Devious Intentions (Carson Cove Scandals 3)

I could sense that Addison didn’t entirely believe me, but I was being honest with her. My fight was no longer within the walls of Sinn Manor—that wasn’t where I was going to find what I needed to bring Edgar down. I had exhausted all of my possibilities there and painted myself into a corner—I had to stop fighting the losing battle with my mother and focus on winning the one that could possibly put an end to the wedding. I didn’t know if it would be enough to get Damien out of jail, but saving his sister was the top priority. If nothing else, she could take responsibility for her actions—and I didn’t think anyone was going to fault her for it when they found out what kind of nefariousness her father had planned.

“She wasn’t a cop?” Bolt tensed up when I entered the room.

“No, it was Damien’s lawyer.” I sat down. “You said you found something?”

“Maybe…” Bolt pulled his laptop back out and opened it. “Sinn Technology’s server is a fortress—but I found a way in.”

“Because you’re the best.” Anna smiled and scooted closer to him.

She seems as impressed by his hacking skills as she was by Dylan Benson’s keg stand…

“This is going to take some time.” Bolt sighed. “I’m in, but there’s no way I can sort through it all to look for something useful. That’s assuming there is something useful.”

“Can you download the server?” I leaned over to look at his screen.

“It’s hosted in a cloud…” Bolt narrowed his eyes. “I could probably mirror the cloud, which would be just as good downloading it—problem is, we would still need a lot of eyes to go through it all.”

“I could call my sister.” Anna reached for her phone. “She does owe us a favor.”

“Yeah, do that.” Bolt nodded. “I’m going to get in touch with my brother while I’m mirroring the server. He might have some ideas.”

I set up my laptop while they were making phone calls. I got the feeling that we were going to be there for a while if it was going to require the kind of effort that Bolt described. An hour later, I welcomed Anna’s sister, Taylor, to the villa—and thirty minutes after that, we had Bolt’s brother on video chat. Bolt ran down what we were looking for, and it was basically anything suspicious—a breadcrumb that could give us direction. Bolt’s brother told how to build an index and search functionality for the server once it was mirrored. Bolt followed his instructions and then gave us all a link to get started.

“How are we going to know when we find something suspicious?” Anna glanced over at Bolt.

“Almost every company has something to hide, but we’re not really looking for trade secrets—we’re looking for personal emails, access points, and the kind of stuff people don’t realize they’ve left out there for someone to find.” Bolt typed a couple of things into his computer.

“Like when the Russians got access to Hillary Clinton’s emails?” Taylor raised her eyebrows.

“Yeah.” Bolt nodded. “Except we’re the Russians…”

“Got it.” Anna tapped on her keyboard.

The hours melted away. I ordered some food for all of us and footed the bill since I was the one that basically begged for their help. We all looked like zombies—staring at our computer screens and reading everything that we could find in the Sinn Technology server. I noticed a few yawns when it started to get late, so I made coffee for those that wanted it. It gave me a quick boost, but that didn’t last long. My eyes were getting tired. My head was starting to hurt. I could feel the constant stream of dead ends, leaving their mark on the room. I wasn’t the only one that was nearing the point of exhaustion. I started randomly clicking—with frustration growing by the second—and then I saw something that piqued my interest.

“Hey…” I narrowed my eyes. “Can someone look up when Edgar Sinn was arrested?”

“I got it.” Taylor grabbed her phone. “I remember it was on the news—here it is…”

“Let me see.” I looked at the article. “Yes, I’ve got something!”

“What is it?” Bolt hopped up and ran over to where I was sitting.

“This is an email from Edgar, but it’s on a different account.” I pointed at the email address. “It looks like the person who responded sent it to his Sinn Technology account.”

“He was making arrangements for protection while he was behind bars.” Bolt nodded. “I’m surprised; I thought he got sent to one of those white-collar prisons.”

“Is that illegal?” I looked around the room.

“I don’t know.” Taylor shrugged.

“Here, let’s index that email address.” Bolt leaned forward. “May I?”

“Go ahead.” I turned my keyboard towards him.

“Oh shit, yes—this is what we need.” Bolt grabbed my computer and sat down on the floor. “That email account isn’t on the Sinn Technology server.”

“Where is it?”