“Well, Eilidh’s security did look into it and tried to trace him through his email, but he’d set up a dummy IP address. I sent it to Lore to see if she could trace him.”
Lore was on my payroll and one of the best hackers in the country.
“But while she was working on that, I thought I’d try to find him using his sign-off. Most of these letters and emails Eilidh received have no sign-off. Completely anonymous. But this fucker couldn’t help himself. He signed off the emailDomini. And that word and a sequence of letters and numbers were used in the dummy email address.”
“And?”
“Domini meansmasterin Latin. And after a search on the dark web, I found the same word and sequence of letters and numbers as a username in several chatrooms. A few were BDSM chatrooms. The other … well, it’s a chatroom where people share their fantasies about what they’d like to do to the people they stalk. We’re not just talking rape fantasies, but violence, murder …”
“What the fuck?” I felt ill.
Evan nodded grimly. “I will never be able to bleach some of that shit out of my head. Ever.”
I winced on his behalf.
“And Lore will want a big fat bonus because I had to send her into the chat to trace the fucker from there.”
“Who is it?” Walker asked impatiently.
Evan shook his head, expression apologetic. “His name is Peter Pryor.”
“That doesn’t ring a bell.”
“Eilidh’s landlord in London. The pervert planted the cameras himself.”
My mind raced in horror at the thought of that bastard watching Eilidh. For ages. For maybe as long as she’d lived in the apartment. I wanted him in front of me so I could eviscerate him.
“A quick look into records shows that it wasn’t the landlord who ordered the annual smoke alarm check. The smoke alarms were fritzing and the new tenant, for whatever reason, had an outside company come in to check the alarms.Theyfound the cameras. Peter was just covering his arse calling Eilidh to let her know.”
“And you know this for a fact?”
Evan sighed. “Lore hacked his computer. Lots of disturbing stuff on there. We didn’t make a move, but if you’re happy to, we’ll hand over what we found to the police.”
“Do you know … are the recordings of Eilidh on there?”
My friend’s features tightened with anger. “Aye, they’re on there. Lore says organized by … activity.”
My hands curled into fists as Walker bit out an angry curse.
Before I could respond or think past the black wrath in my mind, my phone let out a very specific alarm.
No.
A chill slithered down my spine.
“Fuck!” I yanked my phone out of my pocket, the security app open and flashing the alert. Blood rushed in my ears. “Someone just broke into my house.”
Thirty-One
EILIDH
To my relief, it seemed Millie was already over her earache. There was some grouchiness when Fyfe left for work, but it didn’t last long. I fed her a bit of fruit while I ate my breakfast, and since we were stuck in the house, I let Millie crawl for a while. She liked to be on the go, so I cleared the way for her to explore a little. To my delight, she kept pulling herself up to standing, grabbing onto the couch or my legs. I’d taken her hand and steadied her as she attempted to walk.
Tears burned in my eyes and I wondered if she’d done this for Fyfe yet or if I was witnessing her first attempt at walking.
I couldn’t wait to tell him.
It was around lunchtime, Millie was down for a nap, and I was making a snack. The TV was on low in the background with a rom-com playing on a streaming app. So okay, yes, I couldn’t get Fyfe’s words from this morning out of my mind and I was fluttery with nerves and anticipation for his return, and totally confused about … everything.
