Chapter 18 #2
“You just gave me a new lead.” Ryker didn’t glance up. “So, I’m finding your rabbit.”
“That’s not how—”
He cut me off with a look sharp enough to slice. “I didn’t ask for your permission.”
I clamped my mouth shut and watched anyway. If he went digging, I needed to know what he touched.
I’d learned the hard way that some doors didn’t simply open. Some doors remembered your hand on the knob. The internet wasn’t safe, but it was louder. And loud was how you got found.
Ryker’s fingers moved fast, confident, as if this wasn’t new and he’d been in these back alleys before. He navigated through layers of menus and links that looked like broken code. Names that meant nothing if you didn’t know what you were looking at.
He paused at a screen that made my skin prickle. A list: tags, symbols, icons. And among them, small and stupidly innocent, a fucking rabbit.
My forehead pinched as I stared at the screen.
Ryker hovered the cursor over it. His hand stilled for a single beat right before he clicked.
A forum thread loaded. Grainy images. A marketplace vibe without saying marketplace. Everything coded. Everything careful.
He scrolled twice before he stopped. A photo filled the center of the screen. Not clear enough to identify a face, but clear enough to identify a wrist. Bandaged. Hospital lighting. White and sterile and right at the edge of the gauze, like a signature someone wanted seen, the rabbit.
My breath hitched. “That’s …”
He lifted his hand, palm out, indicating for me to be silent.
Beneath the image sat a string of numbers and letters. Not a URL. Not a phone number.
A key?
He copied it.
The cursor didn’t move. No click. No scroll. The page snapped white and reloaded. A tiny hitch. As if the site had taken a breath.
Ryker didn’t flinch. If he noticed, he didn’t show it. He fed the encrypted string into a decoder and started cross-checking it to mirrors, caches, anything that would leave a footprint. The screen spat back a message.
Not access denied. Something nastier. A message that didn’t look automated, and it was only two words.
TOO LATE.
Ryker’s attention moved to the top-right corner of the thread.
Maybe he was checking a user, a location, or anything that could give him the information he was looking for.
His hand hovered over the trackpad, frozen for half a second before he switched windows so fast it was like he’d erased the moment.
He opened a different panel and started pulling data fast; timestamps, mirrors, cached copies.
“Look at this. The rabbit post and photo.” He flexed his fingers as if what he saw pained him.
“The timestamp wants you to think it’s two weeks old, but it’s bullshit.
” He opened a metadata pane, and three entries stacked neatly.
Same photo, different dates, different usernames.
“It’s been resurfaced three times. Someone keeps putting it back in our path. ”
The air in the room grew stale.
Ryker stared at the words as if they’d punched him. Slowly, he leaned back in his chair.
I swallowed hard. “Ryker—”
He held up a finger again. He stared at the screen for another full beat before he turned to me. The look in his eyes wasn’t the cold predator from the first night he’d brought me here. It wasn’t mockery or cruelty. He was determined. With a click of the mouse pad, he returned to the other window.
“You told me the burner numbers changed.” His pivot was too clean. His attention snapped away from the screen and on to me as if he could outrun whatever the words meant.
“Yes.”
“Did whoever sent the messages ever respond to you?” he asked.
“No. Never.”
His attention returned to the screen. The words still sat there, taunting.
TOO LATE.
My throat tightened. “What does that mean?”
“Whoever is on the other side …” His voice was thin, and his forehead furrowed before he shoved the thought aside as if it didn’t matter. “Give me the burner numbers.”
A shiver raced up my spine. “They’re in my phone.”
He reached and picked it up off the table, then held it to my face to unlock the screen.
“Look in my favorites. They’re all there.” I remained silent as he entered the information, then let whatever program run as he returned to the other window again.
Ryker didn’t react. At least not in any way I could read.
I tried to keep my voice steady. “So, what now?”
His mouth tightened. He reached for the water bottle, took a sip, then set it down with controlled precision. Finally, he looked at me as though I was no longer unavoidable.
“What are you holding back? What are you not telling me? Don’t think about it for too long, or I’ll think you’re lying. That won’t work well in the end.”
My pulse spiked. “I’m not—”
“Yes, you are,” he cut in. “You’ve been careful with your truth. I can smell it.”
He was right. There was more I wasn’t saying. A piece of the puzzle I was keeping until I knew what he’d do with it. I forced my shoulders not to tense. “I’ve told you everything relevant.”
His gaze sharpened. “No. You’ve told me a few things relevant to Nate.”
My heart stumbled.
Ryker leaned forward, elbows on the table. The posture felt intimate in a way I didn’t like because intimacy with him was a weapon.
“You know something about me, don’t you? Something that makes your eyes change when you look at me. You’re not the only one that knows how to read people and look for tells.”
My brow arched before I could stop it. “I have a tell?”
His chuckle reverberated through me, my body responding to him without my permission.
“You have a few, so I’ll tell you one.” Ryker leaned closer. “The tip of your nose twitches ever so slightly like a little fox.”
This was the moment. Not because it was romantic because it was dangerous.
The air shifted, and I couldn’t tell if it was the bunker or him.