Thirty minutes later, Ava walked into her cyber domain. She had converted one of the four bedrooms into a technical dome. One entire wall was filled with large monitors, two servers were encased in a cooling aluminum and glass case and hidden away in the walk-in closet. A desk that spanned almost the width of the room was filled with keyboards and various electronic gadgets. The windows were covered with dark one-sided glaze, ensuring no curious virtual eyes could peek inside.
She sipped on her second latte while running an in-depth background check on Parker Rothman.
“Hmm, now why don’t I believe this storybook life of yours, Mr. High and Mighty?” She tapped her teeth as she scanned one result after another. “You know what they say about too in a sentence and this is just too perfect. Time to dig deeper.”
She cracked her fingers in preparation as she straightened in the chair. An excited glimmer flashed in her eyes. This was what she reveled in ... the hunt ... and in her opinion, a cyber hunt was the most challenging kind there was.
“You won’t get the better of me. I’m gonna find you, Master Tiger, and once I do … it’s payback time!”
It didn’t take long for frustration to set in. Everything she tried ended in a dead end.
“Who the fuck are you that you are buried so deep that I can’t find anything?!”
Her fingers rattled like pistons over the keyboard as she reverted to social media and tabloids for more clues. She never depended on them because it was usually a waste of time to filter through tons of posts to find one that might hold some truth.
“Hold on a minute.” Excitement rushed through her as she leaned forward and squinted at the large screen. A smile split across her face. “It is her! Peyton Jackson, my one and only friend and she’s … damn! Why didn’t I know about this?” she muttered as she read the article.
Sad news for Stone Rothman fans!
Yes, the first of the celebrity Rothman cousins has been nabbed by the gorgeous CNN Investigative Reporter, Peyton Jackson. Seen at a fundraising ball in Miami over the weekend, it’s clear that the usually stoic actor is smitten and head over heels in love.
But, never fear, there are six more to drool over. The question is, for how long? There are rumors that the Space Riders are coming to an end … for the Rothmans at least.
Woe is me! I love these sexy cousins. Young and old, they make me shiver just watching and listening to them. For more photos of these celebrities, click here and visit our website.
“I wonder … that time Peyton’s computer was wiped clean. She was in Miami as well. It must’ve been there that she met Stone Rothman. Hmm, yeah, the date of this article is a month after that. Perfect!”
She continued searching and cursed when she came across a two-month-old thread on the deep web of Stone Rothman being shot by an assassin. Apart from that one mention, she couldn’t find anything else, not even find a trace of him being admitted to any hospital in the States. It concerned her that there was not one article online, in a newspaper, or a report on television of the incident. Either the Rothman family wanted to keep his condition from the public or his life was in danger. She couldn’t find any recent articles about any of the cousins. A cold chill raced down her spine.
“What if he’d been killed and they’re all in mourning? Is that why they disappeared off the grid?”
Ava’s fingers hesitated over the keyboard. She had promised herself never to hack into any of the government entities ever again since she’d gone legit. She used her skill to uncover, track, and investigate but she stayed away from the FBI and CIA.
“If there’s information out there, it’ll be with one of them.” Her hesitation was brief, driven not only to find the elusive Parker Rothman but concern for the man of the only person she’d ever called friend. “I’ll do a brief ghost search. If I can’t find anything, I’ll drop it, but I have to know if Peyton is okay.”
The moment Ava hacked into the FBI’s system, she knew she’d made a mistake. Her system was set up in such a way to immediately detect a tracker, no matter how sophisticated. The warnings flared over the screen and she quickly shut off the connection.
“Fuck! That CyberGhost company they’re using is better than I thought they’d be.”
Ava knew that a private company had been appointed to secure all government entities’ data and protocols. One of her CIs had mentioned it a couple of months ago but couldn’t offer any further information. It seemed to be a State secret. One, she’d been unable to crack since then.
She added another level of proxy to the ones already bouncing off various relay stations and satellites, rerouting back and forth in double time to end as always, at the penthouse apartment above The Sailor Joint, a popular gay bar in Manhattan. She remained confident that the added security measure she’d implemented was next to impossible to break to find her real location.
It had been a strategic move to use that location in case anyone ever managed to break her string of proxy codes. Gaining access to the roof of the Manhattan apartment building had been easy and the IP router she installed there was a mirror of her own, but the link was only accessible from her location. A trace would always end at the decoy. The property was registered to a corporation called Hollow Incorporated and used for their executives who visited from all over the world. Currently, it was occupied by the recently appointed company Vice President and his wife. They had immigrated from the UK eighteen months ago and it was part of his appointment that they had the use of the apartment for a period of two years. Information that wouldn’t be easy to find, seeing as the docket was locked at the Registrar’s office.
It was perfect. The woman was a housewife, therefore, if anyone tracked the IP to that penthouse, it would appear that the hacker they thought they found was there most of the time.
She kept watching until the trace once again ended exactly where she intended. In Manhattan. She sighed in relief.
“You might be good, but in this, I’m better.”
An email to her private account flashed on the screen to the left. She stiffened. Very few people had that email address. The firewall she’d installed eliminated any malware of suspect incoming mail. Only ones cleared would be delivered to her inbox.
“Now, who the devil are you?” she muttered as she clicked on the email to open it. “Fuck me!”
You’re getting slack, Dancer. I expected a lot more from you.
Come now, Shadow … don’t keep me waiting too long.
“I don’t fucking believe it. He’s an actor. How the devil does he know I just tried to hack into the FBI …” Her voice drifted off as she stared at the message. “Unless you’re more than just a pretty face, Parker Rothman.”
She restarted searching with vigor. She’d be damned if she gave up, especially now that she knew he was hiding much more than she initially thought.
An hour later, another email flashed on the screen. Her eyes narrowed as she read the message.
Should I leave you some more breadcrumbs, Dancer? You seem to be floundering.
“Fuck you!” she shrieked and with a sneer did a belated search on the email’s IP address. No surprise, it was untraceable.