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“No!” Diya cut him off and then raised a hand to her forehead and pressed shaking fingers against it, taking a deep breath.
Her father had given her so much. He’d done everything to make sure she had a good life. Her mother surrounded her with love her whole life. They’d tried to do the same for her younger brothers, but Logan Stone cut their lives short in a brutally cruel fashion. She couldn’t allow Logan Stone to continue to live his life without a care, while her family would never take a breath again.
“No,” she said more calmly, getting herself under control. “It was those men. They weren’t good enough. That much is obvious if Stone was able to take them down single-handedly. Now they’ve screwed up our shot to get to her. Stone won’t let anyone near her for a long time.”
She sat in the chair at her desk and tapped her nails on the surface. “We need to do better. We need to take care of this ourselves, Yoshi,” she said, turning to her cousin. His dark eyes met hers and he nodded. “We’re going to head to New Haven so we’re ready as soon as they let their guard down.”
“Peter,” she said, turning once again to the man sitting, as always, in front of a laptop. “Tell me what you’ve found on Samantha Page. Is she that hacker you thought she might be?”
“I don’t have any solid proof, but I did manage to connect a few dots. Hackers all leave a certain signature in their style. It’s possible BillieBurke and blu33y3dphr3nd are the same person. Their styles aren’t the same, but it’s possible she was purposely trying to throw people off with the blu33y3dphr3nd identity. If she’s as good as they say she is, she’d be careful to make sure the signatures are distinct.”
Diya nodded and he continued.
“I talked to a friend of mine who’s hacked into some of the files the FBI has on work BillieBurke has done. They don’t name her identity, or even confirm if she’s a man or woman, but I got a list of the jobs she’s done.”
He stopped and glanced up to see if Diya was listening. She made a gesturing motion with her hand to get him to continue. For a smart man, he could be an idiot sometimes.
“Oh, so, anyway,” he said, ducking his head and looking back at the computer screen, “it turns out BillieBurke was involved in bringing down this guy, Lazarus Alonzo. Well, she didn’t actually bring him down. She shut down large portions of his human trafficking ring and helped release a lot of the women. When the FBI couldn’t actually track him down, people say she managed to drain a huge portion of his money from his accounts. Rumor has it she pretty much crippled him and sent him on the run. He’s still out there, but he hasn’t been able to rebuild his empire.”
He stopped talking again and Diya rolled her eyes. “Tell me why I care about any of this.”
“Well, because Samantha Page works for Jack Sutton and Jack Sutton’s wife was one of the women kidnapped by Alonzo’s ring. Can’t be a coincidence, can it?”
He couldn’t have just said this to begin with?
Diya shook her head, slowly. “No, it can’t be, but we need to figure out if that knowledge helps us at all. Yoshi, that name—Alonzo—that’s familiar to me. Why do I know it?”
Yoshi shrugged and shook his head.
“I thought so, too.” Peter smiled smugly and began his incessant tap-tapping on his keyboard, before popping his head up again. “He’s in your dad’s database. Well, your database, but what I mean is, he was in your dad’s journals. He’s got all kinds of info on him. They did business from time to time.”
Diya stared off into the distance. Peter jiggled his foot back and forth, tapping the leg of the table he sat at, over and over. Diya stopped her thinking to glare at him. His leg stilled. She returned to her thoughts. It was moments later that it dawned on her. They could play the Alonzo connection to their advantage.
“Do you think it’s possible to track down Alonzo?”
“Yeah, sure,” Peter said with a nod. “There are code words here he and your dad used to get in touch. Post something in one or two chat rooms of a certain nature with those words, and he should get in touch.”
“What are you thinking, cousin?” Yoshi asked.
“If we can lure Alonzo somewhere and set it up so the trail of this last attack points to him, Logan will either kill him or capture him. I don’t really care which one it is. If Peter can make it look like those men were sent by Alonzo, Logan will relax his security, and we can go after Samantha ourselves this time.”
Yoshi looked at Peter. “Can you do that?”
“Sure, that’s easy. Some emails and phone calls. Maybe some money transfers from Alonzo to one of the mercenaries, and we’ll be set. I already erased all evidence of any connection that could lead them back to us. Setting it up to look like him is simple, really.”
Diya nodded. “Get started on it.”
Yoshi shook his head, though. “I don’t understand how you’ll get Alonzo to go after her?”
Diya smiled. “I don’t even need to have him go after her. I just need him in the vicinity. The man is on the run with no money. I’ll simply reach out to him and let him know we have a mutual enemy and I want to pay to have her taken out. He’ll do it for the vengeance and the cash, I’m sure. Peter, reach out to him online but include the word “daughter” with the code words so he realizes it’s me and not someone trying to impersonate my father. Most likely, he knows my father was murdered and might not answer if he has reason to be suspicious.”
Peter nodded but didn’t look up from the keyboard as he typed. He seemed to be in the zone now that she’d let him loose.
Diya just hoped it worked. They needed to find a way to get to Samantha Page if she was going to get the revenge her family deserved.
Chapter 17
Logan looked down at the caller ID and refused the call again. Ernie had been trying to reach him for the last two days. He knew Ernie wanted to help, but Logan was beyond help now. He needed to see Sam safely through whatever the hell was going on and then he had to take himself far away from her. Her and everyone else.
