ShadowByte

Chapter 4

Elara’s POV

By the time Hailey swung by with lunch, I’d already neutralized three separate tracing attempts all from the same IP cluster.

Persistent.

I sat cross-legged on my couch, laptop balanced on my knees, the rhythmic clack of keys filling the room. Code streamed across the screen like an unbroken river, each line severing another breadcrumb trail someone had tried to follow.

When the third attempt vanished into the digital void I’d built for it, I smirked. Not bad. Whoever was behind this had resources, maybe even their own private tech team. But they weren’t good enough.

Not yet.

“Please tell me that’s a new project and not another hacker war,” Hailey said, breezing in and dropping a paper bag on the coffee table.

I shut the lid halfway and raised an eyebrow. “Define hacker war.”

“The kind that has you up at 3 a.m. with a look on your face that says ‘I could end you with one keystroke.’”

“Then no,” I said, unwrapping the sandwich she’d brought. “It’s just… a client with an overly curious competitor.”

Hailey gave me a suspicious look but let it go. She’d learned a long time ago that if I didn’t want to explain something, no amount of prodding would get it out of me.

“Fine,” she said, settling beside me. “Eat before it gets cold. And you really need to get some sun. You’re starting to look like the ghost you pretend to be online.”

I smiled faintly, but my mind wasn’t on the sandwich. The IPs I’d traced were masked behind layers of corporate encryption, the kind private entities don’t usually bother with unless they have something to hide. Or protect.

It made me wonder if the client I’d turned down was behind it.

It made me certain I’d made the right choice in refusing them.

But as I took a bite, a small, stubborn part of me couldn’t help but admit… It was almost fun.

Damon’s POV

The view from my penthouse didn’t change, but I liked it that way.

A sweep of Seattle’s skyline under a silver sky, predictable, orderly. Unlike people.

I set my coffee cup on the counter as Ethan and my private investigator, Miles, took their seats at the dining table I rarely used for dining. Both wore the same expression: the careful, measured look of men bringing me bad news.

“Tell me you have something,” I said, leaning back in my chair.

Miles opened a folder. “We’ve traced five different aliases connected to ShadowByte over the past three years. All of them are ghosts, burner email accounts, encrypted payment trails, and server activity that bounces between continents. Whoever they are, they know how to disappear.”

Ethan slid a second document toward me. “We thought we had a location yesterday; Berlin. Logged activity, digital signature match, even a pattern consistent with their known work hours.”

“And?” I asked.

“It was a decoy,” Ethan admitted. “By the time we tried to dig deeper, the server was wiped. Completely. No data, no access logs, nothing. Almost like they knew we were looking… and decided to make a point.”

I studied them both. The frustration in the room was almost tangible, but I felt something else.

Amusement.

“They erased their own trail in real time?” I asked.

“Yes, sir,” Ethan said. “The second we got close, they were already shutting it down.”

I smiled, though it was more a slow curl of the mouth than anything warm. “Interesting.”

Miles frowned. “With enough time and money, we’ll find her----”

“You won’t,” I said flatly. “Not unless they want you to. This isn’t just a search; it’s a game. And games like this?” I tapped the table lightly. “You don’t win by playing the board. You win by rewriting the rules.”

They exchanged a look.

I stood, turning toward the floor-to-ceiling windows. Somewhere out there, ShadowByte was watching us watch them. That alone told me there weren’t like any I’d dealt with before.

And if there’s one thing I didn’t do, it was walk away from a challenge.