I returned home, my nerves on edge. The decision had been made. There would be no turning back now. The grey areas were behind me. Ahead lay only darkness, and I was about to plunge headfirst into its murky depths.

With a deep breath, I opened the envelope again, pouring all the contents onto my desk. The calmness of the outside world was at odds with the turmoil raging inside my mind. John had given me more information than I expected. He really was desperate to find something on Sandra.

I brewed a strong coffee before delving into the task at hand. My laptop lit up. Ready for me to find out the truth — or help me destroy an innocent woman’s life.

I started with a simple background check.

Sandra Evelyn Alford (née Bungay)

Date of Birth: 10th of June 1973

Birthplace: Royal Tunbridge Wells

Nothing out of the ordinary. John was her only marriage. They had no children. Sandra was a Chief Executive at a local children’s charity.

On paper, she looked beyond reproach.

Social media was the obvious place to start.

Facebook — nothing exciting. Fewer than 100 friends, mostly family. A few posts of her and John on holidays, but fairly quiet online. No mention of her professional life though.

Instagram — even less posts than Facebook.

Twitter — a dormant account with 5 tweets. Last tweet was posted in 2012 about the London Olympics.

Given her position, LinkedIn seemed the obvious place to look next. Her professional life was laid out in meticulous detail. Hundreds of connections spanning charities, local government, education, and business. Everything looked exactly as you’d expect.

Except for one thing.

Sandra and John weren’t connected.

Most people wouldn’t have noticed. I almost dismissed it myself. But for a married couple—particularly one where both appeared active on the platform—it was unusual enough to make me pause.

I clicked through to John’s profile. There was nothing unusual there either. Plenty of professional contacts, charitable organisations and local businesses. Still no Sandra.

I leaned back in my chair, turning the thought over in my mind. Why? A charity chief executive and a prominent businessman who publicly supported local causes not being connected was unusual enough. But a married couple? That didn’t sit right.

Either it meant nothing…

Or John hadn’t told me everything.

Something was gnawing away at me. There was something missing. But I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

I needed to clear my head, so I walked down to the harbour. I exchanged a few words with neighbours on the way before settling onto my favourite bench overlooking the sea. For a while I watched the boats drift lazily across the water, trying to quiet the nagging feeling that I’d missed something.

Back home, I phoned Banff Academy and spoke with Anna Cockburn. We arranged a date for my visit, where I’d spend an afternoon with the senior pupils talking about ethical hacking and demonstrating how attackers exploit vulnerabilities.

Before ending the call, Anna paused.

“Can I ask you something? Were you a pupil here?”

I’d never mentioned attending Banff Academy.

“I was,” I replied.

“Did you ever know an Anna Ferguson?”

I laughed.

“Of course I did. I had the biggest crush on her. I don’t think she ever knew I existed.”

There was a moment of silence before laughter erupted down the phone.

“David,” she said between laughs. “I am Anna Ferguson.”

My face burned with embarrassment.

Anna explained she’d married after leaving school and had since divorced, which explained the different surname.

The moment I ended the call, my embarrassment vanished.

Surname.

Marriage.

Different names.

I stared at my laptop.

I typed Sandra Bungay into Facebook.

Nothing.

Instagram.

Nothing.

Twitter.

Nothing.

My head in my hands, frustrated. Then another thought struck me.

Her middle name.

I typed Evelyn Bungay into Facebook.

A profile appeared.

A faceless profile.

Unlike Sandra Alford, Evelyn Bungay was remarkably active online.

My pulse quickened as I opened Google.

There was even more.

The name appeared again and again across multiple explicit websites. Photos, videos, and written accounts from various people were scattered across the internet, all seemingly connected to the same identity.

But there was one problem.

No clear photographs of her face.

I sat back, staring at the screen.

I might have found the smoking gun.

Or I might have just uncovered someone who shared the same name.

I needed more.

I studied the photo of Sandra that John had included in the envelope. There were no obvious body marks or blemishes to confirm that the photos online were her. The photos online “Evelyn” showed a couple of small tattoos near her bikini line.

John hadn’t mentioned whether Sandra had any tattoos.

A suspicion isn’t proof.

It was too early to inform John of my discovery. If I was wrong, I could destroy someone’s life.

I needed more.

Hours passed as I studied Evelyn’s online presence, searching for anything that could confirm whether she and Sandra were the same person.

The deeper I went, the more uncomfortable I became. I was staring into someone’s private life, trying to separate fact from assumption. The weight of what I might have uncovered sat heavily on my shoulders.

Eventually, I closed the laptop.

My mind was exhausted.

I needed a distraction.

I picked up my phone and opened Snapchat. Messages quickly appeared from women looking for conversation, flirting, and something more. Most were content keeping things virtual, but after everything I had been immersed in, I wanted something real. Human contact. A reminder that there was a world outside the screen.

One message stood out.

A young woman from Aberchirder was interested in meeting.

After a few exchanges, we agreed to meet at the Knowes Hotel. I booked a room and arranged to meet her at the bar at 8 p.m.

For the first time in hours, I stopped thinking about Sandra.

I arrived at the hotel, despite only being a few minutes away from my home, I always wanted to keep my private and sexual life separate from each other. The only people who knew exactly where I lived were important to me.

Meg arrived at the hotel just before 8. I was already sitting at the bar waiting for her. She was incredibly attractive. Tall with long blonde hair, nice inviting eyes. Young, recently celebrated her 21st birthday. Meg hadn’t overdressed which I appreciated, sometimes casual just looks hotter.

Being the gent, I offered to buy her a drink. Meg decided that she wanted one of the local speciality gins as I had a nice Speyside whisky. We didn’t have much small talk, we both wanted the same thing, sex. Meg just wanted sex and I was the first guy that responded positively, and that arrangement worked well for me. We quickly finished our drinks before heading to our hastily booked room.

As soon as we entered the room, our lips locked. Lustful kissing. Meg unbuttoned my shirt as I started to remove her clothing. Now we were both standing there in our underwear. Meg looked amazing in her mismatching bra and panties. Slowly, I pulled Meg in towards me, our tongues forcing themselves into the other’s mouth. I unhook her bra to expose her 34B tits. Not the biggest but complimented Meg’s body shape well.

Maybe I shouldn’t be doing this but my sexual needs and desires were overruling everything in my head.

Meg pushed me on to the bed and demanded I remove my boxer shorts. I enjoyed her taking the lead. My cock had already reacted positively to her touch, now with her hand on my cock, hardening my erection. Meg said she wasn’t here for foreplay, she just wanted to fuck. I was more than happy with this, I just needed a release.

Meg stepped back, and for a moment my attention was drawn away from everything else.

Then I saw them.

The tattoos.

The same small markings I had been staring at on my screen for hours.

My mind struggled to make sense of what I was seeing.

Every instinct that had brought me here vanished.

I couldn’t stop looking at the tattoos.

For the first time that evening, sex was the last thing on my mind.

Surely the tattoos were a coincidence, maybe I was just seeing something that I wanted to see. It would make my life easier if Meg was Evelyn.

There I was, lying on my back with a hot young woman riding my cock, and all I could think of was Sandra/Evelyn. Was the woman currently bouncing on my dick the elusive Evelyn or was there something else going on?

The release I needed was not there when I needed it the most. Meg was getting louder as I struggled to cum. I needed to get out of here without being weird. After, what felt like an eternity, Meg screamed in ecstasy as she orgasmed hard. Her orgasm inspired my cock to fill her pussy with my cum. Relief came over me as I could think about my escape.

Despite Meg only wanting sex, she was wanting to cuddle up afterwards, just like we were lovers than often share a bed. As my cum leaked out her pussy, she wiped some with her fingers and tasted our collective orgasms.

Mmm, that tastes so good.

Everything that I had learnt today was whirring through my mind. Do I say anything? I need to ask about the tattoos. What if it was just a coincidence? Or was I just seeing things?

“Fuck it, I need to ask her!”

“Meg, I like your tattoos! Is there any special meaning behind them?”

“Eh! There is no special meaning but they are there for a reason.”

“Oh, okay! What do you mean by that?” I enquired.

“Well, it’s not something that I’m comfortable talking about!”

“That’s okay Meg. You don’t need to explain anything to me. It must just be something a lot of women get tattooed.”

“No!” Screamed Meg. “It’s not just for everyone to get tattooed! Only the best girls are allowed to get those tattoos.”

“What do you mean ‘the best girls’?” I queried.

“The best fucks in the local area. I’m a fucking slut, David! The best sluts in the area have those tattoos. Happy now?!”

“Who decides who the “best girls” are Meg?”

“Evelyn does, Evelyn Bungay.”

+++++

On my drive home, all I could think of was, “Is Evelyn Bungay running a sex ring?”

But still, all I had was a name and confirmation that Evelyn Bungay existed. I still needed to see her face.

What had I stumbled into? Who else was involved? Surely John suspected something. Even so, I kept my discovery to myself.

But still I held off revealing anything to John.

Even though it was after midnight, I opened up the laptop, hoping that there wouldn’t be many emails to respond to. Thankfully there wasn’t. Just one from Julie confirming my visit on Thursday.

Before I switched off my laptop, I did a couple more checks on Sandra/Evelyn. The phone number John gave me is connected to Sandra. But surely, that wasn’t the only phone Sandra had.

And yet here I was, staring at a vulnerable system belonging to someone I suspected of hiding a secret.

Who was going to be affected by me hacking the website? The staff and donors might know nothing. They could just as easily be innocent people caught in the middle. I would feel guilty for the children though. Then there was the £100,000 fee, and the promise of other high-paying work. The temptation was too much.

“Fuck it! Stop pissing around and do it!” I told myself.

I knew exactly where the line was. I’d spent years teaching companies how to defend themselves against people like me. Everything I’d built my reputation on said to close the laptop, phone John, and walk away.

Instead, I took a long sip of coffee.

“If she’s innocent,” I muttered to myself, “she’ll never know I was here.”

It was a lie, and I knew it.

I opened a virtual machine and routed my connection through a series of overseas servers. If I was going to do this, I wasn’t going to leave footprints leading back to my front door.

The charity’s website looked professionally designed, but appearances meant very little. I began with passive reconnaissance, building a picture of how everything was connected without touching a single vulnerable system.

Within half an hour, I already knew more about their network than they probably realised was publicly available.

Old software versions.

Exposed development files.

A forgotten administration portal that should never have been accessible from the internet.

Nothing dramatic.

Just years of small mistakes.

I sat back in my chair.

“This isn’t going to be difficult,” I whispered.

The first attempt failed immediately.

Good.

That meant somebody had at least tried to secure the system.

The second failed too.

By the third attempt I’d discovered why. Their web server was patched more recently than the rest of the infrastructure.

For a moment I considered giving up.

Maybe this was fate telling me to walk away.

Instead, I kept digging.

Nearly two hours later I found what I’d been looking for.

An overlooked vulnerability on an older internal application.

One carefully crafted request later, I had my foothold.

No alarms.

No flashing warning messages.

No dramatic green text racing across the screen.

Just a blinking command prompt.

The quietest victories are usually the most dangerous.

Moving through the network was painstakingly slow. Every action had to look like normal traffic. One careless command could trigger an alert and lock me out forever.

Most of the charity’s internal documents were exactly what you’d expect. Funding applications. Safeguarding policies. Volunteer records. Meeting minutes.

Sandra’s account was different.

Whoever managed their systems had taken the unusual step of applying additional security to her files.

Someone clearly considered them important.

I tried the obvious passwords first.

Nothing.

I launched a password-cracking tool against the account while gathering anything that might help build a more personalised wordlist.

Birthdays.

Family names.

Favourite places.

Former addresses.

Nothing.

Hours disappeared.

The software eventually unlocked the account, but the documents themselves remained encrypted.

I rubbed my eyes.

“So that’s your real defence.”

Most people reuse passwords.

Sandra didn’t.

She used passphrases.

I generated a fresh dictionary based on everything I’d learned about her during the investigation. Friends. Family. Places she’d lived. Charity projects. Public speeches. Even obscure references buried in old interviews and newspaper articles.

The attack crawled painfully slowly across the screen.

Thousands of guesses.

Tens of thousands.

Nothing.

I went to bed convinced I’d failed.

The cockerel dragged me awake before sunrise.

Still half asleep, I wandered into the kitchen and switched on the kettle.

As the laptop came out of sleep mode, a notification flashed onto the screen.

One password recovered.

I stared at it for several seconds before opening the encrypted folder.

The first documents were disappointingly ordinary. Expansion plans for the charity. Funding proposals. A sponsorship agreement with Aberdeen FC.

Then I noticed a folder near the bottom of the directory.

EB.

Two simple letters.

Unlike everything else, there was no description.

No date.

No explanation.

Just…

EB.

I hesitated.

Every instinct told me that whatever was inside that folder would change everything.

I inhaled slowly.

£100,000

That was all I needed to think about.

I clicked.

The folder contained eighty profiles.

Each followed exactly the same format.

Photographs.

Preferences.

Availability.

Ratings.

Videos.

Near the top sat a profile labelled:

Evelyn Bungay.

I opened it.

Sandra Alford smiled back at me.

The woman, who was locally celebrated, was she running a sex ring?

Whatever this was, it wasn’t just an affair or a secret online identity. It was organised. Structured. Documented. Whether Sandra was running it or simply part of it, I couldn’t yet tell. They all had one thing in common: the tattoos.

Eventually, I came across Meg’s profile. She was the youngest member of the group. Meg had only been included recently. There was a black mark against her name “sex for pleasure”. Was that the time with me?

One in particular piqued my interest, it was Gemma, John’s secretary. She had been recruited by Evelyn. According to her profile, Gemma was recruited around six months ago. That would be a month after I slept with her, she had some tattoos at the time, but none were on her bikini line. Now the photos show that she has the same ones at Meg, in the same location.

Was John aware? Sandra must be aware of Gemma’s employment. If Gemma had been recruited after joining John’s company, that couldn’t be a coincidence. Whether she was there to watch John or for another reason, I didn’t know.

Hidden among the profiles were spreadsheets that had nothing to do with the women. Payments that didn’t match the charity’s published accounts. Donations transferred through companies I’d never heard of before disappearing altogether.

Whatever Sandra was hiding, it wasn’t confined to her private life.

I still had questions that needed answers. Besides, I had already committed to visiting Banff Academy, and for the next few hours I’d have to pretend none of this existed.

I was nervous for today’s visit, after Anna had revealed her identity. I hadn’t seen her since leaving school. I wonder if I would recognise her.

Anna met me at the reception, she was just an older version of the girl I fancied over twenty years ago. Same beaming smile, she had aged beautifully. Before going to class, she told me about getting married, having children, then returning to the area after the breakdown of her marriage. She had gone down to Glasgow for university, met Joey while down there and fell pregnant soon after meeting him. He was from Dumbarton and decided to stay down there as their new family grew. After her second child, she came home to find Joey in bed with another woman. Anna returned to Banff with her children immediately and worked hard to get her qualifications. I was so proud of her for overcoming all these challenges.

The class went well. The students were engaged with all that I was telling them. They had learnt about my life experiences within the RAF and MoD. I used a training website to demonstrate how ethical hacking could be used positively. Spent time explaining why securing social media accounts was beneficial as well.

Now it was on to the scariest part of the day, Q&A time.

“Do you know James Bond?”

“No”

“Have you ever shot anyone?”

“Not had a reason to. Yet!” With a wry smile.

“Can you hack a bank for us?”

“I can but I won’t.”

And the one boy in the corner asked.

“Did you go to Banff Academy?”

“Yes”

“Did you know Miss Cockburn?”

“Yes, I was in the same year as her.”

“Did you fancy her?” Said the same cocky child.

“Err, yes,” I said sheepishly.

The classroom erupted in laughter and cheers.

Both Anna and I went beetroot red in embarrassment.

Then he asked, “Do you still fancy her?”

“Today is the first time I’ve seen Miss Cockburn since leaving school,” as I tried my best to answer diplomatically.

“That’s a yes,” screamed the boy, surrounded by further laughter and whoops.

Anna managed to gain control of the class before the final bell rang.

As the classroom emptied, Anna and I had a laugh about what just happened. Before I left the school, I passed on my phone number so we could meet up properly in the future.

My visit to the school today was a nice distraction but I needed to get back to my investigation. My focus was on the Evelyn Bungay file. The photo was of Sandra but I needed to get something to secure my fee.

There was a diary for each of the girls. Evelyn’s diary wasn’t as full as the others but she was down for a meeting this evening. It wasn’t a hotel meet, it was a meeting at a car park near Turriff. It was secluded but would still be fairly light at that time. Part of me was impressed with the willingness to be so risky. Obviously, I had to go and gather evidence.

According to the diary, she was meeting there at 9pm. So, I got myself ready with some surveillance equipment to set up around the car park. The car park was eerily quiet when I arrived, which was perfect for me to find the correct hiding spots for my cameras.

The time of the meeting was fast approaching, with a few fancy cars entering the car park. Sandra’s car entered soon after 9. There were around six guys hanging around Sandra’s car. Each with their cocks out, slowly wanking themselves as Sandra exited her car. She didn’t come alone, as she had brought a new recruit. Fuck, it was Sandie. Now I had to hide. I was hoping to get closer but I now couldn’t take that risk.

Sandra introduced Sandie to the waiting men.

Over the next hour I watched enough to know exactly what this organisation was.

My cameras captured every second.

Then, once everything was over, Sandie lay on a blanket while someone tattooed the familiar symbol near her bikini line.

Recruit number eighty-one.

I waited for an hour after the car park had cleared. Retrieved my equipment before heading home. Now I also had the information of six random cars and the men that owned them.

I worked through the night to conclude my investigation. The cockerel just reminded me that I had been awake all night.

All the evidence was there. Sandra/Evelyn didn’t have any wiggle room to lie her way out of this. I had uncovered some financial irregularities within the charity to use as security for John, if Sandra tried to put up a fight.

I pulled out my phone.

Message to John.

Job done.

Seconds later, a response.

Tarlair. Midday. Come alone.

This time, I was going to be late.

I managed to sleep for a bit before a quick shower and headed to Tarlair. John was there before me, pacing up and down the car park holding tightly onto a laptop

Relief on John’s face when I arrived.

I handed him a secure flash drive.

Password is EvelynBungay.

John put the USB flash drive into his laptop.

His fingers hammering on every letter of the password.

John’s face turned ashen when the files opened in front of his eyes.

His fingers froze on the keyboard.

His breathing became shallow.

He opened Sandra’s profile.

Closed it.

Opened it again.

His shoulders sagged.

“Jesus Christ…”

His voice barely rose above a whisper.

“It’s really her.”

“How could you?”

John reached into his jacket pocket and handed me a packed envelope. I opened the envelope to see it full of £100 notes. I counted every note several times.

“Hold on, there is only £50,000 here.”

“Don’t screw me on this. Don’t think I haven’t got an insurance policy of you.”

Panic appeared on John’s face.

“I’m sorry, I’m not trying to screw you. I couldn’t remove £100k in one go.”

“You have until the end of the working day to deposit the other £50k into this account. If you don’t, the Press & Journal will receive this,” I said, waving an unused empty USB stick.

“Ok. Whatever is on that, don’t let the papers know! You’ll have the money this afternoon.”

“How?”

“You wanted the truth.”

“And you were told not to question my methods.”

John walked off in the direction of his Porsche.

As he was about to enter his car, he told me of other businessmen that would be interested in my services.

“Who?”

John paused before opening the Porsche door.

“Steve Rose.”

“Who’s that?”

“He owns the Arbuthnot Estate on the River Deveron.”

“What does he want?”

John smiled.

“He thinks someone’s stealing from him. I told him you were the man for the job!”