Page 22 of Doxed

Since Briar came into my home, I've been distracted and slacking. I pull up the results of my facial recognition search for the guy that went into her apartment. I mean, it doesn't really matter who he is. I don’t really care if people are looking for her. She’s not leaving this house again breathing.

But knowledge is power, and I would like to know who else is looking for Briar.

They may become my problem if they find her here.

No Results.

Excuse me? I rub my eyes roughly. I must be seeing things because there’s no way that my software shows…

No Results.

Is it broken? There is no conceivable way that there isn't a single result of this man. No mugshots, arrest records, driver’s license, social media profiles, fucking school yearbook photo. Nothing.

The only person I’ve ever found to not have anything for them is… me, because I wiped everything that had my photo from the internet’s fucking existence. Just in case someone from one of my jobs found my real name and went looking.

Frustrated, and confused, I go back to the recording to find the date, and then I hack into the apartment building's cameras and go to the one for the day of the break in and fast forward until I see him exit the elevator on Briar’s floor.

I back track from there. If I can't figure out this guy’s name from his face, then I'm going to figure out where he came from.

An hour later, I lean back in my chair to stretch my back.

I’ve been hacking everything from ATM cams to traffic cams. This motherfucker parked ten blocks away from Briar’s apartment, and I follow his ass all the way back to his car, switching cameras multiple times to keep track of him, only to find his car with no plates.

Dammit. I swivel around in my chair and grab an energy drink from the mini fridge behind me, getting myself ready to hack a million more cameras to follow him to wherever he was before he went to Briar’s.

Hopefully to his house, where I can find a precise floor plan and a nice incriminating mortgage with his full name on it.

But when I turn back, I catch a police officer placing a ticket under the windshield wiper of this guy’s plain white sedan.

That'll do.

I catch the patch on the officer’s arm and get into his precinct’s database. From there, I’m able to find the ticket. Although yes, the vehicle didn’t have any plates; he didn’t remove the VIN plate. Idiot.

The car is registered to a company, so I start a search for the company while tracing him back to wherever he came from.

Another few hours, and I’ve tracked him out of Seattle and into a small suburb. I run through the house through the city office’s files and find that the house is owned by the same company.

Lockmoore Holdings.

That’s a shell company if I've ever heard of one, but I go back to my search into the company, and sure enough, it is.

What a joy.

I start the long search through the shell companies, and after another few hours. I finally land at an offshore bank account, which is exactly where I thought I’d end up.

With a sigh, and a gulp from my fourth water bottle, I pull up the online bulletin board.

I type in a series of numbers, lean back in my chair, and wait.

His name pops up in the chat, and I copy and paste his numbers into the website bar. I type in our password and my screen loads up a private chatroom with my anonymous friend.

We found each other when digging through the dark web years ago.

We helped each other with some shit I'd rather not talk about, and we became friends.

I guess engaging in criminal hacking together will do that.

We always use the same number sequence when we need to contact one another, and then we set up a temporary chat room with a password and send the number link in the bulletin board.

I don't waste any time sending him a message about what I need.

Dox:

Hey, I need you to search up an offshore account. FI31 1357 2468 9753 0864.

He’s much better with offshore accounts than I am, and I've about had it with chasing trails right now. My nerves have already been short with having Briar this close, and I'm about to the end of my fuse at this point.

While I wait for him, I look through each company to check for public records of employees and see if any of them match the man who I’m looking for, but of course they don’t.

Most of them don’t have any sort of internet presence, and then ones that do, don’t have his picture as an employee.

My software would have dinged the websites if they did.

I click back into the chat, but he hasn't said anything, so I go into my cameras and look for Briar. She’s in her room, laying on the bed and watching something on her laptop.

I've monitored her laptop history when I’m bored or waiting for results for jobs, and all she’s done is watch a shit ton of Netflix and Hulu.

She does this a lot, but I guess what else is she supposed to do?

I cut off all of her communication with the outside world and convinced her that the cartel was looking for her, which wasn’t a complete lie, but still.

Not a lot of entertainment out here and I'm definitely not offering her anything.

My private chat dings, so I turn away from my cameras and go back to the chat.

The account belongs to Preston Fillmore.

More searching, but at least now I have a name… which doesn't add up to be the guy that broke into Briar’s house.

Actually, this guy is some mega rich dude living in New York. That's odd. How does Preston know our mystery man?

I look into Preston, and he’s squeaky fucking clean. Too clean. So I switch over to looking for him on the dark web. Honestly, that's what I should have done to begin with. I don't know why I didn't think of it earlier.

Nothing.

I blow out a frustrated breath. I've been at this for most of the day, and I've gotten one name, and it's not even the one I actually want.

As a last ditch effort, I search up all the companies on the dark web, and after the twelfth company, I find something. A very small something, deeply hidden, from over a decade ago.

A job posting.

On the listing, the poster gave an email to contact, and when I finally get into that email account, it’s alternate email is a Hook Incorporated email address. One company that I had to go through to get to the bank account.

They were looking for traffickers on that job posting.

Traffickers for a brand new, just starting out, secret society.