Chapter Nineteen
Riglan
Nobody fucked with my mate.
When he was a client, albeit pro bono, I had every intention of protecting him, finding the source of the problem and shutting him down, but now?
The guy was toast.
And I didn’t want to spend any extra time on the matter than necessary, so I contacted the guy I had planned to refer Malone to and a few others—all of whom owed me favors.
With my mate’s permission, I gave them most of the information I had on the asshole.
I set up a whole new worksite for us on the dark web because I’d already determined that nothing in any of the messages indicated that he was more than amateur hour—at least compared to us.
He’d never made any attempt to contact me, either, and I’d made very little attempt to keep my presence in Malone’s life secret online or anywhere else.
We’d been together for some time now, and he’d been sleeping in the lair all that time.
The sofa was okay for one person, but I couldn’t stand him not next to me while we slept, so I’d bought the fanciest inflatable mattress on the market and made up a bed for us.
He wasn’t officially living with me, but once this mess was over, I planned to beg him. Mates should be together under one roof and not just temporarily because one was in trouble.
With Malone tucked in and snoozing in a corner of the room, I put on my headset and entered the room to meet with my colleagues.
We hadn’t been kids together, but close enough.
Meeting on the net as beginners, we’d navigated a lot of tough spaces.
The dating-site job would have seemed hard for us then but now?
Even with the red herring, it just took a few days to resolve.
“I’m not sure why I can’t track this guy down,” I said the moment a few of us had gathered.
My friends were from different parts of the world, but fortunately they all spoke English because I didn’t speak any of their languages and the translators were not good with subtleties.
I ran over the steps I’d taken, how he started out with no knowledge and worked up to get access to the stuff that he’d been using to show he knew where my omega was, when, and what he was doing.
Our meeting room was similar to Zoom but with a ton more security.
Nobody was getting in who we didn’t want to join us.
And my friends’ faces were not at all how they really looked. Just in case.
“None of it is all that hard, really,” Ari said. “With a little bit of knowledge.” From the Middle East, he was using the name Franny and appeared to be a Nordic blond with blue eyes and two long braids.
“Right.” I let my frustration out in a whoosh of breath.
“So does that mean it took him a while to get the information off the devices and the cloud or wherever because he did it on purpose, he’s just a slowpoke, or he is learning somehow?
” Sven, who actually was from Sweden, had chosen the mien of an elderly Australian and even set his voice to the accent.
Learning. They went on talking for about ten minutes, sharing theories and even taking little side trips to follow up on ideas before the whole thing coalesced for me. And then I knew.
I cut off Sven in the middle of a complex discussion of the algorithms and speech patterns evidenced by the stalker.
“Amateur hour.”
“What?” Sven switched gears admirably, dropping his line for mine. “So, you think he’s a newbie?”
“No, I think he’s one of our newbies.”
Ari cursed in a language I didn’t understand. He spoke a lot of them. But the meaning was clear.
“Ours?” Sven sounded puzzled. “I don’t understand.”
“Think, friend.” Ari’s laugh was dry and harsh. I often wondered about the parts of his life we didn’t know about or want to. “The forum? Amateurs?”
“Oh fuck.”
“Yeah.” I bobbed my head, clad in a wimple for the occasion. “The forum. That would explain how someone could be suddenly so much better than before, wouldn’t it? We need to rethink our little program.”
“As in end it now,” Sven gritted out. “I’ll go shut it down.”
“Wait!” I waved my arm, the nun’s habit down to my fingertips. “First. Which one is he?”
There were a dozen or more up-and-coming hackers in there, and we’d done a lot to vet them before they came in at all. They had connections, referrals, of sorts, but if any of them were playing this sort of game, we were done with our little pay-it-back program. Once we figured it out.
“I know.” Ari brought up a picture to replace his. “He came in about the time your mate’s stalking started to amp up. I’m not sure he didn’t do it just to learn how to continue his game. Thoughts?”
We spent the next few hours going over the various visitors to our forum, unwilling to make assumptions and be wrong. Finally, we’d winnowed it down to the one Ari suggested.
Hackers of our caliber were not to be messed with.
And our mates? Well, that was a hundred times worse.
By the time I stood up and stretched, ready to go to bed for the night, various law enforcement organizations had representatives on the way to his house.
Not that he’d given us the address. Or that we needed him to.
Money laundering, identity theft, and illegal gambling were just the start of crimes the evidence would convict him of. Mess with my omega? Pay the price.
I pulled my shirt over my head, prepared to join Malone in bed when I noticed it was empty, the basement bathroom door closed. Five minutes later, he hadn’t emerged, and I knocked on the door. “Omega, you all right?”
He opened the door and shook his head. “I’m not sure. Is pregnant all right?”
My whoop certainly must have penetrated the soundproof walls. “It’s so much more than all right, omega. How long have you known?”
“I was feeling off, so I bought a test this afternoon. I knew you had your big meeting, and I didn’t want to distract you.” He held up a stick. “When I heard you sending my stalker to prison, I went in and peed on the stick.”
“Perfect timing as always, omega. I am glad to announce we can start sleeping upstairs tomorrow, if all goes well.”
“You don’t want me to go home?”
“Omega mine, this is your home now, as long as you would like it to be. And not just because you’re pregnant. I’ve been scheming about how to convince you to move in for a while.”
“Aww, scheming, really? All you had to do was ask.”
“Malone, mate, would you move in with me and live happily ever after?”
His lips curved up right before I reached his side and pulled him into my arms. “Alpha, mate, I’d be honored to.”