Chapter 16 #2
As of this morning, we have confirmed that three additional members have reported compromising material in the hands of an unknown third party.
The pattern is consistent with the issues we discussed.
The scope of this breach is no longer containable through internal channels alone.
The board is formally requesting your assistance in identifying the source.
The Partners are prepared to fully cooperate. You will have full access to membership archives, effective immediately. As I am sure you are aware the risk to all parties is substantial, so we ask that you treat this matter with the discretion appropriate to your position.
Please send a contract at your earliest.
Regards,
Ms. VossA Velvet Stag Partner
Twenty minutes after this email, the contract came through, already signed, the retainer amount sitting in a wire confirmation in my inbox.
Official. I pulled it up and read it twice, the language clean and formal, and felt something close to laughter move through my chest without actually arriving.
Precision Dynamics International, retained to identify and neutralize a threat to the Velvet Stag Partners.
The client’s name on one line. My name on the other.
The case already half-mine before I’d ever been asked.
I run a vlookup between my list of terminated employees and the club’s lapsed members. I don’t expect a hit, not a direct one, but I have to check.
There is a hit.
Line 7: Brenden Hale. Systems Analyst. Dismissed fourteen months ago for unauthorized copying of proprietary encryption schematics.
No charges filed. My decision, I thought if we let it slide, let him walk, we’d avoid escalation.
Instead, I gave him a clean exit. Idiot.
On the club’s records, Hale lasted a little longer, membership revoked six months ago.
Reason: “Boundary violation against another member.” No details, but the notation is severe.
Hale is currently employed at Vantage Systems, a second-tier security consultancy with a sideline in cyber-espionage. The kind of place that would treat a former PDI tech as a lottery ticket.
I check my notes on Hale. During the last six months of his time at PDI, he’d grown erratic, missing minor deadlines, then suddenly logging huge blocks of overtime after-hours.
There were no flagged incidents, but the security logs were noisy, failed logins, unusual IPs, attempts to access restricted folders.
He was methodical, escalating in both aggression and stealth, but he’d never made a move as direct as this.
I’d written him off as an irritant, not a threat.
I print his old PDI personnel file and set it flat on the table.
I open the second file: the complaint record from Ms. Voss.
The tone is clinical, but the details are baroque.
Hale developed a pattern: fixate on a member, test their boundaries with microaggressions, escalate to threats when rebuffed.
Never physical, but always leaving a paper trail just plausible enough to discredit a victim if they pushed back.
He’d targeted people who had something to lose, a marriage, a business, a reputation.
He’d even gone after a former city councilwoman, before the club blacklisted him. He was the club’s dirty secret, too.
The behavioral pattern is unmistakable. Hale is the guy. But something is off. The messages I’ve received, the blackmail threats, are too careful, too clean. There’s no ego in them, no signature. Either he’s gotten better, or he’s acting through someone else. I have to know for sure.
I launch a suite of scripts to compare the metadata on the blackmail messages, ghost signatures on server logins, and the club’s access logs. It’s not enough to know he’s the suspect, I have to pin him down, hard.
As I watch the lines of code scroll, I realize I’m holding Cat’s photo in my left hand. I don’t even remember picking it up. I put it down, then slide it farther away, then bring it back. I’m losing it.
The script pings, a match on a subnet linked to an apartment complex two blocks from Vantage Systems. I check the digital trail.
Someone using Hale’s old logins, but with a new, overbuilt proxy setup.
The kind of system he’d have learned to use at Vantage, with resources he could only get from their side.
There’s even a ghost signature of a wireless connection to the Velvet Stag’s administrative network, patched in after-hours, likely from a car parked nearby.
I write this all down on another sticky note, hands moving too fast, nearly tearing the paper. My pulse is up. This is what it feels like to hunt, to close in on something you thought was behind you.
I’m nearly ready to pull the trigger and send the evidence to Ms. Voss, but something stops me. There’s a piece missing.
The club event calendar, the internal schedule, the one that isn’t on the website or in any of the newsletters, was never digitized.
The only way to know which nights I, or Cat, or anyone else would be present is to have inside information.
Someone had to provide the calendar, or access it after the fact.
I dig through my mental archives. Eight months ago, we completed a records audit.
I remember because it was Cat’s project.
She personally scanned, indexed, and encrypted every internal comms folder.
There’s no one else who knows the system like she does, not even me.
If I tried to pull the file now, it would flag security, which is exactly what the blackmailer would be watching for.
But if Cat did it, she could slip in and out without anyone noticing.
For a moment, I’m angry. Then I realize it isn’t anger, it’s a strange, panicked relief. I don’t have to do this alone.
But asking for her help means bringing her back into the fire, after I already burned her once.
I stare at the face-down photo of Cat. My jaw hurts from clenching. I push the laptops away, gather my notes, and prepare to make the call.
If I fuck this up, it’s not just my job or hers. It’s everything.
I open my phone and thumb through recent calls. Cat’s name is at the top, no surprise. I haven’t deleted the thread, haven’t even tried. The last time I called her, it was eleven days ago, a twenty-second exchange about rescheduling a briefing. I hadn’t realized it was the last time until now.
Her contact photo is from a trip to D.C.
, both of us fresh off a ninety-hour week and half-drunk on stolen minibar gin.
She’s pulling a face at the camera, two fingers hooked in a V behind my head.
I look tired but content. I wonder if she ever looked at the photo and saw anything other than a boss with a stick up his ass.
My thumb floats above the call button. For a second, I think about putting the phone down and walking away, really walking away, starting over. But there’s nothing on the other side of this, even if I solved the case, the mess would follow me everywhere. I’m tied to it, same as I’m tied to her.
I drop the phone onto the marble counter.
The sound is louder than I expect, echoing off bare walls.
I stretch, joints popping, and walk to the window.
The city is still alive out there, traffic slicing through darkness, neon reflected off every wet surface.
I press my palm to the window and let the chill seep in.
On the thirty-fourth floor, you can pretend you’re above it all, but the city always reminds you that you’re not.
You’re just another light in the high-rise, another silhouette with secrets.
I think about the look on Cat’s face in my doorway. Not the hurt, not the anger, those were manageable. It was the second before that, when she thought I might tell her the truth. The hope in her eyes, reckless and stupid, as if I was capable of giving her something that wasn’t a lie.
I go back to the island, pick up the phone. My hands are not steady. I force myself to hold it still, thumb hovering over her name.
I press call.
The line rings. Once. Twice. Every second is a new layer of humiliation. I imagine her seeing my name, weighing whether to answer, her finger over the decline button, maybe hoping I’ll just hang up.
On the third ring, no answer. Just my own reflection, backlit by city lights, holding the phone to my ear, idiot that I am. I close my eyes and let it ring a fourth time, savor the shame, the inevitability.
When I hang up, the silence in the apartment is total.
It’s just me, and the wall of evidence, and the ghost of her voice, daring me to try again.