Thousands (Dollar 4)

And Elder?

I would continue to nurse a broken heart and hope to God he was happy…wherever he was.

Carlyn cleared her throat. “Well, I have a question for you before we go down that path.”

My head snapped up. “What question?” And why did her voice turn coy with suspicion?

“The man you said who rescued you. You said he was wealthy.”

I nodded slowly, my hackles rising, ready to defend Elder.

“I did.”

“And you still refuse to say his name?”

“I do.”

“Is he a member of the law?”

I frowned. “What?”

“Is he in any way associated with a police force, FBI, or member of overseas law enforcement?”

I shook my head. “There are many things I don’t know about him. I don’t believe so, but he might…why?”

She cocked her head, studying me for lies.

She wouldn’t find any answers because I was as blind as her on this topic.

“Could the men who took you have ways to hack into the police servers?”

I froze. “What? What does that mean?” I hunched, looking into the empty corners of the room. “You think someone is tracking me?”

She tried to soothe me unsuccessfully. “No. However…something strange happened overnight.”

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.