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Mom drove home, I took Bonnie to a nearby motel. She was upset, feeling violated. If she had walked out on me right then, I would have deserved it. Instead, without hesitation, she showed her true colors, her loyalty. Her attitude wasn’t “What have you done to me?” It was more, “What do we do now?”

The next morning she called her work and asked to take some vacation time for a family emergency. Her boss told her that some police officers had shown up, wanting to interview her. My first thought was that since I had been hacking from her apartment and on her telephone, they were assuming that she was the hacker. But then I concluded that their strategy was probably to use arresting my girlfriend as a bargaining chip: “Admit everything or your girlfriend goes to jail.”

I spent the next few days calling lawyers, explaining the situation, making plans. The way Bonnie remembers it, “We cried a lot together but we stuck by each other.”

Why didn’t she just walk out? “I was crazy about Kevin,” she says today.

We were able to release some amount of anxiety and worry by spending a lot of time making love. I felt really sorry that I had put Bonnie in this position, and that I caused my mom and grandmother such anxiety, and I guess Bonnie and I found comfort in that basic outlet.

Aunt Chickie drove Bonnie and me down to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s West Hollywood station. We turned ourselves in, and Chickie immediately posted our bond, $5,000 each. Somehow the police neglected to fingerprint and photograph us. Because of this major procedural error, there was no arrest record created for either of us. Still today, there is no official record that I was ever arrested on the Santa Cruz Operations charge. Please don’t tell anyone.

Over the next few months, for every appearance we had to make in the Santa Cruz courts, I had to buy four round-trip airplane tickets—Bonnie was using a different attorney—plus spring for hotel rooms, a rental car, and meals. Both of the attorneys had required a retainer up front. So much for the money I had been saving for the wedding: the entire $3,000 went to pay my attorney’s retainer. Mom and Gram loaned me money to pay for Bonnie’s attorney and all the other expenses.

So we didn’t have the money anymore for a proper wedding, but it was worse than that. There isn’t any loving, romantic way to put this: I told Bonnie we needed to get married so she couldn’t testify against me, and also so she could visit me if I landed in jail, which was looking like the way things were headed.

I gave Bonnie a diamond engagement ring, and we were married by a minister who conducted weddings in his home in Woodland Hills. Gram was there, along with my mom and her current boyfriend, deli entrepreneur Arnie Fromin. None of Bonnie’s family joined us; her mother was understandably furious at the situation I had landed her daughter in.

It wasn’t the magical occasion so many girls dream about when they’re young. Bonnie wore pants, a top, and flip-flops. She hadn’t bothered to even attempt to put herself together. Afterward we all headed over to our apartment, Gram bringing a platter of food.

The legal picture turned from bad to worse. On top of the criminal charges, SCO filed a $1.4 million lawsuit against me for damages. And ditto against Bonnie.

Then a little sun broke through. It turned out the lawsuits were just for leverage: the opposing lawyers said the folks at SCO would drop the civil suits if I would tell them how I’d hacked in. They had never been able to figure it out.

Of course I agreed, and sat down with a system admin named Stephen Marr, who acted as if he thought we were going to chat like good buddies. I treated it the same way I would have if it had been a deposition: he asked questions, I answered. But there wasn’t all that much to tell. No high-tech hacking secrets. I told him how I had simply called a secretary and schmoozed her into giving me her log-in name and changing her password to one I provided—no big deal.

Though Bonnie’s mother wouldn