Page 143 of Ember

Ember needed me. She needed me when she was in physical therapy, working her way back to being able to use her armproperly. When she was working her way back to herself, dealing with heats and grief and everything in between.

I remotely accessed Greg’s computer and started digging. He was a decent programmer, and he had extra layers of protection on his personal computer. It took me half an hour to break through his layers of security. But when I broke through, I found a sickening number of candid photos of Ember.

I left everything untouched. At some point the warrant would come through, and the police would find what I saw now, and this would be used to convict his ass. Right now, I needed information. I dug through his financial records and chat transcriptions, and I lost a minute to rage when I found he wrote a malware program to screw with my projects.

He was the reason I was having issues at work. It wasn’t enough to stalk Ember; he had to mess with the rest of us. I would make sure he went to jail forever. If not, I’d outsource and find someone to make him disappear.

I made a list of hotels he’d stayed at for various conferences. The police had already checked his apartment and found nothing.

There had to be something. He had planned this, had been stalking her for months. I sat back, my failure burning inside me.

“Hey, it’s okay.” Rian patted my shoulder. “We’ll get him.”

“All I have are his apartment and some random hotel room. He could have taken her anywhere.”

Alejandro straightened up from the countertop he was leaning against. “Would he, though? You can’t haul an unconscious woman into a hotel room, not without people asking questions.”

I huffed. “Is she still unconscious?”

“Yes,” Rian said, giving my hand a squeeze. “She’s confused but it doesn’t feel like she’s in major pain.”

I gritted my teeth, envying the pack their bonds. “What if he rented an Airbnb?”

“Did he?”

I glared at the screen. His financial records were squeaky clean. “Not in the last two years. No charges on his bank account or credit cards either.”

“Does he have any family?” Ben asked. “Maybe he’s staying with one of them?”

I tried to remember. I hated people most of the time and hadn’t paid much attention to Greg since I didn’t like him. “No?”

I dug into his computer again. I didn’t have to remember. I pulled up family records, his driver’s license, and his credit report, which would list all previous addresses.

“Parents are dead, only child, aunt that lives in Washington State.”

Alejandro froze. “Maybe he’s going to take her there?”

Rian bit his lip. “He could be driving there now. Did he rent a car?”

“No.” I poked into his financials some more and found records that when his mother had died, she left him the house and her car.

“But he has a car and property under his mother’s name.” I wrote down the name and the address.

It felt cruel to hope. Too cruel, if this was the wrong direction. I could be distracting the police, but their hands were tied until they could access his computer anyway.

“That’s only twenty minutes away,” Rian said, his voice running the line between hope and despair. “He could have taken her there to regroup before moving on.”

“We should tell Detective Kelly. This is worth looking into,” Ben said, standing up. “Tell him you remembered he has property in his mother’s name. That should be public record.”

Alejandro left the room almost at a run. “On it.” He brought the detective up to speed on what I’d “remembered.”

“I’ll assemble a SWAT team,” the detective said. “It’s a good place to start.”

We all stood up at once.

“We’re coming with you,” I said. “Just in case she’s there.”

The detective started to shake his head, but everyone talked over each other.

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