Page 4 of Shadow Of Sin

With a grunt, I slap my palm against the desk. I built this system. I should know every inch of it. Whoever found that gap took the time to study how I build things, learned my habits, and found the one place where I got comfortable and stopped checking up on myself. Someone out there has been watching me long enough to know how I think, and that thought twists in my gut like a jagged blade.

I think about the front door that’s ten steps behind me. My go bag is in the closet—cash, burner phones, three USB drives with different identities. I’ve run once already since I got out. Not that I got far. After all, Sal is here and I can’t leave him. That’s the leash no one had to put on me. I slapped it on myself.

But if I had to, I could be someone else by tomorrow afternoon, and right now every nerve in my body is screaming at me to move, to run, to get the hell out of here before whoever this is comes back.

Except…if they found me here in this shitty apartment, they’ll find me in the next spot too. Running doesn’t fix the problem. It just moves it. And I’m so tired of running that it almost outweighs the fear.

Almost.

I pace the length of my apartment, going through the short list of people who’d want to find me. Dmitri already knows how to reach me. He doesn’t need to break in when he can just call. The shipping company doesn’t know I exist. Law enforcement?

I doubt it. In my experience, Feds grab everything and sort it out later. This person was careful, selective, almost respectful about it, which is a word I never thought I’d use for someone who just violated the only safe space I have left in the world.

That bastard Daniel is in Singapore. Last I checked, he was working for a cybersecurity firm and posting pictures of his lunch online like a man who’d never ruined anyone’s life. But Daniel doesn’t have the skill for this. He was always better at talking people into things than doing the actual job, which is how he got me to do his dirty work and let me take the fall.

I press my fingertips to my throbbing temples.

Fourteen months in federal prison.

People probably think I wish him dead during every one of my waking hours. But I don’t. The rage has fizzled. Now it’s my own stupidity that drives me batshit crazy. When I think about him, I remember how it felt to stand in that courtroom while I was being sentenced. I filed that feeling away so I’d never forget what trusting the wrong person costs.

So. I drum my fingertips on the desk. It’s obviously someone new.

I guzzle the last of my cold, stale coffee and put the mug down. The sound is too loud in the quiet apartment, and I flinch. My nerves are shot, and I’m pissed at myself for it.

There’s nothing outside that’s close enough to hurt me. Just a street that goes dead quiet after midnight, a bodega on the corner that closed hours ago, and the muffled bass from someone’s stereo two floors down. I picked this neighborhood because nobody asks questions, and nobody looks too hard at anyone. I bite down on my lower lip.

That geographical choice was smart a few hours ago when I didn’t know I was being watched by God only knows who.

I could call Sal. And say what? He’d hear the fear in my voice no matter how hard I tried to hide it. He’d panic and want to help, but there is absolutely nothing he can do for me in this situation. Sal’s talents begin and end with making a decent old fashioned and finding the worst possible poker table in any room he walks into. I love him. But this is mine to figure out.

I close the drive folder, kill every active session, and start rebuilding my security from scratch. It’ll take hours. While it runs, I go back to the gap they used to get inside my virtual walls.

I stare at the screen with my head in my hand. It’d take ten minutes to patch it closed. That would be the safe and smart thing to do. My hands hover over the keyboard to do just that, my brain screaming at me to hurry, lock it all up, and seal every crack so that nobody can ever get in close again.

But I don’t. I leave it open.

Because, for as panicked as I am, here’s the thing that keeps gnawing at my gut…they wanted me to know they were here. If they were good enough to get in, they were good enough to leave no trace at all. Whoever got in left that timestamp on purpose. Someone showed up, looked around, and left the door cracked open on their way out.

On purpose.

Someone went through the trouble of finding me, and dammit, I want to know why. That want is stronger than my fear, which either makes me brave, or makes me the same idiot girl who trusted Daniel. And honestly? I can’t tell the difference between the two right now.

I get up and make another cup of coffee from the ancient Mr. Coffee on the counter that came with the apartment. I wrap my hands around the mug once it’s filled with the hot liquid. I stare out the window—nothing of importance but the fire escape, the alley, and the building across the street with half its windows dark.

No shadows move in the darkness, at least none that I can see. But then again, someone was inside my system for forty-nine minutes. I didn’t see that either.

Everything is still, and that somehow feels eerie as hell.

A few minutes pass. I sit back down and look at the gap I left open.

I learned something in prison that stuck with me…the person who comes to find you is always less dangerous than the one you never see coming.

So come find me again. I’ll be here.

I lean back and glare at the monitor with my arms folded across my chest.

And this time, I’ll be watching.