I didn’t like strange. I hated strange. “Strange how?”
“Well, your file was accessed by two different sources. Illegally, I might add, outside our servers and through a crack in our firewall.”
The knitted jumper I’d been given couldn’t ward off the ice spider legging its way down my spine. “What does that mean?”
“It means someone hacked into our data-base and instead of ransacking our files or looking at anything they wanted, they merely stole an electronic copy of your information and left, patching up the code as they did. Our technology crime divisions are already searching for the culprits but without much hope. The only thing they’ve been able to confirm is your file was accessed by two different people within hours of each other.” She narrowed her gaze. “No explanation or answers on who could’ve done that?”
I huddled in the chair, suspecting everything and everyone. “None.”
Elder was great at many things, so hacking might be one of them. That would explain one invasion, but why two? Who was the other person?
I didn’t know how these things worked or what could be done to find the infiltrators. “What were they searching for?”
Carlyn rolled her neck as if she’d had a tough night and only expected more where I was concerned. “We don’t know, but it seems as though one hack was thanks to an alert on the name QMB and another was a red flag on your name.”
She sighed full of frustration, repeating as if she couldn’t quite believe it. “Both entered, copied, and left without a trace.”
Stupidly, I’d believed while in the curiosity of the police that I was safe. That no matter what evilness lived out there, while in here, I could relax.
Was that not true?
Who was searching for me?
Who knew about the QMB apart from the men who bought and sold women illegally?
Was Elder trying to find me?
Was someone else?
Good and bad.
Right and wrong.
Friend or foe?
Who would find me first?
Chapter Nine
Elder
The Night Before
WHAT WAS THE point of having skills if I didn’t use them?
I knew how to create magic with computers.
I barely used those talents anymore unless hacking into a client’s bank account to ensure he had the funds before agreeing to do business with him.
But Pim...shit, I'd do anything to find her—including illegal things.
In the time it took for me to stalk back to the hotel, crack open my laptop, and log onto the secure server so my IP and other activity would be hidden, I’d already formulated a code that would work.
The Monaco police firewall wasn’t nearly as impenetrable as a lot of the high-level criminals I designed yachts for, and I found it a simple matter of cracking open a back door, creating a patch, and firing off the search alert under the name I had never used but belonged to the woman I’d come back for.
Tasmin Blythe.
While I waited, I opened as many news sites and historical links attached to Pim’s disappearance as I could find. I skimmed the headlines all over again of what her mother had done, the murder she’d committed, the unapologetic way she confessed, and the pride in which she served time.
I could understand Sonya Blythe.
She’d done the right thing when others had failed. She would rot in jail, but at least her conscience would be clear.
I subscribed to the same rule of thinking.
I might be doing illegal shit to find Pimlico, but at least I could fix the wrongs I’d done. I could continue my promise to keep her safe. And that was all I cared about.
I didn’t have a Facebook account but quickly created a fake profile in order to track her down and stalk the sporadic and uninteresting posts Tasmin had shared before she was sold.
There were a few tags with her barely smiling with bitchy looking girls and another with her fists curled as a boy draped his arm over her shoulders.
She was younger.
Less damaged.
She’d had a life before me, but it didn’t look like a happy one.
Not that the life with me had been happy, either.
I would do everything in my power to change that when I found her.
Twenty minutes after I cast out my fishing line, dangling her name as bait, something latched on, and my computer pinged.
Closing my web browser, I scanned the code that gave me everything I needed to know.
Pim had been caught for thievery. She wasn’t stealthy enough, quick enough, corrupt enough. She’d stolen before she was ready, and whose fucking fault was that?
Mine.
All goddamn mine.
My heart cramped at the thought of her in captivity yet again. Shackled behind bars. Interrogated and ridiculed.
Alone.
Goddammit, Pim.
At least, I knew where she was now.
And I wouldn’t fucking stop until she was mine again.
Chapter Ten
Pimlico
I’D BEEN MOVED to a room just off reception and left alone for the past hour.
After delivering the terrifying news that not one but two people had hacked into the police system all because of me, Carlyn had guided me to this new waiting area, complete with a metal barred window and large one-way mirror, and mumbled something about getting the rest of this mess sorted out as soon as possible.
A few minutes upon arrival, a male officer popped his head into the room and asked to see Carlyn privately.
Reluctantly, she secured a cuff to my wrist and the table and left. It took all I had to remain calm and not let my thoughts slither back to another time when I’d been restrained against my will.
I’d never been a bored person. Too many things went on in my mind to ever let me get fidgety and impatient, but that hour seemed to drag for days.
I was in limbo.
I hadn’t been booked for my crime nor had I been told I was free to go. They’d given me free medical treatment and tests, and all for what? So I was healthy in prison, or so I was strong enough to survive if I was released?
Until I knew an outcome, I couldn’t mentally prepare for jail or concoct a new plan.
I had no mother to go to.
No lover to return to.
No womb to create life—
You said you wouldn’t think about it.
Resting my head in my hand, I pressed my fingers against the bruising on my eye. Luckily, the night in the hospital meant the swelling had gone down considerably, and only the discolouration and the odd twinge remained. My other bumps and scrapes were nothing I couldn’t handle.
Harold had been fiendish, but he was a baby shark after the great whites I’d swam with for two years.
Thinking of Harold and the girls, I wondered what Simone was doing. Hopefully, she was back with her family and second-guessing her relationship with such violent friends.
Would I see her again?
Or had she decided I wasn’t worth the hassle, after all?
Can’t say I blame her.
The door finally opened, and Carlyn returned. She gave me a bright smile, and I jangled the metal around my wrist in a silent request.
“I have news.” She came around to my side of the table and released the cuff.
I rolled my arm, rubbing where the cold metallic kiss had turned warm over the hour of waiting. “I’m going to jail?”