so administrative access was authorized only through a physical Ethernet connection. Someone knew their cybersecurity. Which was unusual for a business like Work It Out, a single-owner gym without particularly sensitive data to protect.
That made the dark web activity all the more suspicious.
He’d have to ask Dawn where the router was located, although he would take a guess it was in the boss’s office. Getting in there with his laptop was going to be tricky, to say the least. He could ask Tully for help, but he suspected his partner would insist on coming along.
He kick turned and his thoughts inexorably returned to Dawn now that her name had floated across his consciousness again.
One more lap, during which he would allow himself to fantasize about peeling her exercise clothes off and running his hands over her naked skin.
Then he had to get back to work.
Chapter 6
“Nat, I need your opinion about something.” Dawn bit into a fried zucchini stick, a specialty at Winenfood that she allowed herself to indulge in no more than once a month, even though she and her friends generally met at the local bar once a week.
“And I thought you’d invited me out for a drink for the pleasure of my company,” Natalie said, her slim fingers curled around the stem of her Manhattan glass. She had her short blonde hair smoothed back into a sleek, sophisticated style and wore a simple white cotton blouse that she had somehow turned into a fashion statement by adding a couple of delicate silver necklaces.
“I thought people were flattered when you asked their opinion.” Dawn took a swallow of her Stella Artois.
“An opinion is like advice. Everyone thinks they want to hear it until they do.”
Dawn nodded. Natalie was smart that way. Maybe it was because she owned a hair salon and heard more about her customers’ lives than she really wanted to. Or because she was about ten years older than Dawn and had survived some tough experiences in her life. That’s what had made her trust the other woman almost from the start.
“Well, I really want to hear your opinion about this.” She told Natalie about how Leland had discovered the dark web activity at the gym. “So who at the gym do you think might be capable of doing something illegal on the internet? And what would it be?”
Natalie gave Dawn a searching look. “Why are you getting involved in this?”
Dawn frowned in surprise. She’d never questioned her motivation for searching out the truth. “Because something criminal is going on at the gym. Because the customers are complaining and I don’t want Ramón to lose business because of it. Because it’s not right and I don’t want to back away from a situation like that ever again.”
“Why don’t you just call the police?”
“Leland’s an expert on this stuff and says that the bad guys will just move the node if the police get involved before we know what’s going on.”
“I can’t help remembering what happened when Alice tangled with some bad guys.” Natalie rotated her glass by the stem. “Haven’t you had enough violence in your life already?”
If anyone else had said that, Dawn would have been furious, but Natalie genuinely worried about her. “Now I know how to handle myself.”
Natalie gave her a tight smile. “You tell us in every self-defense class that a gun changes everything. Or a knife. Or more than one attacker.”
Dawn flinched at the last one, but she had techniques to deal with that now. “I have no intention of getting myself into a situation where I need to defend myself. Leland is the one who’s doing the hacking.”
“That’s another thing. You don’t have permission from Ramón or Vicky to mess with their Wi-Fi. So you’re getting in their business without their knowledge.”
“Ramón just defers to Vicky and she thinks the whole thing doesn’t matter. I tried to talk to her about it, remember?”
“Yes, you told me.” Natalie looked away across the bar for a long moment before she took a sip of her drink and swallowed. “The whole situation worries me.”
“Me too. Help me figure out who’s behind it so we can call the police.”
“You’re like a dog with a bone.”
Dawn grinned. “My mother used to tell me that. I take it as a compliment.”
“I’m sure she didn’t mean it as one,” Natalie murmured.
Dawn set down her beer. “Ramón got me out of the dark, scary place I was stuck in. Maybe I can repay him in some small way.”
“All