Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
W ith misgivings, Marise watched Kathleen disappear down the corridor to the elevator.
She hadn’t slept well. Even with Kathleen warm beside her, her body curled into hers, sleep had come in bursts. Every time she drifted off, her guilt yanked her back.
What the hell was she doing?
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Agreeing to the lessons had been reckless enough, but she’d never intended them to be like last night.
She’d meant to give her an idea of intimacy in little doses.
It should have been simple, structured. Controlled.
Teach her enough to make her confident. Build rapport but stay professional.
That had flown out the door quickly enough. She had stepped over the line bigtime. Kathleen hadn’t let her in; she’d opened like a flower in her hand and Marise had been unable to control her own emotions.
You fucking idiot. You took her to bed and left pieces of yourself behind in the sheets.
Christ, Kathleen had given her something she hadn’t given to anyone else, now what could she do? File it under “client relations” and walk away? She rubbed her temple feeling a stress headache coming on.
Kathleen was changing her.
Not breaking through her defences, but reminding her who she was before the aliases, the jobs, the paranoia. Back when she still believed in the possibility of something simple and good.
Marise closed her eyes and leaned her head back. She couldn’t keep doing this.
She’d been sent to gather intel. To find out what Kathleen was developing and report back. That was the mission. The payday.
She’d stepped into this assignment with clear rules—be professional and keep her distance. Veronica Hale was only a tool. A part she could slip in and out of like the silk dresses in her wardrobe. She'd kiss, fake affection, but always with one hand on the exit.
But last night had been real.
Kathleen hadn’t been a mark. Not in that moment. She’d been warm, open, trembling with something fragile and hopeful. And Marise—goddamn her—had responded not as a professional but as a woman starved for sincerity.
She could still feel the way Kathleen had clung to her after her climax, her cheek pressed to Marise’s shoulder like she never wanted to let her go. No one in all her years had touched her deeply like that. It wasn’t sex. It was something far more intimate.
Something terrifying.
Marise got up abruptly and moved to the window. The skyline was grey and flat, the kind of New York morning that looked cold even when it wasn’t. Below, people looked like ants on the streets. The world went on, oblivious to the turmoil inside her.
She told herself it was fine. Kathleen didn’t suspect anything—how could she? She still believed Veronica was an expensive companion who enjoyed kayaking and vintage cars. Marise had fed her half-truths wrapped in practiced smiles. But how long could that hold?
She turned from the window, crossed to the bar cabinet and pulled out a small bottle of bourbon. Though it was far too early, she didn’t care. She poured a measure into a glass and stared at it, fingers curled tightly. Then she swallowed it in two gulps, welcoming the burn in her stomach.
You don’t get to keep her.
But it was fucking worse now. She wanted to protect her.
It had always been a mystery how her employer had known Katheleen had rung the agency. While Kathleen was sleeping, she’d pulled her phone apart and she’d found a bug inside. They were tracking her every move—probably had her under surveillance as well.
She should walk away. Email her employer and tell them what she knew. That whatever experiment Kathleen had been working on was a success and near completion. Ted had told her that much. Forfeit the rest of the money—she’d earned her ten percent.
But she couldn’t. If she left, they’d probably send in some goon to rough Kathleen up to find out what they wanted to know.
Her phone buzzed breaking her thoughts. Marise checked the screen: Elise . She picked it up with a sigh. “Veronica speaking.”
“Good morning, Veronica. My apology for the intrusion, I know you're on a break but something has come up.”
Marise felt the tension creep back into her shoulders. “What’s the problem?”
“It’s Darlene Hunt. She’s requested your company Saturday night.”
Marise’s hand curled into a fist. “Sorry. She’ll have to engage someone else.”
Elise hesitated before she said, “She’s become…difficult. She complained about client prioritisation.”
Marise muttered, turning away from the window. “That’s ridiculous. Did you tell her I’ve taken ten days off?”
Elise made a huffing sound. “She’s a very wealthy woman with a lot of influence. She knows how to tarnish our image. Would you consider doing Saturday night.”
“I understand,” Marise said calmly. “But I’m afraid I’m not available.”
There was a pause on the other end. “For Saturday?”
“For the next ten days,” Marise said. “I’m out of town on personal leave.”
Elise replied after a pause, “Very well. I’ll inform her you’re away. But when you return, we’ll need to revisit the booking structure.”
“I understand,” Marise said. “Have a good day.”
She hung up before Elise could speak again. The Langford had served its purpose. Tomorrow, she would send Elise an email, resigning from the agency. She would say, very regretfully, that due to unforeseen circumstances, she could no longer work as an escort for them.
She slid her phone into her pocket, pleased to shed that persona. It had been interesting but she had no use for it now. She had personal access to Kathleen.
Today, she had to plan her next date with her on Wednesday. There could be no more lapses like last night.
Marise cleared the bourbon glass and set it in the sink, then unwrapped her tool roll containing her instruments: micro screwdrivers, SIM extractor, signal sniffer and flash jacks.
Everything she needed to dissect secrets without leaving a mark.
She moved quickly—she’d tracked corporate surveillance tech before.
Most had black-market SIMs and cheap directional mics.
She picked up the bug she’d extracted from Kathleen’s phone and turned it over in her hand.
It was small, flat, and matte black. Designed to blend in and not cheap.
She clipped it to a micro-USB adapter and opened the burner laptop she kept as a spare.
The screen flared a dull green as she ran a passive diagnostic.
There was no interface, merely lines of raw code and signal data.
The bug sent out short bursts every six hours, recording audio and tracking location.
Everything was packed into encrypted messages before being sent out.
She opened a terminal window and dumped the last few logs into a folder and ran a scan. The server it was talking to was masked—routed through three relays, the final endpoint landing on a familiar hostname: apexa-data.com.
She pulled up the registration record.
The domain belonged to a holding company: Torcal Services Ltd.
, registered in Wyoming, backed by a silent partner with a listed office in Houston, Texas.
On paper, it was an independent logistics firm.
But Marise knew better. Torcal was a known shell.
She’d crossed paths with it two years ago during an intel contract in Alberta.
It funnelled money for Pelmax Petroleum.
A private oil consortium—old money, politically connected, and aggressive when it came to emerging energy threats.
Pelmax operated quietly behind lobbying groups, but they had a history of coercing or buying out promising tech before it could disrupt their dominance.
In one case, they’d bankrupted a startup that had developed super batteries.
They bought the patent and buried the research.
Pelmax must believe Kathleen’s invention could be a viable replacement for energy sources. That’s why someone planted a bug in her phone.
It wasn’t about gathering data. It was about getting control of the product. And when money didn’t work, the company was known to use more forceful means.
Marise leaned back in her chair. If Pelmax was worried, she may be under surveillance from other companies.
She snapped the laptop shut, stood, and stared out the window at the city’s lights chewing up electricity.
If Kathleen could come up with a cheaper and better alternative to producing power, it would be worth trillions.
If she walked away now, they’d send someone else who wouldn't care how brilliant or sweet or strange Kathleen was, only what she was worth if silenced.
She crossed to the closet, unlatched the floor safe, and dropped the bug inside. It was time she found out exactly what Kathleen was doing in her lab.
Marise spent the rest of the day on her laptop, surrounded by coffee cups.
She trawled everything she could find with Kathleen’s name on it: academic listings, old grant records, committee minutes, obscure conference abstracts.
She read through dry white papers on soil conductivity, chloroplast repair, and hybrid moss ecosystems.
Nothing connected.
No patents. No test trials or open datasets.
The woman had left fewer digital footprints than a ghost. Even her academic citations were vague. “Collaborative ecological systems” was the most concrete description she could find, if that signified anything at all.
Marise knew what this meant.
Kathleen’s work was deliberately shrouded.
Unpublished yet and almost certainly unregistered.
Hidden even from colleagues and her board.
Pelmax had employed her on hearsay, since no one outside the lab had any idea what was going on.
Maybe it had nothing to do with energy replacement—it might be a different product altogether.
Marise pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. No amount of trolling through university records was going to help. Kathleen had built walls around her work that only physical access could breach. The woman wasn’t anyone’s fool; she knew how to hide her work.
Marise needed to get inside the lab. That meant a passcode, a keycard or something.
And the only realistic way to get that was through Ted.
He was enthusiastic, and liked her a lot. At dinner on Thursday, he’d probably tell her the lab security policy between appetizers and dessert if she played it right. He’d also know what firm cleaned the lab.
Marise closed the laptop with a click.
There was still Wednesday night with Kathleen.