Chapter 27
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
M arise popped two packets of instant porridge into a saucepan and turned on the gas.
The fire had died to glowing coals, leaving a lingering warmth in the cabin. Outside, mist clung to the pines, grey-white and still. It was peaceful, an unfamiliar peace that she’d rarely experienced.
They sat quietly while they ate, Kathleen shyly looking up at her now and then.
After they finished breakfast, Kathleen set up her laptop at the kitchen table, flicking her tongue across her bottom lip as she typed her manuscript. Marise smiled as she watched her, then picked up her laptop and sat cross legged at the small wooden table near the hearth.
She wiped a smudge from her laptop screen and booted into an operating system that didn’t exist in any public registry.
It was time to find out who had hired her, and she was going to need help on this one.
Marise typed faster, diving through her layers of encryption.
She had a contact, an old handler from Prague, username Lapwing.
She’d never met him, didn’t know his real name or heard his voice, but she knew he was male.
Three years ago, during a contract in Luxembourg, Marise needed to trace a shipment of biometric devices that had been rerouted through six dummy firms. A mutual contact gave her Lapwing’s encrypted key.
They worked together remotely for forty-eight hours straight and cracked the ownership trail.
Lapwing was paid in crypto and refused to say more than, “You’re cleaner than most. If you ever need me again, get in touch. ”
Marise tapped a string of characters into her shell window, then opened into the site. The interface was barebones: no branding, no timestamps. Only a blinking cursor and a space for a message.
She opened the encrypted chat and typed: Lark here. Need eyes on a contract reroute. Same channel. High priority. Someone shifted the game mid-play. Need eyes. Are you ghosting today?
It took three minutes before a reply appeared.
Lapwing: Still perched. How dirty is the nest?
Marise allowed herself a faint smile and typed: Corporate. Possibly federal. Target: bioenergy project. Attempted hit this week.
Another pause, then Lapwing replied: Payment?
Lark: Full trace. Trail to origin. Crypto. Same wallet.
Lapwing: Send what you’ve got. Names, contracts, any digital breadcrumbs. I'll pull the rest.
Marise uploaded the compressed data packet: Kathleen’s scrubbed research history, procurement lists, and internal files from the shell company she’d traced earlier. Then she leaned back and waited.
He’d follow the crypto trail backwards—wallets, conversions, sudden deletions. It was a thin thread, but it was all she had.
She looked up. Kathleen was scribbling something into a notepad, the pen flying across the page.
She was mouthing something to herself, unaware Marise was watching.
Her brow was furrowed, and she looked more alive than Marise had ever seen her.
There was power in her intensity—real and unselfconscious.
She might struggle socially and emotionally, but when it came to her work she was deeply focused and animated.
“What?” Kathleen said, sensing her eyes on her.
Marise shook her head. “Nothing. You look—” She hesitated, “like you’ve finally remembered who you are.”
Kathleen gave a small smile and turned back to her laptop. “I’m never hesitant with my work.”
Marise returned to her screen when she heard a buzz. Lapwing had sent another message. Found something. Funding looped through a shell firm out of Delaware. Name on the formation docs is fake—but the signature matches another file I’ve seen. Gimme a sec.
She stared at the blinking cursor.
Okay. Got him. You’re not going to like it.
Try me.
He’s Philip Conway. A Congressman and member of the House Energy Subcommittee. Tied to multiple fossil fuel PACs. Took meetings last quarter with executives from Astera and Verdantis Petro. Same day as your contract was signed.
Marise’s heart went still, and she sat back, thinking.
Conway. She remembered the name. A rising conservative from Texas. Handsome, clean-cut, media-friendly. He spoke in buzzwords like “responsible energy transition,” “protecting American jobs,” and “economic security.” A man who smiled as he blocked environmental bills in committee.
He wasn’t merely in the pocket of Big Oil—he was entrenched in the lining.
Marise typed back: Motive?
Your girl’s project. Rumour it’ll damage oil sales bigtime. Contract out on her.
Marise stared at the words. Just what she though. If Kathleen died without publishing, they’d force the institute to close down the project. It was still all supposition—no one knew what she’d engineered in the lab, but she had told them what Ted had said. Kathleen was close to publishing.
Fuck. It had forced Conway to take action.
Kathleen looked up again. “Everything okay?”
“I’ve found our saboteur.” Marise’s voice was even.
Kathleen frowned. “Who?”
Marise closed the laptop with a soft snap and walked over. “You ever heard of Philip Conway?”
“The congressman? He was on a panel about environmental ethics last year. Ted watched the whole thing and swore he wanted to throttle him.”
“Well,” Marise said, perching on the table edge, “you might get your chance.”
She explained what she’d learned, watching Kathleen’s expression darken by degrees.
“You’re sure?” Kathleen asked when she’d finished.
“He paid for the original contract. Disguised it through a shell company. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t known where to look.”
Kathleen rubbed her hands together. “So now what? We go to the press?”
Marise shook her head. “Not yet. He’s protected by big money and powerful friends.”
Kathleen went very still. “I’ll send my paper in as soon as I finish it.”
Marise nodded. “Good. Then I’ll handle the rest.”
Kathleen’s eyes narrowed. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going to make sure that bastard Conway removes that contract on you.”
Kathleen didn’t argue. She simply stood and crossed to the window, looking out at the woods. “It’s so peaceful out here. Why do some people crave money and power, Veronica. Even kill to get it. It doesn’t bring happiness.”
“No, it doesn’t,” said Marise sadly. She wasn’t worthy of this woman’s love. Kathleen was right. For all her money, Marise had never found happiness.
She went back to the couch, reopened her laptop, and began compiling everything her contact had sent—company names, meeting dates, asset flows. She’d need more than one favour. She had two days to trace every thread Conway had spun and pull it tight around his neck.
Marise cracked her knuckles, rolled her shoulders, and got back to work.
The sun had edged up through the pines, lighting the clearing outside in streaks of silver.
Birds called out softly, and Kathleen’s fingers tapped steadily across her keyboard from the other side of the room.
It should have felt tranquil, but Marise had slipped into her other state, the one with the narrowed vision, the rapid keystrokes, the predator’s patience.
She didn’t need to break into federal servers. She needed to follow the money.
Lapwing’s initial files gave her the starting point: a dummy corporation registered in Delaware, used to launder money for political purposes.
Marise ran the name through offshore directories, looking for cross-links with PACs, energy lobbyists, and consulting firms. The software did most of the heavy lifting, but the intuition was hers.
It took her until noon to stitch together the trail: one fund transferring small, repeated amounts into multiple ‘consulting’ companies.
Not illegal on the surface, but the names were familiar.
Two were tied to known shell operations used in election finance scandals.
A third had been used by a petrochemical firm five years ago to bribe officials in eastern Europe.
It had been a quiet settlement, an NDA, then buried.
“Got you,” she muttered.
She flagged it all, took screenshots, and dumped it into a secure vault. Then she went deeper.
Conway’s calendar was public. She cross-referenced the dates he’d met with Verdantis Petro execs with the days the shell company’s accounts moved funds.
She followed all movement within forty-eight hours.
The amounts were low enough to avoid automated banking red flags, but it was a pattern.
And if there was a pattern, she could prove intent.
She pulled up property records. Conway’s family trust had quietly purchased farmland outside Houston last year. Months later, a pipeline expansion was approved to cut through that land—jacking the property value by over 300%. The bill approving it was sponsored by Conway himself.
That would play well in the court of public opinion.
As she dug further, Lapwing sent another message: You want leverage or prosecution?
Marise typed fast: Both.
A few minutes later, he delivered gold.
Lapwing: There’s a recording. Private Zoom call. Got it through a whistleblower archive. Not pristine, but usable.
She downloaded the file and played it through a scrubber.
Conway’s voice was unmistakable—charming, with that slight southern drawl.
“The energy bill’s DOA unless we kill the alternative proposals.
We’re not funding fringe tech. We’re funding oil, gentlemen.
That lab in New York—make sure it doesn’t get traction. Quietly.”
Marise sat back, her mind in a whirl.
It wasn’t only corruption, it was premeditated. The call was timestamped three weeks before the attempt on Kathleen’s life.
She replayed it, then trimmed the clip and encrypted it.
Kathleen looked up. “Progress?”
“I’ve got him,” Marise said. She turned the laptop around and pressed play.
Kathleen listened, her face paling. “He doesn’t know what I’m doing.”
Marise nodded. “No, but he suspects it’s something powerful enough to scare off his donors.”
“What are we going to do with this?”
Marise’s voice was calm. “We use it. I know a reporter who’s still got ethics and reach. If I send this to him, it’ll explode. Conway won’t only lose the contract—he’ll lose his reputation.”
Kathleen didn’t speak right away. “Will that stop them coming after me?”
Marise hesitated. “It’ll stop Conway and send a warning to anyone else watching.”
Kathleen sat back in her chair, hand resting lightly over her heart. “Then let’s do it. Everyone will be safe then.”
Marise clicked save. Then she leaned in and kissed her gently on the temple. “We’ll take this bastard down.”