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I fucking loved it.
The marketplace had exploded in popularity after Special Operation Ironside. Crims were looking for the next “safe” option. Seeds of doubt had been planted. There were questions. Were some of the other big marketplaces really anonymous? The answer was no. They were very much monitored by law enforcement agencies, but that was a tightly held secret. The FBI had closed down one of the sites in spectacular fashion, arresting a few high-profile mafia targets and making the charges stick. A different marketplace had resulted in the downfall of the head of a Russian organized crime syndicate. She’d been taken into custody by Interpol but had never made it to trial, her own people shooting her in the head just as she was about to step into an armoured police truck.
Hopefully, whoever was after Tristan had placed their trust in a marketplace I could monitor.
With my fingers crossed, I accessed the back end of the site using my Federal Police credentials and searched, narrowing down the wanted ads seeking out criminals for hire to reveal the threats against Tristan.
Nothing even closely relevant appeared. Sure, there were invitations to issue threats but none close to the dates of the previous notes and none that reflected a note being left. Revenge porn featured heavily. One was a threat against a teacher, but not in the same geographic location. I flagged that threat and sent it to Ezra to refer to the state police for follow-up.
Drumming my fingers on the desk, I navigated to the closed chat section of the site. It was a lot like Facebook marketplace—advertisements could be placed for services available or required and interested parties could privately message the poster for further information without disclosing any form of identification to the other. My access allowed me to monitor those posts and conversations, giving me unfettered access to everything on the site, especially the clandestine back-end data collected by the site and funnelled into databases concealed by multiple layers of obfuscation.
Keyword searches narrowed down chats to the relevant ones, allowing me to discard anything irrelevant and sift through the remaining results.
Hours passed, the sun dipping on the horizon and plunging behind the low mountain range in the west as I whittled down the results. My guys dragged me out of my office for dinner, but I was back at it straight after I’d finished.
Then I saw it.
A message from one supposedly anonymous person to another.
The message was stark. My chest seized, the breath catching in my lungs. Right there in black and white. A few keystrokes by some random arsehole and Tristan’s life had been endangered.
My hands shook and my gut bottomed out, the floor seemingly falling away from me. It was as if I’d been dropped from my jet without a parachute and was plummeting down, the earth racing up to meet me with devastating consequences.
My throat burned, bile crawling up it as the words in front of me blurred. But there were no tears. There was no panic. Instead, hatred as violent as a Category 5 cyclone was devastating, boiled inside me.
I paced the room, trapped like a wild animal in a cage. I clenched my hands into fists, squeezing them until the crescents left by my nails stung and my fingertips came away red with my own blood. My nostrils flared as I sucked in a breath, and my teeth cracked as I ground my teeth together.
“Ezra,” I barked, and immediately heard footsteps rushing toward me.
He slid to a halt in the doorway, and his eyes widened a fraction before he reached for me. I shook my head, warning him to stay away, but he was undeterred.
“Hey,” he whispered, coming closer and brushing his thumb along my cheek. “What’s happened?”
“I found the threat against Tris,” I ground out in a voice I didn’t recognize as my own.
He froze, the only movement in his body a slow blink. Colour drained from his face, and he sucked in a shuddery breath. “Show me.”
I pointed at the screen and his gaze followed my outstretched arm. But he didn’t step closer. Instead, he grasped my hand and peeled open my fingers, exposing my bloody palm. His eyes softened, and he held my hands gently. I didn’t need his care and compassion though. I needed ruthlessness and anger.
But despite Tristan being the man he loved above anyone else in the world, I hadn’t fully comprehended how incapable of cruel vengeance Ezra truly was until that moment.
“Ry, can you please bring me the first aid kit?” he called out.
“Never mind,” I muttered, pulling my hands free of his gentle hold. “Just… stay out of my way.”
Ezra tugged me close, holding on as I struggled against him, trying to push him away. He sat on my chair, pulled me onto his lap, and locked his arms in place around my waist. I could either elbow him in the nose or sit still.
Tears formed in my eyes, my hands shaking as the enormity of what I had in front of me registered. Tristan—my guy—a man I loved was at risk. Threats had been made against him. Someone had tried to scare him into backing away.
What would happen if he didn’t? There was no doubt in my mind that they’d simply escalate. Threats would become actions. Actions would turn deadly.
“It’s okay. We’re going to fix this,” he murmured against my hair, his deep voice lulling me into a sense of peace.
But it evaporated in a fizz the moment I lifted my gaze to the screen. Tristan’s name and address were front and centre. The content of the most recent note was written out with instructions to deliver it to Tristan’s door. Payment details and a price were set out below. Under it, written by the original poster was, “Accepted.” Below that, “Executed.”
“Can you trace it?” Ezra asked carefully.
“Yes. It’s the AFP’s marketplace.”
