Be it bad vibes from her haunted house earlier or a crack in her own code of ethics, Tessa decided to get a handle on her privacy issues by burying the hatchet in her enemies’ backs, to sizzle them to a crispy treat of revenge. Starting with Cole and Glenn.

She did not speak a word to Cole, even if she did enjoy the short ride on the back of his bike. Maybe she needed to get a motorcycle again? She jumped off the back before he’d shut off the motor.

Marching into Haven, she stopped in front of Glenn.

“Uh-oh,” he muttered. “Want to see the landscaping for your house?”

She glanced back over her shoulder where Cole communicated with a stare to Glenn. That only sparked her temper a notch.

She followed Glenn into his office, almost stomping, while Cole brought up the rear. Cocking her hands on her hips, she hatefully asked, “So which one of you two won the bet a decade ago?”

Good for them, neither man played dumb with her. She might knock them on their butts if they tried it.

Cole lifted his hands up and to his sides as if in surrender. “No one.”

Glenn raked one hand through his curly blond hair. “What did you tell her, Stone?”

She lifted one of her brows, hoping the arrogance of the act insulted them. “Who put in the sonar?”

“Ouch, Tess,” Glenn answered. “Thought you knew it was me?”

“Wow,” she sneered at Glenn, knowing it was him and wanting to hear him admit it. “Sound bytes,” and she turned to sneer at Cole, “and a stream of pictures. How very enterprisingly multimedia of you back in the day.”

Tessa bowed low before them. “May God return to you a hundred times over—“

“Don’t,” Cole growled, “try to curse us with a hex. Calm down. Can't you give me a second chance?”

She pointed at him. “Why don’t you ride on, Stone? You have nothing to do with my business with Glenn.” She pivoted toward Glenn. “I no longer require your services.”

Tessa marched out of the office, right out the front door of Haven. Now to get to her laptops, to hit them both where it would really hurt.

She whipped out her cell phone and called her best female friend from this area. “Hi, Dee.”

The familiar voice smiled over the airwaves. “Howdy howdy. Are you in town now?”

“Yeah. Can I impose enough to ask for a ride from Haven to the hotel? My car croaked.”

“Be there in five,” Dee chirped.

More like ten minutes later, Dee parked in front of Haven. Tessa no sooner hopped into her sports car, than Cole and then Glenn stepped out the front door of Haven also.

Dee rolled down her window and shook one finger at the men. “My girlfriend does not look happy. She looks like she has unburied her guns.” Dee laughed and winked at Tessa. “You go, girl!”

Tessa accepted the positive stroke and smiled back at Dee. And that, unburied or dug up . . . who cared, was what having a best girlfriend was all about! Yet instead of returning to the hotel, she spent the next three hours at her friend’s house. By the time Dee did take her to the hotel, the sharp edge on her wand of bad wishes was dulled by the good time she’d had.

“Tomorrow,” she promised herself and dropped back on the bed.

A rumble of male laughter could be heard through the hotel wall next door.

“Ugh,” she pulled a pillow over her head to shut them out, but the noise level of indistinct baritones increased. “What the—“

She swung up from the bed and whipped out all six laptops, booting up as she pulled them from the cases. In less than ten minutes, someone tapped on her open wireless router. Tessa grinned and let them in. She sent a blinding flash of images, one after another, warnings, Windows alerts, and then typed out a new asp warning box. She used the first two words that she had long ago used as her greeting and ending to private messages. As rude and as clear as she could make it.

A fist pounded on the connecting door. Cole’s voice was low and angry. “Best mellow a bit, woman. Need some weed?”

She threw a pillow at the door. “Got some,” she taunted him. She knew that would make him mad and he might just believe it.

“Damn well better not.” Only that was Glenn’s voice.

She was as mad again as before going to Dee’s house.

“The ghost hunters are here, Tess,” Glenn called out again. “I’ll pick you up tomorrow night.”

She snorted and grabbed her jacket. She pulled a hat down over her forehead and walked out her hotel room, making sure the click of the shutting door was deadly quiet. She stopped her fast foot pace at the nearest gas station for a soda and a lighter.

For the next three hours of darkness, she plugged music in her ears, plotted wicked things in store for Cole and Glenn, and power-walked the long way out to her old house.

By the time she arrived, the morning fog had burned off to humid sunshine. Tessa paced back and forth in high weeds in her front yard. She need not return inside for this. Would the big six-foot shadowman in her house, Shadow as she thought of him, move on to somewhere else safe? The rest could rot to hell.

Tessa yanked out handfuls of brown grass and then year-old crumbly leaves. She set the kindling at the bottom of the basement door. With a flick of her lighter, she caught the dry grass on fire. She blew lightly on dancing flames, smoking wildly against the grass, and dropped a handful of leaves on top.

The flames lapped at the new fuel, sputtering up and scorching the old wooden basement door. She would not sell this place of misery to some unsuspecting happy couple wanting to move out for a lifestyle of dwelling in the country.

After walking up the basement steps, she flung her coat over a tree in the yard. While white smoke puffed up in a small steady stream behind the house, she collected more kindling.

Tessa tucked it under one arm, wiped the sweat from her forehead, and climbed the antenna next to the house. She dropped the grass and twigs onto the roof, above the upstairs front windows, and flicked her lighter again. The wind blew lightly but the windows below her rattled like a wind-shear hit them. The house was not talking to her, she repeated in silent mantra. She hunched over the tiny flame to help it flicker to a stronger burn.

Dust from between a path of woods and cornfields billowed from down the gravel road, blowing toward her.

“Hurry up,” she pleaded with the kindling to catch the shingles on fire.

The dust storm moving down the road turned into the circular driveway, an entire convoy of trucks, equipment, and a crew of men. Glenn jumped out first and shouted up at her. “Renovating, Tessa Kendall?”

Tessa blew on the fire again. “Go, go, go,” she muttered as twelve men armed with equipment walked to the side of the house to tilt back a dozen faces and glare at her. “Yikes. Ghost hunters. Busted.”

The ancient antenna rattled against the house like the weight of a person climbing up two stories. Cole stepped on the roof, stomped over to her, and then kicked out the fire, kicked the burning kindling off the roof. He snarled at her. “You cannot burn out the parts of your life that you wish to rid yourself of.”

The white smoke from behind her house fizzled too and she glanced at the ground. She didn’t see Glenn from here, so he must be back there extinguishing the fire.

“It’s my house,” she shouted to anyone who was within a mile. “I will burn it to toast if I want to!”

Landscaping equipment beeped as a backhoe backed off a flatbed truck.

Tessa tilted her head, lifting her face to the hot sun, and growled.

Glenn bellowed from the yard. “Get down here now!”

What else was she going to do, hang out on the roof like she wasn’t sweltering in the sun, like everyone on the ground wasn’t watching to see what she was doing? What happened to her invisibility?

Cole stepped in closer to her and lowered his gorgeous face to hers. His baritone was quiet, not at all matching blue flames blazing from his eyes. “Tired of this dysfunctional routine? You couldn’t dam that river of sin ten years ago and it flash-flooded me away.”

He lifted one arm and tapped his watch. “It’s morning. I want an answer to my question of last night. Can't you give me a second chance, Trouble?”

“You are too much. Much much too much,” she muttered.

“What did you think I would do if you ever left that stoner and divorced him? Oh you’ll listen a second more. I know you. I know how your mind operates. If you’re free from him and have taken a breath of that sweet atmosphere of freedom, no choke chain around your neck . . . then, honey, I’m coming in even if I have to hack your heart.”

“Not even you could hack my unhackable heart. Count on it, dude.”

Tessa bolted away from him, climbed down the tower, and no sooner placed her feet on solid ground, than Glenn pointed at her chest. “It won’t work. Even if a new house were built here, the paranormal activity would spill over into it. We have to hunt it down, chase it out, or the haunting in your head will never cease.”

Glenn stomped off to direct his crew of landscaping workers. Seeming much cooler, much calmer, Glenn came back to her. He held out one large palm. “Give me the padlock key.”

She fished it out of her front pocket and dropped it in his large calloused hand.

Walking to the backyard, to her jacket in a tree, Tessa plugged in her earbuds and blasted the music. She slid on her sunglasses. She climbed up, swinging her legs over the branches, invisible in her mind now, until she found her most comfortable perch high in the branches. Wind whispered through summer leaves, cooling her temper. She stared toward the cave in the woods further behind her house still.

She could not hear anything except a thumping beat and rapper in her ears. She screamed and lost her balance for a second when a hand closed over her ankle. Cole! In a tree with her?

He yanked out an earbud and stuck it in his ear before leaning back on a branch as if he did this everyday.

“What do you want of me?” she whispered.

“An answer.”

She pulled off her sunglasses and hooked them on her shirt. She rubbed one hand over her eyes as if closing him out would make him disappear.

“I’d turn back the years if I could and do it so very differently. I can’t do that though, so it’s just you and me in the here and now. Put away the pretend, the masks, the hiding from me and you. Forgive me and we could conquer the world together.”

She lifted her face to the sky; she sighed a low pained breath. She would slam him with honesty if not bad wishes. “Okay, you are forgiven. But I can never trust you."

"Tessa, give me second chance with you."

"Do you want me to say I love you, that I love me? The consequences of very long ago made that impossible for me.”

“I want to see you in candlelight. I want to memorize how you taste. I want to do so much more than engage your mind. I want to make you lose your mind.”

She held up her hands, shaking her head. “You already tried that.”

“Not like that! Down inside of you, Tessa, you love me.”

Tessa bit her lower lip, trying to take the sting from her eyes. Could she love this man, really love him? He’d cracked her life and her computer wide open once upon a time. She suspected they were very much alike. “You are bold to suggest that at any time, especially when I’m so angry and you’re in a tree with me.”

His large hand, long fingers, cupped her cheek. “Anger stems from fear. Don’t be afraid of me. Don’t be afraid of what we could do, of what we could have, of what we could be together.”

He nodded his head to the side indicating her house. “Finish this and leave all the fear and anger of this place and the past behind you. There will be no reason after this, for you to need to come back to this area at all. You liked the city. We’ll live in the city.”

Her resistance slowly evaporating, she leaned into the gentle hand brushing her cheek. “Is it another game to see if my heart is hackable, some kind of bet, or do you truly want to work with me in medical security?”

“No game. No bet, babe. I apologize for my past but I can’t change it. I’m sure you can’t tell by the choices I’ve been making, but I’m not that man anymore. I want you to be my partner and work together, both in medical security and in our private time.”

She wanted to consider his offer. Oh man, this hacker was trouble!

His smile and dimples flashed at her. “Finish this here and then come with me to my home in Virginia. Go to tryouts, to test, so when both options are there for you, you can choose of your own free will and never doubt your career choice. I’ll back you up no matter what you decide.”

Tessa pointed at the house. “Do you want to come inside with me?”

Cole plucked out the earbud, swung down branches, and then jumped from the last limb to the ground. He held up his hand for her. “Come on, tree hugger; let’s do this.”

She stepped gracefully in and out of branches, before swinging down with her long legs wrapped around a limb.

Cole blew out a deep exhale. For a minute there, he had thought he lost her. Then he thought she might be close to tears. Even more frightening, he intended to return inside this haunted house with her. Maybe the daylight would help?

He held up his arms and grabbed her off the lowest branch, pulling her toward him and sliding her body down his. Error! He leaned into her, her back now against the tree, and moved his mouth over hers. The chemistry between them electrified him.

Glenn coughed behind him.

Cole lifted his lips from hers and groaned. “What do you want?”

Glenn dangled his truck keys in front of Cole. “All’s fair, bud. I’d like to take her back to the hotel where she can catch some sleep. Tonight when we hunt her ghosts, she needs to be well-rested and prepared for battle.”

Cole sighed and nodded. Glenn was right. Tessa had not slept, had not changed clothes, and had probably not eaten. “Did you hitch here last night?”

“I walked.”

“You are something else, lady.” Cole slid his arm around her waist and she leaned into him. Yeah, the pull between them must be intense for her too. He squeezed her once more. “I like that about you.”

Glenn waved one hand. “Yep, like to like.”

Tessa glanced up and sunshine bathed her lovely face. She hitched her thumb toward the house. “I could sleep in there?”

Cole held up one hand. “No; then I would have to stay in this creepy house and watch over you. Besides, the house is full of paranormal investigators setting up equipment.”

He shuddered, recalling the growling voice in his head, shooting responses last night to questions Cole had asked. Be it her dead husband or a demon from hell, even the skeptic in him did not doubt it happened.

“Fear not,” Glenn stated, maybe to Cole, maybe to Tessa, maybe reminding them all.

She pulled her jacket from a branch and then pulled her black cap low on her forehead. She held up one palm. “Which of you gentlemen would be so kind as to loan me your wheels?”

Cole spoke before Glenn could form a word. “If I let you drive my bike, will it move me forward in sweeping you off your feet?”

She grinned. “It might.”

Although he dropped the keys into her waiting hand, Cole asked, “Any chance I can catch a ride with you? I don’t want to spend any more time at this place than I absolutely must.”

She tossed the keys back at him. “I’m tired, Cole, and doubt I could sleep in there if I were fully tranquilized. I’m happy from the back. But with my car dead, and you flying by on this taste of freedom, I’m thinking about getting a bike again. Yours is kinda big for me to handle. Mine was fast but not really made for two.”

Cole drove her to the hotel. "Be back soon, babe."

By the time he returned from a restaurant with food, he discovered Tessa showered and fast asleep. He sat sacks of food on a dresser and he pulled off his hat, staring in real-time at the woman from his dreams. Temptation slammed against his conscience, like the devil perched on one shoulder and an angel on his other. He’d not done such a swell job so far in showing her the high code he lived by now.

He kicked off his shoes and leaned beside her. She mumbled in her sleep and snuggled into his body heat. He pulled her closer and closed his eyes. “Sweet dreams only for her please, Lord.”

When he next blinked his eyes open many hours later, he soaked in the vision of female dressed in a pretty pink blouse and jeans. “G’morning.”

She pointed at a clock next to the bed which clearly indicated it was night and time to return to the haunted house. Yet she smiled, a streak of white with twin dimples winking at him. “G’morning to you too, handsome.” She grabbed his hand and pulled his knuckles to her lips. “Hungry?”

“Starved,” he assured her. The dark green flecks in her eyes seemed to suggest she might not mean for only food either. His blood shot elsewhere from his brain.

Three sharp knocks sounded on her hotel door. She smiled again. “Pizza is here.”

He jumped to his feet and headed toward the door connecting their rooms. “Give me five minutes to shower.”

An hour later, Cole drove his bike with his woman on the back into the circular driveway at her haunted house.

Glenn nodded and introduced her to his fellow ghost hunters. But when the demonologist approached her, chanting in Latin, and reaching his thumb to anoint her forehead in oil, it was Cole who she glanced toward as if for reassurance. It was Glenn however who stated, “It’ll be all right, Tessa. Paul is protecting your head, shielding your thoughts, from the demonic attack waiting on you in there.”

Cole accepted the blessing on his forehead too.

Two by two, each man armed with equipment, entered her front door. When the team broke into groups in different rooms of her big house, Cole held Tessa’s hand. They followed Glenn and Paul to a back bedroom.

The spicy smoke of incense swung from the demonologist’s decanter and slowly filled the air as he chanted Latin.

Cole let out a breath that he hadn’t realized he was holding. So far, nothing more was happening in this house than any other century-old country home.

Suddenly, his neck prickled like a spiderweb slid over his nape. Tessa tried to free her fingers from his as the temperature in the room dropped several degrees . . . verified by a temperature gauge in his other hand. The atmosphere in the room grew thick, heavy, making it harder to breathe.

A six-foot solid black mass, a shadow of a man, appeared fast like a gamer’s speed hack not two feet from Tessa.

“Shadow,” she whispered.

“Friend of yours?” Glenn grumbled his question at her. Then he asked question after question of the shadowman, confirming that neither the house nor the land held the shadow to this place. Instead the shadowman pointed at Tessa.

“No,” Cole growled before debating the wisdom in provoking the thing.

Glenn growled too. “You will not follow her!”

Better him than me, Cole thought. Glenn was crazy, he decided, when Glenn asked the shadow if it could touch him and the shadowman shoved Glenn back a step, hard!

Tessa stepped forward, pulling Cole up with her. “No, Shadow. He’s friend not foe. If the cave is some kind of portal like Glenn said, then please go toward the light or somewhere else where you can be happy.”

The shadowman shoved Cole back a step.

“No!” Tessa growled this time. “He’s with me. I’m leaving here with him for good. Get out of my house and then get out my life, Shadow.”

Cole rubbed his eyes as the shadowman lifted one hand like a parting wave to Tessa. In a blink he was gone. Relief no sooner pumped through his brain, than Tessa screamed. She pointed at a short shadow, its chimp-like stature only more pronounced as it jumped around toward them.

“That one has claws and is mean as hell!” she confirmed. “Shadow always kept it away from me. He’s gone now. I want to leave now, Cole!”

An upstairs windows rattled, red lights flashing like a laser show at the top of the stairs. Yet in the basement, pans crashed and glass shattered. Glenn continued to ask questions of the spirit.

The walkie-talkie on Glenn’s hip bleeped an announcement from another team in the house. “The demonic force here likes to play with technology.”

The demonologist swung the incense and chanted before dousing the evil shadow-monkey with holy water. Blessed liquid hit the hunched monkey-shadow mid-leap in the air. Bright white-hot sparks flashed while the air sizzled and the monkey exploded as if someone lit a truck of fireworks.

Cole pulled her tighter to him, praying now quietly but aloud.

“I wanna go,” Tessa whispered.

Glenn pulled her arm. “We aren’t even close to being done yet. Two down, Tessa. Fear not and we will finish it tonight!” Glenn nudged Cole with the mini DVD recorder. “Take her outside in the van to hack the house.”

Cole couldn’t get her out of the house fast enough to satisfy him. He opened the backdoor of the van and she climbed in. A command center! Two men in the van gave them a briefing on the equipment and then left to join the team in the house.

Tessa wasted no time, focusing in on the white noise fuzzing the house. She isolated two different frequencies. She pressed a button to talk over the radio. “One upstairs, probably a white mist. It changes into Johnny Reb, a man in a Civil War uniform sometimes. One in the basement, watch out; it may be the one that haunts the head.”

She turned to Cole. “Oh, I so want to use technology to prove this is happening.”

Cole nodded before she turned back to the keyboard. He grabbed a keyboard. He fuzzed the house with a different program. He wanted to collect scientific undisputable proof too. He’d hacked a lot of things in his time, but never before a haunted house.

“Yikes!” she exclaimed and pointed toward one of the many camera monitors. This one focused on a cave behind her house. Red then yellow then white lights flashed at the mouth of the cave. “Truly a portal?”

Cole stared in shock, part disbelief even if the paranormal event happened in front of his eyes. This place was indeed evil in his opinion. Her husband had killed himself left alone in this house. Cole thanked God for Tessa getting out safely. “Run, run, as fast as you can,” he warned whatever all forces or dimensions that were showing themselves in the back of the cave.

Tessa snagged his attention when she smiled at him. “That’s what I like about you, Cole.”

“What’s that?”

“Your black hat. Your white hat. All 256 shades of gray that you hack in.”

How could he not love this woman? He did not say that, instead stated, “You can crack a heart, babe, in so many more ways than hacking. Are you attacking or counterattacking?”

Her answer mattered to him in more than one way. She could choose either for her future. “White hat? Or black hat? Which one makes you happier, Tessa Kendall?”

Which one would she choose?

Black Hat?        White Hat?