Disclaimer Ally Carter owns all except for the plot and the character Luke.

Chapter 5

Zach pov

There was a small rental company about 5 miles from the office. It was a short walk. There Macey, like planned used one of her fake credit cards under an unknown alias. The car was larger than we anticipated but we got out of there quickly. We had no idea how far the hacker was. They could have been two steps behind us or 10, either way we weren't taking any chances whatsoever.

"How much security does your apartment have?" Liz asked using her phone to try and catch satellite pictures of anyone following us.

"Only three people know how to bypass it, Cammie, Bex and I. To answer your question, we have every one available to us, dozens of physical and voice scans, a bunch of pass-codes and about a hundred motion detectors and security cameras. Does that sound like enough to you?" I tell her making a sharp turn while speeding.

"I think it will suffice for now, but I think we need to make your apartment completely invisible for the next couple of hours until we are sure the storm has passed. Is your security camera feed connected to the CIA's network." We had to take every precautions. We got this far, there is no turning back now.

"No we made sure to put it on out own private feed which is also backed up." We were almost there. Bex and Macey took the liberty of looking around to spot if nay car was tailing us. So far nothing came up. Either they were really good and we underestimated whoever it was or we successfully managed to get them off our tail. I hope it was the latter.

We rushed out of the car as soon as it was barely parked. We rushed into the building without skipping a beat. "We need to destroy the laptop" Macey said as I was working on getting all of us inside the apartment. There was a reason we barely had any people over. "Agreed, there could be some trace he put on it." Bex said nodding her head and motioning for me to hurry up.

"I told you there was a lot of security" I mumbled. Liz clutched the laptop, I think it was her third favorite one. "For Cammie." She says and gives it to them willingly. Just then I managed to open the door and push them inside.

"Liz work on erasing everything off of the laptop and see if there could be a link or a connection to the hacker that we could get nay information about them." I was making sure all the security-measures were working tightly. We couldn't have traces on ourselves physically, This hacker better make themselves ready for whats about to come to them. Anyone who stands in my way would regret it, anyone who stands between me and Cammie will never forget what I would have done to them.

It was almost time to rotate in surveillance when I caught a quick glimpse at a flash of black hair. It was in one frame and gone the next. They seemed to be moving fast enough to be caught only once on every other camera, they were good. From the frame it looks like a man.

"Guys I got something on the cameras." They rushed over in time to see the figure dash across the monitor screen. "He seems to be making his way up here." I tell them pulling up the footage from a few minutes ago. The pattern of where he was going conveniently was the same way to our apartment.

"How did he manage to follow us?" Bex asked with her eyebrows scrunched together trying to solve the impossible. "It doesn't matter what we need to focus on is what we know about him, anything we could come up with to use against him as a weakness." Macey said staring at the computer intensely.

"She's right. From the way he walks he favors his right leg more so we can assume he is right handed." Liz chimes in pointing to the computer to prove her theory.

"We don't have enough time for that. He is getting closer, he might be able to hack into the system and disable the security." We only had a few seconds before he could get close enough to ruin everything.

"We can catch him by surprise and attack him as soon as he gets in." I say getting close to the door. I couldn't wait to punch whoever it was in the face, hard. A couple seconds later Liz tells me that someone was trying to gain access to our security feed. She did what she could to give us a few more minutes but the bottom line was that he was coming in. Bex stood beside me as we waited for the door to open. Macey was leaning on the wall opposite of us.

"Are you ready?" She asked. We nodded as Liz told us he would be coming in in less than 10 seconds. I was one step closer to getting Cammie back, all I had to do was interrogate the person who made us flee work to go to my house.

A knock was heard on the door. I scoffed, who does he think he is knocking if he disabled security and tracked us here there was no need for that. Why not just break the door down?

The door knob turned, the door creaked open. I couldn't wait. I attacked the figure at the door knocking him to the ground. "What do you want with Cammie?" I added a punch to the stomach knocking the wind out of him.

"Zach stop it!" I heard Macey say in horror. Why did she suddenly feel sympathy for this monster? Then Bex and Liz chimed in too when I added in another punch. It was when the person underneath me groaned that I realized it was someone I knew. It was Preston. What was he doing here and where was the hacker? Clearly I was missing something.

I quickly got off Preston and helped him get up. "Sorry man I thought you were someone else." He rubbed his midsection in pain. "Clearly." He mumbled giving me a quick glare. I closed the door behind me while Macey was fussing over him.

"Can someone tell me what is going on?" He asked, well more like sighed. Liz told us that security was still down. The threat wasn't gone just yet. Macey was about to start explaining when I cut her off. "By now you have probably heard that Cammie has gone MIA. The CIA has no idea where she could be and lost her about a week into the mission. We decided to take it upon ourselves to track her and her heavily encrypted case file." I gave him the short version of things, we were pressed for time and the hacker could be anywhere.

"I see." He sat there for a few seconds taking in the information. At last he looked up with a determined look in his eyes and said "I want to help, in any way I can. Cammie was my friend too and I want to bring her back." And with that said our small team just got bigger.

"Welcome aboard Preston" Macey said kissing him on the cheek. It just made me long for Cammie even more.

"The best thing we could do right now is research. Cammie went out into the field with the wrong information about what she was dealing with, we cannot afford to make that mistake." As the words were rolling out of my mouth I realized how much I sounded like Solomon. It scared me a little, but at the same time I was proud.

"Agreed. I think the first order of business is to get that file. You guys made it sound like it had a lot of answers." He was with us for only a few minutes and was already breaking out great ideas.

"A public place would be better to find it, even if they manage to track us down we could always lose ourselves in the crowd and make a getaway." Liz grabbed a spare laptop she brought that I hadn't even noticed. I must be losing it. I had to be aware. I needed to be aware of everything, missing the slightest detail could send us back days, days we didn't have.

We made our way back into the rental car and to the closet populated area which happened to be the mall. Back at my apartment we changed into clothes more fitted to blend in with a large crowd.

Bex, Macey and I set us a make-shift perimeter in the edge of the food court. The place was packed which was good in our circumstances. Macey brought a long a bunch of disguises if things got too drastic. Preston was watching after Liz while the rest of us surveyed the scene like hawks.

"I have something." Liz said about 20 minutes later. We rushed over forgetting about security for a moment. "Are you sure?" I asked, it seemed to good to be true. She scoffed like I just insulted her intelligence, which I did I guess. "Sorry" I mumbled staring intensely at the computer screen.

"This is the one." She announced quietly but proudly. Just as we were about to open it, the screen went black. "What happened this time?" Macey said annoyed. I couldn't blame her, this stupid hacker always managed to be one step ahead of us.

Liz stared at the screen in shock. "They deleted it. Permanently deleted it. There is no way of getting it back now." Her frown quickly turned into a smirk making me wonder what kind of trick she had up her sleeve. "Too bad I made about a dozen copies and send it to secure locations."

I hugged her right then and there.

"You are amazing Liz." She smiled back at me brightly. "Let's not open it in here, they might already be onto us, this isn't a secure firewall." We nodded and managed to find our way to Macey's house which was like a fortress.

"I think we should do more research on the director." I announced pulling up into her driveway. "I can research Luke." Preston agreed once again maiing things easier for us, "We should back up that file a few more times in case the hacker tries to delete it again from my private stores." Liz told us getting out of the car. We quickly followed. "In the meantime I am going to try to get as much information about the hacker as I can."

I couldn't agree on a more better plan.

A/N: Hey guys! So what do you think? A lot going on in this chapter. First the suspense of when the hacker was going to show us, Preston appearing out of the blue (the reason he ended up there is going ot be revealed in the next chapter). Also they finally managed to get that blasted file. Or did they? Also Macey and Preston's relationship will be explained in the next chapter. I forgot if I already mentioned this but I have most of the ending planned out for this story. Kind of a big twist at the end, I'm not going to say anything else until I write down all the details. I am excited to say that in a few more chapters we will see Cammie's pov. I plan on doing her pov a few times in this story until the end.

And now to end this long author's note, don't forget to comment your favorite part and your predictions for what is going to happen next, and vote if you liked this chapter!

Last to Know and this story will be updated as scheduled as of this point. -Zammie4life