Knock it off, Steele! I’m not meeting with you!I switch windows—and my eyes widen inhorror.
He’s sent a photo attachment. It’sme.
Blurry footage of my hair tucked under my hat and my body wrapped in a fuzzy gray coat that isn’t my style at all—it’s one of my disguises. The image is taken from a big-box store where I handled some of my furniture orders for my “clients” earlyyesterday.
