Page 31 of Girl, Unmasked (Ella Dark #28)

His lair was a nest of circuit boards and servers, and while Ripley wasn’t a fan of the environment, all she needed was a translator. She was on mission, and that mission had a name.

Her dark web ventures had given Ryland a lead, thin as it was, but Ryland could, in his own words, conjure miracles out of scraps before.

On one monitor, lines of code scrolled past faster than the human eye could track.

On another, a maze-like graph of interconnected nodes pulsed and shifted, each point representing a potential breadcrumb in the digital trail of their elusive poster, apparently.

Ripley couldn’t do much except watch and answer any questions Ryland had. She felt a little useless, but it was her that kickstarted this avenue of investigation.

‘Okay, so we’ve used a crawler to map out the site's structure and user interactions. The forum uses a modified version of the Tor network. It bounces connections through multiple relays to obscure users' locations. It’s clever, but not impenetrable.’

‘I… think I understand.’

‘Then I’ve deployed a series of packet sniffers and traffic analysis tools. We’re looking for patterns, anomalies, anything that might give us a clue who this user really is.’ He flicked his monitor. ‘Come on. Show me something.’

A notification pinged and drew Ryland’s attention to a secondary monitor. ‘So this decryption algorithm has managed to crack a small portion of the forum's user database. It’s not much, just a fragment of metadata associated with recent logins, but it’s a start.

Ripley didn’t know where to stay quiet or encourage him, so she opted for a mixture of both. ‘Sounds like good news. Even something minor is better than nothing.’

‘Now I’m going to isolate the data related to LACHANCE666’S account. I’m feeding it into another program, one I’ve made, which will attempt to correlate the login times with known exit nodes of the Tor network.’

For a moment, hope flared in Ripley’s chest. She wasn’t sure, but it looked to her untrained eye like there was a pattern emerging; a series of connections that seemed to originate from the same general area.

But as quickly as it appeared, it vanished, probably swallowed up by the ever-shifting landscape of the dark web.

Outside, the precinct yawned to life with the first pot of cop coffee, but in here, time slipped sideways. Could've been minutes, could've been hours. All Ripley knew was after this, she didn’t want to use the dark web again.

‘Okay, another trace routine. This one’s designed to piggyback on the forum's internal protocols. It pretends to be routine server maintenance while it really hunts for IP addresses.’

A string of numbers appeared on his screen.

Ripley said, ‘Forgive my ignorance, but is that an IP address?’

‘Yes it is!’

Then, just as quickly, it vanished, replaced by an error message. [0x1D4C] UNAUTHORIZED INTRUSION DETECTED.

‘Damn it to hell!’ Ryland slammed a fist on his table. ‘I didn’t expect that. You know, whoever this LaChance guy, he’s pretty good. He knows his way around the dark web.’

‘That’s not good.’

Ryland took a deep breath. ‘Okay, so a direct IP trace is out. Time for Plan B.’

‘Plan B?’

Ryland pulled up a different program. ‘I designed this. It’s less of a battering ram and more of a lockpick.

I made it to analyze posting patterns, linguistic quirks, and temporal data.

It’s supposed to build a digital fingerprint of the user.

I might not be able to crack LaChance’s setup but I can maybe still track his activity. ’

‘Do it.’

Ryland launched his program, then waited. He reached for his coffee.

Then his program pinged. Analysis complete.

‘That was fast,’ Ripley said.

Ryland moved closer to his screen. ‘Uh… wait a minute. Did I do that right?’

‘I’m seeing results. What? Did something go wrong.’

‘No, it’s just…’ Ryland’s breath hitched, and if Ripley didn’t know any better she’d think he was shaking. ‘I definitely didn’t expect anything like this.’

***

The fire alarm wailed as Ella burst out into the schoolyard. She'd grown up on drills like this -– crouched under desks, hands over her head, waiting for the all-clear that meant the world hadn't ended quite yet. But she'd never had to put the training into practice, not until now.

Drop everything and run like hell -– that was the gist of it. Only trouble was, Ella wasn't keen on running away from the danger.

Ahead, Blackwood's tweed jacket flapped as he careened around a corner. He was surprisingly nimble for a man of his stature.

‘FBI, freeze!’ Ella yelled, but she knew it was futile. Nobody ever froze. Not when they had guilt riding their coattails.

A tsunami of plaid uniforms emerged out into the yard. Their faces were a mix of confusion, fear, and the unmistakable glee of unexpected entertainment. A few even had their phones out, because God forbid a potential tragedy go undocumented.

Ella's hand twitched towards her holster. One clean shot to the leg would end this chase real quick. But the rational part of her brain, the part not currently drowning in adrenaline, knew better. Firing a gun in a school, even at a fleeing suspect, was a fool’s move.

So she ran. Pumping her legs like pistons, dodging around clumps of gawking teenagers, she gave chase.

The years melted away, and suddenly she was back in the academy, running laps until her lungs burned and her legs felt like jelly.

Only this time, the stakes were a hell of a lot higher than passing some fitness test.

Blackwood veered left, heading towards a field.

Smart move. Open ground, fewer obstacles.

But Ella had run down perps in worse conditions than this – or so she thought.

It seemed that fear was a hell of a motivator, because Blackwood tore through the school grounds like his ass was on fire.

He vaulted over a low fence with surprising agility.

‘Goddamn,’ Ella panted, hauling herself over the same fence, reeling from the impact on her ankles as she hit the ground.

Ella's lungs burned like she'd swallowed a lit match.

Her knees protested with every step, reminding her that chasing suspects was a young cop's game.

But damned if she was going to let this tweed-wrapped jackrabbit outrun her.

Blackwood zigzagged across the field, making a beeline for the outdoor sports equipment shed. Ella's cop instincts flared. Confined spaces meant weapons, and weapons meant trouble.

‘Don't even think about it, Blackwood!’ she bellowed, putting on a burst of speed that made her calves scream in protest.

But Blackwood was beyond reason. He reached the shed, yanked the door open, and disappeared inside. Ella skidded to a halt, every nerve on high alert. For a split second, silence reigned.

Then a clatter from her left had her head spinning.

Blackwood emerged wielding a baseball bat. He sliced through the air in a frenzy, but Ella ducked, feeling the whoosh of air as the bat passed inches from her skull.

This scumbag wasn’t just trying to escape. He was trying to kill her.

Her hand shot to her holster on instinct, but she stopped herself. No bullets. Not with kids within a hundred feet.

‘Drop it,’ Ella said. ‘You’re not getting out of here.’

Blackwood swung again, blind with panic. This time, Ella wasn't quite fast enough. The bat glanced off her shoulder, sending a bolt of pain down her arm.

Ella gritted her teeth and pushed past the pain. ‘Last chance, Blackwood, drop it!’

But Blackwood had reached the point of no return. He’d fled, attacked a police officer, all but proven that he wasn’t an innocent man. At this point, suspects either killed their attackers or killed themselves.

He came at her again, swinging wildly. Ella backpedaled, looking for an opening. Her shoulder throbbed, her lungs burned. She was running out of steam, and Blackwood showed no signs of slowing down.

Time to end this.

As Blackwood wound up for another swing, Ella surged forward.

She ducked under the bat, driving her shoulder into his solar plexus.

The air left Blackwood's lungs in a whoosh.

The bat clattered to the ground. Blackwood might have been a nimble creature, but Ella had years of training and a lifetime of pent-up aggression on her side.

She twisted, using his momentum against him, but Blackwood slipped from her grip like a greasy snake.

He stumbled to the floor, then came up with the bat clutched in his hands again. In a blur, the metal clanged off Ella’s stomach and forced the air out of her lungs. The vague outline of Blackwood began to diminish, and as her vision returned, she saw her suspect fleeing across the field again.

Blackwood left the field, back onto the school pathways. Students lined the whole path, but they parted rapidly as Blackwood and Ella flew past them.

Then Ella saw Blackwood’s intended destination.

The exit.

Blackwood barreled towards the open gate like a man possessed.

The fire alarm must have triggered a release.

Which meant that Roger Blackwood, slippery bastard that he was, had a straight shot to freedom.

All he had to do was make it through that gate, disappear into the suburban sprawl beyond, and they'd be right back to square one.

Ella pushed harder, gaining ground but not fast enough. Blackwood was going to make it through before she could reach him.

So Ella dug deep. Deeper than she had in years, since her days pounding pavement as a fresh-faced rookie, high on the illusion of her own invincibility. She reached down into the core of herself, the place where grit and guts and sheer bloody-minded stubbornness combined into something unbreakable.

It wasn't pretty. Her knee screamed, her lungs burned. That knife-bright pain in her side flared with every jarring impact. But she ran anyway, eating up the distance between her and Blackwood in great, gulping strides.

Fifty feet. Thirty. Twenty.

Close enough to hear the rasp of his breathing, the sob that hitched in his throat as he realized she was gaining.

He glanced back over his shoulder to see how close she was. Just a split second. But at full sprint, a split second was all it took.

And that was his biggest mistake.

His foot caught the edge of the sidewalk where it met the gate's threshold. Physics took over. Blackwood went airborne. His arms flailed as he tried to regain balance, but he hit the concrete hard and skidded on his palms and knees.

Ella didn't slow down. She launched herself at him before he could get back up, driving her knee into his back and forcing him flat against the ground. Her handcuffs were out before he could even process what had happened.

‘Roger Blackwood,’ she panted, planting a boot on his chest, ‘you have the right to shut the hell up.’

She slapped the cuffs on.

'Get up,' she said as she hauled him to his feet. 'We're going for a ride.'

Game over.