“So you’ll get the fresh green roping tomorrow?” Eva asked, ready to be done with this meeting. She’d gotten what she wanted. They were implementing her plan. She was happy with it. Time to go.
“I said I would. Although putting it up weeks before Christmas...” Linc shook his head. “I’m afraid it’s going to start dropping needles.”
“Just keep your heat low,” she said as she turned toward the front door. He dressed like a lumberjack. The Tennessee mountain man should be able to withstand a little chill.
Behind her, Linc let out a snort. “Easy for you to say. I have to live here. Meanwhile, it’s a hundred degrees in that apartment above Rosie’s where you live.”
She spun back. “How do you know what it’s like in my apartment?”
“Emmett used to live there.”
Her eyes narrowed. Just the mention of the snake’s name had the bile rising in her throat.
Linc cocked a brow. “Don’t look at me like that. None of us had any idea what he was doing to you. And I have just as much right to be mad at him as you do. He used my photo to catfish who knows how many women.”
“Six…as far as I can tell across those three websites.” She’d scoured the internet looking for more fake profiles. Image searches. IP addresses. She even searched unique phrases he’d used in his bios, looking for repeats and had come up empty.
He must have moved on to another scam because she did not fail when she set her mind to something. But she had failed to realize he had scammed her.
Just one more reason to not date.
Work. That is what came first.
And as much as she wanted to kick some Wilder ass in this Christmas challenge, her job—her calling, really—took priority and she needed to get back to it.
She’d been away from her computer for too long. It was in her vehicle, of course. She never was far from it. But it wasn’t like she could call for a break in her meeting with Linc, log onto the dark web and check for messages.
“I gotta go,” she said, reaching for the knob.
“Wait. Have you found anything about the key?” Linc asked.
“I thought you didn’t want my help with that.”
“I don’t, but I would like to know what you’ve discovered about my family’s heirloom.”
Narrowing her eyes at his attitude, she answered, “I hate to tell you but your family heirloom is so freaking common it’s bogging down my search. I’ve gotten at least a hundred people sending pictures of a key that looks just like yours. And their keys open everything from chests to desks. One even went to a clock cabinet.”
His eyes widened along with his mouth. She held up one hand to stop him before he spoke.
“Don’t bother saying it. I texted Livvie immediately. Wyatt and Darcy got the key and checked all the clocks in the mansion. No go.”
She enjoyed his scowl as she called him out on the fact his family home was a freaking enormous mansion. Even though the Wilders all just called it the house, Poppy had taken to calling it the manor, much like Batman’s Wayne Manor.
Eva enjoyed referring to it as the mansion herself. And Livvie still had the look about her as if—almost a year after crashing into this town—she couldn’t believe she was living in that museum of a place.
Linc let out a breath. “What I was going to say was that there’s an old clock here in the cabin.”
Eva’s focus shot to him. “Oh.” She hadn’t anticipated that he'd have relevant information to relay, but rather than admit it, she said, “Don’t forget that greenery.”
She tugged open what had to be a ten-foot-tall door and gazed up at the height of the opening.
They were going to need a scaffold to decorate this place. Or at least a ten-foot ladder. She hoped Linc was prepared. But that was his problem. She was the brains of this operation. He was the muscle.
“Don’t you forget to get online and order your whimsy,” he called after her as she headed out into the brisk evening air.
Just like a man. Had to get the last word in.
Two could play at that game.
“And you find a rag and run it over that mantle before we decorate. I could write my name in the dust.” Smiling to herself, she climbed into her car.
As she started the engine, she saw Linc watching her from the doorway.
She treated him to an admittedly obnoxious little wave of her fingers before throwing the car in gear and driving away.
Back at Rosie’s a dark room greeted her.
It used to annoy her that Poppy would leave every light in the place on even when no one was home. Rich people problems. The girl had probably never paid a utility bill in her life.
Eva, on the other hand, had been raised by a single mother who worked two jobs and still struggled to make ends meet. Because of that, Eva was to this day a miser with the use of electricity. But walking into the dark apartment really hammered home the fact that Poppy wasn’t here anymore. That she now lived alone.
She flipped on the light switch, chasing away the shadows and her sudden malaise.
Whatever residual feelings of loneliness she had disappeared the moment she logged into the computer and saw the message waiting there. A job. And it promised to be something juicy too, judging by the organization the message was from.
The existence of the not-for-profit, open-source investigation collective wasn’t a secret.
People knew of Bellingcat, the think tank of international computer experts who helped find the Kremlin-backed assassins who’d poisoned Navalny. Even more people were aware of them now after the movie about the event aired on HBO.
What no one knew was that Eva worked with them. Part time, since it didn’t pay— At least not in money. But the return in knowing she was bringing criminals to justice or shining the light on wrongs was well worth it.
Besides, she earned more than enough on her paying jobs to be able to work gratis for the organization. And the challenge, gathering the evidence, putting the pieces together like a puzzle, honed her skills. And the jobs kept her in the loop with people who could be of assistance to her in her paying jobs. Win-win.
Opening the message, she copied the encrypted text into a document, then disconnected her customized gaming computer from the internet. Behind more firewalls and security than most government agencies ran on their systems, Eva put the message through the decoding program.
Even before she read the full correspondence, words jumped out at her. Zelensky’s name being one of them.
There had been another assassination attempt. So far, the president of Ukraine had survived more than a dozen. Presidential adviser Mikhail Podolyak had reached out to Bellingcat to prevent further attempts.
The organization was casting a wide net, reaching out to all their contributors, searching for any indications of who was involved, besides the Kremlin, which was a given. Anything found was to be forwarded immediately to Grozev, her contact at Bellingcat.
A chance to save democracy in Ukraine by playing in her favorite sandbox—the dark web? Yes, please. She could do that.
Fueled with adrenaline, she settled into bed, the computer in her lap. She wouldn’t sleep until she found something to send back.
Not all superheroes wore capes. Some battled the bad guys on the web instead. Most of those heroes’ names would never be known. They’d never get public recognition or credit and she was fine with that.