Alpha Geek Shaw

Alpha Geek 6: Shaw

Panther shifter Poppy Cain has been living a secret life. She’s been hiding her nursing career from an overbearing uncle and terrifying cousins. They run a shady business in town, and when they want to use her as a pawn, Poppy makes a hard decision: run. What she didn’t expect was to find a mate in the process. Shit just got real.

Shaw Eagan uses his hacking skills for good. Or in the very least, he toes the line. But when the evil Cain family pushes him over the edge, he comes up with a dangerous plan. He clears their bank accounts and steals a mysterious serum to turn himself into a shifter. His family depends on it.

When they meet by pure coincidence, sparks fly. Poppy’s life is in danger, she has no time for a mate. And Shaw doesn’t know she’s a Cain. The truth is exposed. Lives are threatened. Trust is on the line. Can Poppy and Shaw put away their pain long enough to survive?

Reader's Note: Hang on to your panties, my geek lovers. This one's dirty, fun and action-packed. As with all my books, adults only, please. Enjoy, you awesome freaky readers.

Chapter 1

Shaw

There was nothing like it.

The feeling of his fingers flying on the keys as he tapped out a code. It made his skin tingle and his heart soar to think of all the things he could do with just a few keystrokes. Even the clickety-clack of the keys was somehow comforting.

In front of his computer screens, Shaw Eagan was the master of the world.

He could change traffic light signal patterns. He could hack into any bank. He could spy on air travel. He could even hack into a car’s GPS system and change its route.

He was that good.

The world wasn’t his oyster, it was his playground. Not that Shaw was in the habit of doing bad things with his hacking skills. He was more of a gray hat than a flat-out menace to the fabric of society. But there was only so much abuse a man could take before he used his exceptional skills to his advantage.

If others didn’t play fair, why should he?

Shaw wasn’t a bad person. Not in the least, but there was only so much embarrassment a man could take before he genuinely snapped. He volunteered at the nursing homes, teaching little tiny grandmas and grandpas how to use email and how to video chat with grown kids and grandchildren who couldn’t be bothered to visit. Why? Because he wanted those nice folks to get a chance at communicating with those they loved. The online community was a great place to feel connected, and the elderly needed that. More than anyone else in the world, the abandoned nanas and pops needed to be linked into the big wide world.

What Shaw was doing at that very moment was something else entirely.

The Cain boys had been causing him nothing but pain since grade school. Carl had given him his first swirly in the first grade. Carson had beaten him up during a field trip in the second grade. Curtis had poured water on him on the bus in third grade and told everyone Shaw had peed his pants. He was called Shaw Wet-Pants for years. Well into high school.

And so, it had gone on until Shaw had graduated. Not quite valedictorian, but only barely. He had spent too much time with his computers to get the perfect 4.0 GPA.

Throughout all of their school years, the three Cain brothers had taken turns torturing him, egging each other on in a way only absolute meatheads could.

What one did, the others had to top, and their favorite victim had always been Shaw. 

At long last, Shaw had been free of the terrible trio when he had gone off to college. But the second he had come back into town to take care of his nana, the Cains had been right there. They owned most of the rental properties in the city, and that included his grandmother’s apartment building. They had bullied her into another five-year lease at a rate that she just couldn’t afford. 

The penalty for breaking her lease agreement was so high, it would be impossible for Shaw to come up with the money. More than that, they had put in some dingy clauses, making it damn well airtight. Breaking the lease would just not be happening. Not on the right side of the law, anyway.

To add insult to injury, the Cains refused to fix the leaky faucet in the bathroom and the shattered balcony window. Shaw had boarded it up while he waited for a new window to be delivered and installed.

The Cains didn’t care that the elevator was broken all the time. They said the stairs were there for a reason. Like Shaw’s eighty-year-old sweet, wonderful nana could go up and down five flights of stairs with her lousy hip and shaky hands.

The Cain trio’s latest move was truly disgusting.

There was a cockroach infestation in the building, and they were asking every resident to pay a grand each to treat their apartment. Even if treatments weren’t even close to being that expensive. It was a crocked cash grab. Shaw had the proof, too. He had looked at the lease agreement, and the legal document clearly stated that any pest or rodent problem was the owner’s responsibility.

It didn’t matter, though.

The Cains were well connected. They were panther shifters who ran the city’s seedy underbelly. He couldn’t make one single move against them with legal recourse. They could—and had—paid off every judge and sheriff in town.

It was a bad scene.

But Shaw had a plan. A good one.

Well, strictly speaking, it was a very bad plan. But it would rectify so many ills that the Cains had done. His grandmother wasn’t the only one being terrorized by that family. They had all of the city’s less fortunate by the throat, owning nearly all of the so-called affordable housing.

Shaw smirked as his fingers continued their work. Soon enough, his plan would be set in motion. The first bit of his plan made him uncomfortable and a little bit sad. That part was terrible, and he wished there was another way. It was an integral piece, and there was no way he was going to survive without it.

He just couldn’t forget what he was doing, and more specifically, why he was doing it.

He was going to be Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. It was all going to go smoothly, even without a band of merry men by his side.

Shaw wasn’t specifically surprised how easy it was to hack into Nick Milan’s protection agency server. Or how  simple it was to poke a huge hole in their defense. The malware he installed was particular, and it would keep the business and all of its clients safe. But it would look like there had been a significant security breach.

Technically, there had been. Shaw had the skills to be a pure black hat hacker, but that wasn’t his goal.

The purpose of the hack was for Nick Milan to hire Shaw as a professional hacker.

It was the only way that Shaw could get his hands on the shifter serum. Once he had it, he could inject it into himself, become a shifter, and then the Cains would never be able to mess with him or his nana again. Or any other human struggling to make ends meet.

Especially not when Shaw was done with the last part of his plan.

That was all set up and ready to go. He wasn’t even going to wait until he had the serum in his hands. He was that sure his plan would work and absolutely confident in his skills.

Shaw had hacked into the city’s major banks and written a code that would clear out all of the Cain’s family bank accounts. Yup. Accounts with an s. They had more than one. They had piles and heaps of money that he would just take.

He wouldn’t keep the money.

Rather, it was all going to be divided between all of the Cains’ tenants, the food bank, the community center, the after-school art programs, and a few other businesses that had been plagued by the Cain family for entirely too long.

Had Shaw wanted to be a shifter his entire life? Yes. Absolutely.

From the very first second that he had learned that they existed, from a very loud-mouthed and boasting Curtis Cain, Shaw knew that until he also shared his body with an animal, there was no way he could level the playing field with the Cains.

It was dangerous. He knew that. But there were a few guys from his college that had been injected with the serum, and they had survived and thrived. There was no reason why the same couldn’t happen to him. Bennett and his three best friends had changed significantly since becoming shifters, and Shaw wanted some of the protection being a shifter afforded.

He would get the shifter serum, rob the Cains blind, and by the time they figured out he was responsible, he would be a shifter and utterly impervious to an attack from them.

Without all their cash and their superior physiques, they were men, just like him.

Their time had come to an end.

It was time for the geek to revolt against his bullies.

With a few more keystrokes, Shaw blasted Nick Milan’s employees' phones and computers with ads for his freelance computer security company. It wouldn’t take too long for Nick to realize there was a problem in his systems, and he would call. He would have to. Shaw had a stellar reputation. He was good at what he did.

It wasn’t like Nick’s people were in any danger. Shaw’s code was clear. It would only look like there had been a cyber-attack. Only he would know it was all faked. With a deep breath, Shaw pushed the final button.

There was no going back now.