The responses varied from people immediately logging off, to support for EG, to users demanding a refund. But EG didn’t stick around to listen to complaints and Yael hadn’t begun to isolate his signal which was bouncing around like a ping-pong ball off three different proxy servers.

Then he was gone.

Alex bowed his head.

“You need to warn the others,” Yael said woodenly. “Every hacker on the dark web will be trying to damage us or our clients tonight.”

Alex sent off a text to whoever was on duty in DC to be on the watch for cyber-attacks. The most obvious one would be a denial-of-service attack. If the company took the website down for a few hours it would take the wind out of their sails and beat them to the punch. It wasn’t as if that’s how they pulled in most of their business anyway. It was just the public facing front.

“Laura knew all the IDs I used that received invites to the auctions. She had to in order to track the crypto. How do we get into the next auction?” Alex was pissed. They were effectively blind when they most needed to see.

“I can get us in,” Ashley said quietly. “I have a dark web persona who’s been invited before and LAPD have a cybercrime unit that’s been posing undercover. I know the detective there. I’ll reach out as a backup.”

Alex nodded. He looked defeated though, which he never did and Yael felt the same way.

“You need to take a break,” Shane said quietly in her ear.

“Don’t tell me what I need to do,” she said sharply.

“You need to eat.”

“I ate earlier.”

“That was hours ago.” Shane dragged her chair out from her desk with her still sitting in it. “Come on.”

Alex shot them a glance. “Might be a good idea to take a quick breather. It’s going to be another long night.”

“Fine.” Yael closed her laptop and stomped out of the room into the dark frigid evening.

28

Outside the building Yael glared at Shane as he waited until he was close enough to open the door of his truck before popping the lock. She climbed inside, hoarding the anger and fury and pain that burned through her being.

“I don’t appreciate being told what to do,” she snapped.

“You think I hadn’t figured that out yet?” Shane’s expression tightened as he slammed the door shut.

Even though she was pushing him away the thought of him going anywhere hurt. How messed up was that? She was falling for him, she realized with a jolt. After all the years of never falling for anyone, of only dating people she didn’t like, she was falling for this man who was everything a younger, more innocent version of herself had ever dreamed of.

They were driving now through the gloom.