Chapter 10

My voice echoed in the damp air of the basement. The humming from inside the lab was the only reply. Hannah squeezed my arm, her eyes wide.

"Maybe he's not here," she whispered.

But I had to know. This was my only option. I pushed the door all the way open and stepped inside.

The lab was vast, but cramped. Server racks lined the walls from floor to ceiling, their blue and green lights blinking in the dim room. Cables snaked across the floor like vines. The air was frigid, a stark contrast to the humid hallway, and smelled of ozone and cold metal.

In the center of the room, a figure sat with his back to us. He was wearing a gray hoodie, the hood pulled up. His fingers flew across a keyboard, the clicking sound the only indication of movement.

He didn't turn around.

"Ashton Bridges?" I asked, my voice shaking slightly as I stepped closer to the glow of his monitors.

The clicking stopped. For a long moment, there was only the hum of the servers. Then, the chair swiveled around with a soft squeak.

The face looking back at me was sharp and clean. He had high cheekbones, pale skin, and eyes that were an unnerving shade of gray. They were devoid of warmth, scanning us with a clinical detachment.

"Your devices are compromised, Chloe Carrillo," Ashton Bridges said, his voice flat and mechanical. "The intrusion is sloppy, but effective. You're being watched."

It was a logical deduction, but hearing him say my name, confirming my worst fears so calmly, made my skin prickle. He hadn't been expecting me; he had simply observed the data and drawn a conclusion.

"You know about the stalker?" I asked, my voice barely a whisper.

"I know someone is bouncing signals off your network," he said, gesturing to a screen filled with scrolling lines of code. "Show me the messages."

I pulled out my shattered phone. "I broke it."

Ashton didn't even flinch. "Smart. But useless. He's already in your cloud data. He has everything."

Hannah stepped forward, pulling out her phone. "I took screenshots ," she said, her voice surprisingly steady. "Just in case."

She handed the phone to Ashton. He plugged it into a dock and his fingers flew across the keyboard again. The code on his screens shifted and re-formed. He studied it for a few minutes, his expression unreadable.

"He's using a rotating proxy," he said finally. "It masks his IP address. It makes him untraceable to the police. But not to me."

"Can you find him?" I asked, my voice desperate.

Ashton turned his chair to face me. His gray eyes locked onto mine. "I can. But I don't work for free, and I don't work for the police."

"I have savings," I started, but he cut me off.

"I don't want your money, Chloe." He leaned forward, his gaze intense. "I want the puzzle. This guy is good. But he's not me. Finding him, exposing him... that's the payment."

It was a strange request, but I didn't care. He was offering me a way out. A way that didn't involve Dean Gibbs.

"Do it," I said. "Find him."

Ashton reached into a drawer and pulled out a small, black flash drive. He held it out to me. "Install this on your laptop and your new phone. It's a monitoring program. It will track any incoming data and trace it back to the source. It will also act as a firewall, blocking his access."

I took the drive. It was cold in my hand. "That's it?"

"For now," he said, turning back to his screens. "I'll contact you when I have something. Don't contact me. And don't tell anyone about this. Especially not the Gibbs family. They have a tendency to... complicate things."

I nodded, clutching the drive like a lifeline. I turned to leave.

"Hannah," I said, my voice low as we reached the door. "You can't tell your brother about this."

She looked at me, her eyes conflicted. "Chloe..."

"Please," I begged. "Ashton is the expert. If Dean finds out, he'll take over. He'll make it a Gibbs family project, and I'll be right back in the cage. I need to handle this on my own. Promise me."

Hannah bit her lip, glancing between me and the silent figure of Ashton. Finally, she sighed. "Okay. I promise. I won't tell him."

We left the lab and climbed the stairs back to the surface. The afternoon sun hit my face, warming my cold skin. I took a deep breath of fresh air. For the first time in days, the tightness in my chest eased slightly. I had a weapon now. I had a plan.

I didn't look back at the basement door. If I had, I wouldn't have seen anything. But I also wouldn't have known that behind that heavy, sealed door, the gray-eyed boy had turned his chair back to his main monitor. On it was a live feed from a tiny camera hidden in the ventilation grate above my desk at home. His lips, which had been a flat line, were now curved into a slow, predatory smile.

"Little Lamb," he whispered to the empty, humming room. "You walked right into my arms."