Total pages in book: 139
Estimated words: 132437 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 441(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 132437 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 662(@200wpm)___ 530(@250wpm)___ 441(@300wpm)
The date and the time clock indicated that the feed had come in between roughly eight and ten a.m. this morning.
The male was Allhan.
That was the extent of the details that made sense.
The second phone in Allhan’s hand was the problem.
It was not the one that the guy had been issued when he’d started working at FT. Which shouldn’t be a problem. On the surface, that was. After all, Allhan made his own money, and he could go his own way. He wasn’t required to only use provided technology and communications devices.
It also wasn’t a problem for the male to go into any of the BDB databases. On the surface, that was.
And finally, the fact that the guy was turning off his location features on his provided device shouldn’t be a problem.
On the surface.
True?
V took another drag on the hand-rolled, and then reached forward to zoom in on the other cell. It was not an iPhone, so hey, there was that. But it was also not any particular maker’s phone.
The goddamn thing was a burner—
His own phone started to vibrate beside him, the rattling sound the Samsung made as it boogied across the glass of his desk the kind of thing that would have annoyed the hell out of him. If he hadn’t been doing arithmetic that fucked his head up.
When he’d started going through the various monitoring systems on his networks, he’d intended only to see where else the male had been peeking into. What other databases had been visited by anonymous users. If anything had been tampered with. He’d hated the part of his brain that was so untrusting. Had done his best to reroute the impulse.
There was only one other database that had been logged into.
The species census.
Which contained the names, addresses, contact phones and emails, ages, and bloodline intersections of the entire population of vampires. Not just here in Caldwell, but out west and in the Old Country, too.
This breach hadn’t been like the one that had been flagged at eight a.m.
V had had to work to find it. Whoever had snuck in the back door had been a ghost, tripping no alarms, disturbing nothing, leaving nada behind.
The date of the infiltration was five months ago.
Within one night of Allhan coming to work at FT.
V had discovered it three hours ago at home, and as he’d sat through First Meal, and then come here, the excuses had flowed like water. Hackers were everywhere these days, working to get into all kinds of shit. It was possible that his networks had been tripped over, and whoever had found them just wanted to see what it was all about—and when the information was only a bunch of names, they’d bailed in favor of more lucrative or targeted pursuits.
Except after he’d gone three levels deeper… he’d discovered that the search had been done here.
It had originated… inside his own IT program.
Talk about the call coming from inside the house. And in response, he’d had to look into the logs of all of the males and females who worked for him. None of them had gone into the census files. Not even Allhan.
Supposedly.
But Al was the only person who had the skills to hide his tracks that well.
“Fucking hell,” V muttered before taking another drag.
Getting up, he went over to the minibar across the way. The fridge was of the dorm-sized variety, although made by some fancy, state-of-the-art manufacturer with a hyphenated name. Opening up the freezer, he took out one of the three bottles of Goose he kept on ice.
He stuck the cigarette between his front teeth as he cracked the top, and then he tossed the cap into the wastebasket, rabbit fingered his smoke, and drank right from the neck.
As he sat back down, he looked at the image he’d frozen. Once he’d started tapping on veins when it came to Al, he’d had to follow them all. Which was how he’d found this feed from the Old Laws room.
Which was also how he discovered the male had been turning off his location services. The night at the alley? When Al had stumbled onto those males? There had been no record of him being downtown. His ping had gone dark as soon as he’d left the Wheel.
V clicked on the next screen and looked at the pattern of times and durations Allhan had been going ghost: The night of those deaths. Last night, too.
About once a month, maybe twice.
Sure, the male was allowed to have his own life, but there were limits. And red fucking flags.
A lot of those.
Including why Allhan was right now sitting at his desk and accessing the CPD’s evidence database.
What the fuck was he doing now, true?
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
I don’t know why you’re helping Allhan.”
As L.W. laid the oh-so-generous opinion out, Shuli glanced in the fighter’s direction. In the dim light, the heir to the throne was sitting at the far end of the dining room table, eating strawberry Pop-Tarts directly out of the box. Empty silver wrappers were scattered at his elbow, dead soldiers on the battlefield of his totally nutritious breakfast of champions.