The Pack's Hacker (by Cooper) novel Chapter 27

Jude

When I returned to the Academy, I set up searches trying to find Patrick, Peter, and Justine. Then, I went right back to the video feed at the prison.

I watched the video I flagged again, just to see if I’d missed anything. I can tell by the tracking on the video that both Tracker and Hijack have watched it too. However, neither of them has had time to move forward.

Maybe it’s because I have a vested interest in keeping Wendy safe, but I need to know what the plan was.

I spend the rest of the afternoon going through videos. It’s a long, tedious process, but I don’t want to fast forward too much in case I miss something important. It’s too bad I can’t put someone like Yana on this. She’d love this and being the little digger that she is, she’d probably get everything we needed in a couple of days.

I stop at dinner time to go get food from the cafeteria. I almost never eat in here and right now, it’s summer break, so there aren’t many people around.

Since I’ve been here longer than most, the cafeteria people recognize me.

“Hey, Jude. Welcome back. Steak and potatoes tonight?” Jane, one of the cafeteria ladies, asks me.

“Did you grill the steak?” I ask, grinning. The woman is magic on the grill.

“As if I’d serve steak any other way,” she says offended.

“How’s your son?” I ask while she makes my plate to go.

A couple of months ago, he’d gotten into some trouble with his friends. I’d done what I could to help her out and get her son out of trouble. He isn’t a bad kid, he just made bad decisions when it came to his friends.

She sighs. “I hope he’s realizing that the ‘boring kids’ are the ones that can actually keep him out of jail,” she says, handing me my to-go box.

“Thanks, Jane. Let me know if you need any help with him,” I say. There’s not a lot I can do, but her son is an only child, she’s a single mom, and she works hard at the Academy. He’s probably on his own a lot.

“Thank you, Jude. Aren’t you heading home soon?”

“Yes, ma’am. I’m leaving in a few days. I’ll be gone a week, so don’t worry when you don’t see me around.”

“You have a good time. Tell your momma I said she did right by you.”

“I will.”

I go back to my room just in time to answer a video call from Wendy.

“Hello, beautiful,” I say, sitting down as the call connects.

“Hey! So, I have an idea about Patrick, Peter, and Justine. I wanted to run it by you before I mentioned it to Tracker.”

“Okay, let’s hear it,” I say, grabbing my food and eating while she talks.

“What if they’re in a pack somewhere? What if some crappy Alpha accepted them and is helping them to hide?” she asks.

I chew my fucking delicious piece of steak while I think.

“What Alpha would accept two Alphas and a pregnant woman?” I ask her.

“A friend? Maybe an Alpha with a family member of one of them in his pack?” she says.

“Have you dug into that more?” I ask.

“Not yet. I wanted to see if you thought it was a stupid idea first.”

“Wendy, there are no stupid ideas when you’re hunting for someone. The fact that Tracker can’t find them means that they aren’t moving in the normal way that people on the run move,” I say, setting my plate aside and pulling up a search engine on my third monitor.

“Which would you think is the more likely option? A pack with a friend or family?”

“Family,” she says immediately. I already knew what her answer would be. If Wendy was in trouble, the first people she’d go to would be her family, probably Alpha Warren. But not everyone has the family that she has. Siren, for example, would never go to her father if she was in trouble.

“Okay, let’s start with family,” I say and begin digging on Patrick, Peter, and Justine’s family. I have no idea if this will develop into anything, but it’s a great learning opportunity for Wendy, so I’m willing to go through the motions with her. She’ll learn all of this in her first year’s classes, so it will give her a leg-up before she even starts.

“Okay, Patrick and Peter didn’t have any other siblings, so we’d have to go back to their mother’s original pack,” I say.

“No, I don’t think they’d do that, unless they already had a relationship with that pack,” she says.

I pull up the information that I have on them.

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