Page 26 of Stiletto Sins

My email box blinked at me, begging me to click on it, but I found a new email from Asa each time I gave in to checking it. I was too worried to see if they were “I hate you” emails or “I love you” ones to read them.

Yeah, chickenshit needed to be my middle name after loser.

Focusing on the code Blackhawk had left me, I plugged it into a program and then pulled up the one I’d been working on before the whole “chase a cowboy” incident had left me in a sticky disaster.

Staring at the information needed, I realized I didn’t have much to go on. I didn’t know his real name. I knew he lived in the south at the time of initiation and was attending a state college with Obsidian. But I didn’t know what he majored in or even if he had graduated. I didn’t even know his eye or hair color. I would need to change the parameters to use this to find him.

Reaching into a new bag, I pulled out a pen and notebook. I’d had to replace them too, but fortunately, they were within my budget, and something I eagerly would shop for. Stationary was my jam.

Tapping the purple pen on the notebook, I tried to think of all the things I knew about Blackhawk.

College.

Foster care.

Roommates with Obsidian.

Scared of the dark.

Once bought me red stilettos.

Was funny and kind.Nope, scratch that. He was annoying and an asshole.

Mid-twenties.

Not good at math.

Really good at staying hidden.

Part of a few hacker clubs.

Worked for some organization.

It was more than I’d had, but it wasn’t a lot of identifying information. Based on how he’d covered himself at the bar with his cowboy hat, I couldn’t even tell what his facial features were. Okay, so he was tall and had muscles. That was obvious. And his voice…

The realization hit me like a ton of bricks, and I knew why it had sounded familiar earlier. He’d been the guy at the bar, the one with the eyes I’d gotten lost in.

Nope, back that train up. I would not think the man who let me get arrested and ghosted me after had nice eyes. Big scoop of double nope.

So, what? He’d been following me for days? He knew who I was and how to locate me easily. Which meant his skills had improved, and I would be wasting my time trying to find a bread crumb if he didn’t want me to.

But it also meant I had more information to enter into my database, and it might just be the thing that he didn’t take into consideration.

Typing in dark hair, 6ft tall, brown eyes, light stubble, sharp jaw, well-built with muscles, and a deep voice into the search criteria, I realized I had just described every teenage heartthrob I had a crush on.

But surely, not all good-looking guys in their mid-twenties would have hacking skills. There had to be some criteria to filter out all the obvious people. I just had to keep digging.

Feeling slightly better and ignoring the mild attraction I had to the asshole, I switched over to the other program running through his code. When it beeped, I grinned, excited to have a location. Hopefully, he’d still be there four hours later, and I could end this tonight. But with the time it took for me to wallow and then go and get a new computer, my time might be up.

At least this time, I was prepared, and I’d be taking every precaution as I hunted his ass down.

He thought I was the mouse, but I’d show him he would be the one to fall into my trap in the end.

* * *

Walking up to the storefront,I debated if I should have just waited until morning. It was close to midnight now, and everything within a mile radius was closed, making the street eerily dark. The bookstore in front of me looked like an odd place for him to be, but I was confident in my program to have figured out his clue.

Cloak-N-Dagger Books looked like a regular bookstore, but after some hacking into their system and a thorough search on the dark web, I’d found they were actually a secret hangout for a club. I wasn’t sure which club yet as that was all hush, hush. But the fact that it was more than meets the eye had me believing this was the right place. It was just like Blackhawk to pick something like this. He liked his puzzles, after all.