The Real Heiress Is Coming Back (Hannah Carter) novel Chapter 148

Chapter 148

Other than that, Hannah really couldn’t figure out any other reason why Barnaby was following her around 24/7, watching her like she was some kind of criminal.

Barnaby gave her a long, searching look. It wasn’t that he was worried she’d run off; he was scared she’d vanish again.

“Yes,” he said.

Hannah could only stare at him, totally lost for words.

“Well, you don’t have to worry. I’ve got ethics, and I won’t bail on you,” she said, then turned and headed into the café.

“Ronin,” Barnaby said, shooting a look at the driver’s seat. Ronin caught on instantly.

Hannah was led by the waiter to the private booth Van had reserved. She knocked and walked in.

Van was the only one inside, totally absorbed in his laptop, catching up on all the latest gossip on the hacker forums online.

These past couple of days, after the whole VER-224 hack, Interpol dropped a $100,000 bounty for Raven.

Everyone on the forums was trying to guess who Raven really was and where they were hiding. Plus, there was another thread blowing up about who the other hacker could have been.

“Boss, come check this out! Someone on the forums is digging up dirt, saying the one who hacked VER-224 with you might actually be Shadow. Is that for real?” Van said, spinning his laptop screen toward Hannah as soon as she walked in.

‘Shadow?’ Hannah thought, a little surprised.

She leaned in to check out the post. It was just gossip, with most people guessing it was either Shadow or

Vulcan.

Those two were legends in the hacking world, but also bitter rivals.

Their fans never got along, and now that things had blown up, they were flaming each other and trying to shift the blame, just trying to make sure their own idol didn’t get dragged into it.

Vulcan’s fans were saying: [Raven’s wanted now, so the accomplice must be Shadow.]

Shadow’s fans shot back: [Vulcan’s just copying Shadow to frame him. Talk about dirty tricks.]

The onlookers were all hyped: [No wonder they’re top hackers, breaking into Veridia’s military satellites? That’s legendary.]

Hannah just stared at the screen, speechless.

ers

Honestly, she was dying to know the truth behind all this drama, was any of it real, and who was the other hacker? But Shadow still hadn’t replied to her.

But this wasn’t the time to get lost in the drama.

“Where’s the stuff?” she asked.

Van reached over to his laptop and pulled out a black memory card, sealed in a small clear plastic bag.

Hannah took it. It was a Micro SD card, just 256MB, one of those old-school phone memory cards from the flip phone era. It was seriously ancient.

“Did you bring the card reader?” she asked.

“Yeah, I’ve got it,” Van said, pulling a card reader out of his bag and handing it to her.

Hannah dragged the laptop over, sat down across from him, and plugged the SD card into the reader, then into the computer.

Van jumped up and hurried over to watch.

Hannah opened up the card, it was completely empty.

Just then, the waiter came in with a cup of coffee and asked, “Hey, is that guy outside with you?”

Hannah peeked through the door and spotted Ronin standing awkwardly in the hallway. ‘Seriously?’ she thought, a little exasperated.

Van noticed Ronin too. Knowing he was Barnaby’s right-hand man, he asked, “Should I let him in?”

“No,” Hannah said, shaking her head. She wasn’t about to let Barnaby find out her real identity just yet.

She turned to the waiter and said, “Just bring him a latte and have him wait outside for me.”

“Got it,” the waiter replied, closing the door behind him as he left.

Van caught on to what she was doing. “Wait, you’re still not planning to tell him who you really are?”

Hannah raised an eyebrow. “Tell him, so he can cash in on that $100,000 bounty?”

Van’s mouth twitched. “Come on, he’s not that heartless. If he found out you were Raven, he’d probably jump at the chance to bring you into the Thole family business.

“You’d have the Thole family in your corner, and they could pull some strings with Veridia, maybe put in a good word for you so they’d drop the whole manhunt.”

“Forget it,” Hannah said, her tone flat. “He’s always telling me how rough it is for him in the Thole family, and how he’s got to make it on his own.”

Van just stared, totally speechless.

‘Rough? Seriously? Van thought, not buying it.

‘Rough as in, he can settle down, have kids, and step right up as the next head of the Thole family whenever he feels like it?’

As they chatted, Hannah drank half her coffee, pulled a sleek silver USB drive from her pocket, plugged it into the laptop, and her slender fingers flew across the keyboard.

Van had always known Hannah was a genius, but this was the first time he’d actually witnessed her skills firsthand.

Her fingers were just a blur, dancing over the keys, and lines of code scrolled across the black screen so fast, Van couldn’t even catch a single command before it vanished.

Ten minutes later, a few files appeared on the previously empty SD card.

The file names were the generic ones from an old Nokia system: “Album,” “Recordings,” and similar default titles.

But someone had shredded the original data, so not everything could be recovered. The album folder had photos, but the images were corrupted and couldn’t be displayed.

Hannah clicked on one of the audio files in the recordings folder and hit play.

It was a phone recording from eleven years ago, but the data was incomplete, so the exact date was lost.

“Is this it? Boss, you’re a total legend!” Van shouted, nearly jumping out of his seat. He grabbed his phone. “Let me text Lauren right now!”

“Wait,” Hannah said, holding up her hand to stop him. She double-clicked the audio to open it.

Van’s eyes went wide. “Boss! I promised her I’d keep this secret…”

“Shut up. Don’t make a scene,” Hannah snapped, cutting him off.

The audio started playing, but all Hannah could hear at first was this constant static. No way to tell if it was just a crappy recording or the file was messed up.

The static dragged on for more than five minutes before, finally, another voice broke through.

“If this goes wrong, people could die!”

It was a man’s rough voice, he was trying to keep it low, but one could hear the tension all over it.

Hannah’s eyes lit up and she leaned in, but the static came back before she could catch anything else.

Another six minutes ticked by before the voice came back, but this time it was a woman’s.

“I’ll give you 150 thousand dollars. Just do what I say. Once it’s done, no matter what happens, I’ll take care of your wife and daughter for the rest of their lives…” The voice faded into static again.

‘Wait, that voice… Hannah thought, her mind racing. “That’s Gemma!’

The recording ended after three more minutes of static.

Eleven years ago, something deadly, 150 thousand dollars, and a promise to look after a man’s wife and daughter.

Hannah’s mind spun, piecing it all together with the car crash that took her adoptive mom’s life eleven years. back. ‘Wait… was it Gemma? Did she actually pay Gantt to cause that accident and have my adoptive mom

killed?’

And of course, all the most important details in the recording were missing.

She tried running the data recovery again, but still got nothing new. ‘Seriously? Not even a single extra file?’ Hannah thought, frustration bubbling up.

Refusing to give up, she ran some audio repair software, but it was pointless, the recording was so corrupted, it was like something had scrambled it from the very start.

Just thinking about Gemma’s scheming face made Hannah’s fists clench tight. ‘That woman… How could she be so ruthless?’ Hannah seethed, barely able to contain her anger.

Van noticed how stormy Hannah looked and gently poked her shoulder, trying not to spook her. “Boss, you alright?

“That recording sounded like someone was putting out a hit. Is this about Yvette and her mom, the mother and daughter you told me to watch out for?”

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