AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Do it.”
I looked at Ezra, searching his gaze for any doubt, for any uncertainty. He was crossing a line that he might not be able to come back from. This wasn’t going to end with me finding out information like we’d done in Monaco. He knew the score. He knew what I would do when I found out who was responsible for Mum’s and Asher’s deaths.
But there was no hesitation.
Ry arrived a moment later and took in the state of my hands with a shake of his head. He wiped them, smirking when I hissed at the sting, and wrapped a gauzy bandage around each of my palms. ”I’ll check them again before you go to bed.”
Ezra gave me back my chair and moved in behind me, sighing as he massaged my shoulders. “I’ll go and talk to Tristan. Can I get you anything?”
“Cuppa?”
“I’ll get it,” Ry offered. He playfully tugged on a piece of my hair and gave me a small smile before he walked out.
“He seems to be opening up,” Ezra mused.
“A little, but then in some ways he’s even more closed off.” I dropped my gaze to the floor. “He’s avoiding me.”
“He’ll come around.” Ezra dropped a chaste kiss on my hair and pressed his forehead to my head.
“Maybe.” I blew out a breath. “But first, I need to find who did this.”
*****
Finding the IP address was easy. But it was a shared one, the user’s data hidden by a VPN. At least it gave me a direction. Hours passed with me locked in a brute-force attack with the VPN, trying to get past its protections and into the programming interface. While I worked, Ezra read the technical specifications and user agreement, intermittently asking me questions.
The leak protections the VPN had in place were top quality. That system acted like a reinforced seal on a pipe. If the seal failed, even for a split second, the backup kicked in, preventing the true IP address from being revealed. There was also a kill switch that cut all access to the internet if the VPN dropped out altogether.
But those weren’t the features I was interested in.
I needed to know whether the VPN kept logs. If they did, I had a chance at nailing these bastards to the wall. If not, my job would get immeasurably harder. I’d be relying on failures of their leak protection systems and kill switch protocols for any chance at identifying the anonymous user on the marketplace.
“Bingo!” Ezra laughed delightedly.
“No fucking way,” I breathed as he turned the laptop around so I could see the screen. He was on page forty-five, the font absolutely tiny if the zoom on the screen was anything to go by. Clear as day, the VPN’s terms announced that activity logs and connection details were recorded and used for analysis to ensure the VPN was operating at its declared standards. I shook my head, huffing in disgust. They’d compromised the security of their entire system for performance data that they could use in their marketing.
“Are you in?” he asked, pointing at my screen.
“Not yet.” I sighed, frustration bubbling in my veins.
But another two hours later, as the sun rose over the sandbank to our east, I did it.
I was in and looking at the result of the search.
Mauritius.
That was as specific as it got. A whole country.
I scrubbed my hands over my face and groaned. I’d been hoping for a small city. Better yet, a town. But narrowing it down from one and a half million people was doable. At least not all of them were internet users.
My eyes were raw and gritty. Exhaustion swept over me, and I yawned. Ezra was asleep on the couch in my office. Ry had paced the hallway for hours until I ordered him into bed. Tristan had stayed with Flynn after he and Ezra had spoken, needing Flynn’s eternal optimism to stop him drowning in fear. The last time I’d checked on them, they were curled up together, Tristan’s head on Flynn’s chest, my guy’s fingers tangled in our professor’s hair, holding him close as they slept.
I stumbled into the galley and set the kettle to boil, and then I rested my head against the cupboard. I needed to close my eyes just for a moment.
I jumped when strong arms slipped around my waist and a soft kiss landed on the sensitive spot below my ear. “Morning, kitten,” Tristan rasped. “Did you get any sleep?”
“Haven’t been to bed yet.”
“You need sleep,” he scolded, but there was no bite to his words.
