Page 53 of A Fierce Princess

He grins as he chews. “These are hands down the best cookies that I’ve ever had,” he declares. I look over and see a glass of milk.

“Milk, huh?” I say to him.

He nods. “I needed it. It’s the perfect pairing for these chocolate chip cookies. I can’t decide if the oatmeal raisin or these are my favorite,” he says.

“Well, I for one love the oatmeal best,” I say to him as I walk over and remove one from the cookie jar. “Tessa, can we get a snack plate for the billiard room?” I ask.

She turns and wipes her hands on her apron. “Of course, sweetie pie. I’ll have someone bring it over shortly,” she says as she eyes up a staff member on the far side of the kitchen. I feel a little bad, as there are a few new hires since I’ve been here last. I walk over to the young woman.

“Hello,” I say.

She turns and shyly smiles at me, curtsying.

“Oh, no need for formalities. I’m Anna,” I say.

“Liza,” she replies.

“Nice to meet you, Liza,” I say to her. She nods and quickly scurries off like a nervous rabbit.

“Thanks,” I say to Tessa as I kiss her cheek and grab another cookie for the road. “You coming?” I ask Logan as I waltz toward the door.

“Sure, if I eat any more of these, I’ll need two plane seats for the way home,” he says. He gives Tessa a wink.

Logan follows me down a corridor and then another. I hear the distinct sound of the balls clicking against the billiard table as Auggie must have started playing on his own.

I walk into the room, and he stops.

“Hey, I found a straggler,” I say to him.

“You play?” Auggie asks Logan.

“I’ve been known to play a bit,” Logan says. I can tell by his voice that he’s trying to be cool about the fact that he must play regularly.

“Chalk it up, then,” Auggie says with a smirk.

“Seriously?” I say to them. “Is there room for me in this testosterone-filled party?” I ask them.

They both turn to me with sheepish looks. I roll my eyes but see an out to continue my research. “Why don’t I leave you two to play and I’ll come back down in a bit to join you?” I say to them.

“Why, what are you doing?” Auggie asks, his voice laced with suspicion.

“I just want to check my grades; they should be posted by now,” I say to him innocently.

He gives me the “I know you are up to something” look. I smile and sneak out of the room and back to my laptop.

I pull it from its resting place.

I scan the search and my eyes narrow on two things. One, M has arrived in my country. I see one of his aliases in the passport entry records that I’ve hacked. His arrival is timestamped as 3:46 p.m., yesterday. I also find an interesting message buried in a chat room in a part of the dark web that even mildly bad criminals would not want to be caught in.

It reads, “Finish it now.”

I pull up the encrypted message file details. It was posted fifteen seconds ago. I quickly begin typing, running a trace as fast as I can. I have a very, very limited window if this individual is anything like I think they are, they will have this erased and the server untraceable in a matter of seconds. M must have a search running that gives him this information immediately, so he doesn’t miss it. I push the thoughts of what hacker is working with both M and my mystery person as I zone in on the numbers and symbols flying across my screen.

Then, I see it, the location is coming into focus for me. In my head, it’s like a giant map of the world, and I’m slowly zoning in on the area. Europe and then France and then Saint Tropez. And then a section of town, and I’m almost to an exact block of a street when the connection dies.

“Damn it,” I mutter. I pull up the location on a map. There are only six large homes back in the area that I’ve locked into. I see pools in the satellite imagery. I stare at it, puzzled as memories flood my mind.

“Again!” I cry out.

---