The Waitress

24 - Back to Square One

"Kaely, if you don't calm down right now I'll shoot your bloody foot, I swear."

"And if you don't hurry up right now, I'll shoot you in the face."

Leo and Kaely were sitting cross-legged in the middle of the ballroom with Genevieve's laptop hooked up in front of them. They were trying to contact Kaely's mum, but it was difficult to find the right signal. If someone had hacked into either device, they could hear the conversation about to take place. So Leo was trying to hack into a clean signal so that wouldn't happen.

"You're not making sense," Leo growled as he tried to connect the laptop to the signal he'd just rigged up, and Kaely glared at him forcefully.

"Your face isn't going to make sense if you don't hurry up," she snapped back, and Leo stopped what he was doing to turn and look at her.

"Would you stop turning everything I'm saying into an insult to my face?" he demanded, and Kaely scowled.

"Just because I'm twenty," she retorted, "doesn't mean I can't act like I'm fifteen."

"That's five years ago!" Leo protested. "There's really not much difference!"

Kaely pointed at the computer screen with a direct finger and Leo rolled his eyes before shuffling around to begin playing around with the laptop's settings again.

"It would help if you knew the password, kale chips," he grumbled, and Kaely looked at him, confused.

"Ho- what...? Kale chips? Did you just call me 'kale chips'?"

Leo looked up, confused himself. "Hm?" he said, then looked as though intelligence just came to him. "Oh, right! It's an inside joke; Lexus told it to me while you were in the hospital in Perth."

"Um... okay then," Kaely frowned, then shook her head and glared at the screen again with her finger. "Come on! Connect it! Hack it! It's not so hard!"

"Oh, hacking is a good idea," Leo decided, and Kaely felt like hitting him. For a computer genius, apparently he wasn't very good.

So as he got into the hacking, Kaely sat back and buried her face in her hands, realising the full extent of her anger for the first time since Leo told her that Jared was with Richard Campbell. She didn't know what to do: so what if she got Genevieve to clear Jared's name? So what if she somehow managed to prove that Campbell was behind it all? He could have already killed Jared, and it would be for nothing. Kaely didn't believe in revenge, but she did believe in fate, and if Jared died, fate would definitely not be kind to his murderer. Not if Kaely was fate.

"Got it!" Leo announced and Kaely dropped her hands, scooting closer to Leo as the call. The call kept ringing and Kaely got nervous, but as soon as it began connecting, her eyes widened and hope involuntarily leapt out of her throat in the form of a squeal as a fuzzy crackle sounded through the laptop's speakers.

"Kaely?" Genevieve asked, sounding the least to say surprised. "Is that you? What are you doing, calling me like this?"

"It's an emergency," Kaely replied quickly. "Bryson; she took Jared and we have to get him back."

There was silence for a moment. "Is someone with you, Kaely?" she asked finally, her voice quiet. Kaely glanced at Leo.

"It's just Leo, he's okay," she assured Genevieve, and Leo cocked his head sideways before waving awkwardly. "He got separated from the others; Campbell has Jared, Mum; you have to help us. I don't know what to do, and if he dies I'll never forgive myself; I could never live with that." Her eyes were forming glass barriers, but she didn't care. It was the first sign of emotion that she had shown anyone in a long time that wasn't due to anger, and it felt good.