Page 29 of Deserving Ryleigh
Ry had no problem looking solely at him. It made this less painful somehow. It was weird how this man who’d treated her like crap, who’d intimidated her, had mistrusted her so much that he took her computer away at night so she couldn’t sneak online and do something nefarious, was now her lifeline.
“Twenty-one.”
Tiny looked surprised. “You’re what, thirty-one now?”
She nodded.
“So he’s been looking for you for ten years? That’s a long time.”
Ry nodded again. “And now he’s found me.”
“How?”
“How what?”
“How’d he find you?”
“I messed up.”
“I seriously doubt that,” Tiny said gently.
“I did. I used an unsecured connection.”
“When?” That question came from Pipe.
“It was when we were looking for Owl, Stone, and Lara. Brick wanted me to do what I do. We were here, in this room. He gave me his laptop. I knew better. I knew once I opened the smallest window, he could find me…but everyone was so upset and angry…so I used his computer instead of going to get my own, with a connection I knew was secure.”
“Shit,” Brick swore, his voice low. “I didn’tgiveyou my laptop. I shoved it at you. Yelled at you. Treated you like shit until you did what I wanted.Fuck!”
Ry didn’t know what to say to soothe him. He wasn’t wrong. Hehaddone those things. She still could’ve insisted she use her own laptop. But she’d caved under the force ofhis displeasure. He’d reminded her so much of her father, when he’d used intimidation to get what he wanted.
She swallowed, refusing to look over at Brick. Staring into Tiny’s eyes was safer.
“I’m sorry, but I still don’t understand how that could allow your dad to find you,” he said gently. His tone was so different than Brick’s. It gave her the courage to continue.
“I have layers upon layers of encryption set up on my computer. The IP can’t be traced, not without some serious effort and skill. I bounce the signals off IP addresses all over the country, and even some outside it.”
“And our connection here isn’t that secure,” Tiny said, finally understanding.
Ry nodded. “But it’s more than that. My dad taught me everything he knew—so he knows my patterns. Knows how I ‘look’ when I’m online. That’s harder to explain, but it’s like a signature. How I search, the words I misspell, the sites I use…he knows my digital footprint as well as he knows his own. He probably has alerts set up to ping him when one of my patterns shows up. So when I went online using Brick’s computer, he was alerted. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to trace the strings back to The Refuge.”
“That was months ago. Why is he messing with you now?” Tonka asked.
Rydidturn her head then, but she felt Tiny’s hand on her thigh, grounding her. Giving her the courage to answer Tonka directly. “He’s not messing with me. He’s messing withyou,” she said almost sadly.
“Why?” Brick asked.
“He’s waited months to make a move because he’s been studying The Refuge. Learning as much as he can. He’sprobably looked into the backgrounds of each and every one of you. And your wives. And all of your families. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s hacked into the cameras. By now, he knows how much I like it here—if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have stayed this long. Knows that I’ve made friends. So he’s going to do everything in his power to ruin the things I’ve come to love…just because he can.”
“Ryleigh.”
She turned to look at Tiny again.
“He’s not going to ruin anything.”
“You don’t know him. Tonka’s insurance snafu? The fuel? The food? That angry man out there? It’s all just the beginning. He’s going to continue to mess with The Refuge. Do little things that could be dismissed as people not doing their jobs correctly, or electronic glitches. But they aren’t. It’s all him.”
“Now that you know what he’s doing, can you stop him?”
