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A tense silence fell over the car as the implication sank in. They both knew taking down powerful criminals like crime bosses would fuel the Game Master’s God complex, let him demonstrate his control over life and death. What better prey than those he first lured in with promises of illicit riches?
Callan smashed a fist into his open palm. “Son of a bitch. That means he had their names for months before he took them.”
She gave a terse nod, jaw tight. “We need to run full background checks on Garofalo and DeLuca. Learn their habits, friends and enemies, routines. Anything to reconstruct their final days.”
“I’ll call it in tonight. We’ll retrace their steps until we pinpoint how the Game Master abducted them without raising an alarm.” Callan’s voice held grim resolve, matched by Roseline’s own simmering anger.
Roseline’s mind was already leaping ahead. “I need to try finding this initial gambling site Moretti mentioned, the one on the dark web that serves as an entry point.”
Callan glanced over with raised eyebrows. “Any sense if that’s possible? The Game Master’s live stream is encrypted to hell and gone.”
“I know, his security is insane. But it can be cracked, eventually.” Roseline’s fingers tapped absently on the wheel as she mentally worked through approach vectors. “The gambling site is likely protected, too, but I doubt it’s as hardened as the live streams since it needs to allow access and betting.”
Callan nodded thoughtfully. “Yeah, good point. He’d want to keep it restricted but still functional.”
“Exactly. If I can gain entry at all, I might be able to pull system data, account names, and IPs. Even crumbs could be useful.” Saying it out loud cemented Roseline’s intent to start digging.
Callan gave her a crooked smile. “Well, if anyone can work some magic on that untraceable dark web voodoo, it’s definitely you.”
Roseline felt herself smile slightly in return. “Flatterer. But you’re right. I can handle the digital shadows. I just need one loose thread to start unraveling this whole thing.”
Her hands were already itching to get on her keyboard, scouring the hidden recesses of the web for any pathway leading back to the Game Master. The monster hid well, but the best hunters could track even wary prey. Every criminal made mistakes. All it took was time.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Roseline’s deft fingers sped across the keyboard. The normal hustle and chatter of the station had faded away hours ago as night descended on New Orleans, leaving her alone in the small tech office tucked away in the back corner. She preferred it this way, just her and the soothing glow of the computer screens. Out there, she was an outsider, an oddity, the brilliant tech analyst who kept to herself. But in the digital world, she was, again, in her element.
She leaned forward, brow furrowed in concentration as web pages flashed across the monitors arranged on her desk. She was digging through forums and message boards known to be frequented by criminals and other dwellers of the internet’s underbelly, scanning each site for any mention of the underground gambling ring Rafael Moretti had described.
The flashy vehicles, expensive jewelry, and company he flaunted made it clear those massive wire transfers weren’t from any legitimate job. If his story checked out, this gambling site hosted by the enigmatic Game Master could be an essential link in their investigation.
Most of the forums required logins and verification, but Roseline’s expert skills granted her access to their secrets. She scrutinized each post and comment, searching for patterns, redundancies, anything that might point to the existence of the exclusive web-based betting operation. An hour passed, then two, her eyes continuously combing the streams of conversations. Most contained the usual mix of hacking tutorials, illicit drug listings, and other petty cybercrime schemes. On a forum dedicated to sports betting populated by Russian domains, she spotted it.
A post title jumped out at her: “Anybody else get an invite to a new high-stakes poker site?”
Her heartbeat drummed in her ears. This could be it.
She clicked to expand the full post. The anonymous user described receiving a cryptic email inviting him to an exclusive, members-only online gambling site with buy-ins starting at $10,000. The games promised huge payouts, with winners decided by both skill and chance. He asked if others on the forum had gotten the same message, which included instructions for installing encryption software to access the site.
Several users responded, confirming identical emails, though most seemed skeptical it was legit and not some scam. But one replied he knew somebody who had played on the site and won big money fast. He claimed it was highly secure, with all members vetted first and remaining anonymous even from each other. The only ways in were by invitation or by referral.
With her adrenaline spiking, Roseline recorded all the usernames who had responded. She then ran searches to scrape their forum histories, hunting for more clues that might explain this mysterious betting domain.
As she dug further, a pattern emerged. The users who claimed to know about the gambling site had all joined the forum within the last eight months, and they regularly posted in threads related to card games, casino gambling, and sports wagers—backgrounds well-suited for the high-stakes poker described. This timeline also aligned with when Moretti said he had first been invited to participate around seven months prior. The matching details gave Roseline a surge of excitement. These members could lead her right to the Game Master if she could track down who they were.
Glancing up, she realized almost two hours had passed immersed in her digital hunt. The wall clock read 12:27 a.m. Rubbing her tired eyes, she knew she should call it a night and pick things up fresh in the morning. Pushing late into the night often impaired her effectiveness for the next day. Much as she hated to stop with hot new leads uncovered, she needed rest.
With a resigned sigh, Roseline began shutting down her trace analysis programs and proxy servers. She would initiate full background checks on those forum users first thing when she returned. As the monitors switched to black, she stood and stretched, feeling the ache of having been hunched over for too long. She decided to leave her decryption algorithms running in hopes they might break through the gambling site’s defenses while she slept. Grabbing her jacket off the back of her chair, she was about to leave when something caught her eye.
The screens flashed back on, the dark background now dominated by an open chat window. Roseline froze, her jacket slipping unnoticed from her fingers to the floor.
Cold dread trickled down her spine. This was from an unknown application, one she had not opened herself. Dread morphed into anger as she typed into the agency’s network activity tracker, trying to identify the source.
But the chat program appeared to be running locally from a partition on her own hard drive. That should not be possible since her security was airtight against remote access. Somebody would have needed physical access to the machine to install this.
Physical accesstohercomputer. She glanced around. What else had been added?
Her eyes returned to the unprompted conversation now taking over the monitors. At the top, the username read “Game Master”. Dread congealed into a lump in her throat. Hands trembling, she tentatively began typing into the chat window.
