Chapter 22
Brie
One training video ended, and the next started automatically. The same woman I’d been watching for hours popped up in a circle at the bottom of the screen and proceeded to explain another incident response protocol. In the world’s most monotone voice.
Ken was right when he’d teased yesterday about how boring it would be.
Claire had left me here three hours ago.
While the videos themselves were mind-numbing, the process left my brain available to work on the problem: How to find Fenix.
Hacking the HSMs for higher access was a no-go.
The more I’d thought about it, the riskier it sounded.
If that was Claire’s first play when she arrived and she was hunting for traitors—whether to Mnemis, the US government, or some other organization—she’d be watching for that.
“How are you finding the training materials?” Claire approached my desk, a tablet tucked under her arm.
I paused the video and pulled my headset down to my neck. It only covered one ear anyway, but it was the polite thing to do. “Informative. However, this one shows an older version of the system. Version 4.2.8, but we’re running 5.1.3.”
“Training always lags behind updates.” Claire glanced at the paused video and sighed. “I’ve asked to have them updated, but management prioritizes system stability over documentation.”
“Makes sense.” I kept my tone light, interested but not too interested. Noticing a version mismatch showed I was paying attention. “Can I see the current interface? Maybe shadow someone?”
“All new employees start with the training modules.” She shrugged, as though saying she’d let me if she could. “You’ll need to be patient. Complete the fundamentals first. After that, we move you forward.”
“Right, of course.”
Claire’s phone buzzed. She checked the screen, then frowned slightly. “Sorry, Brie, but one of the hardware techs needs me in the server rooms.”
“Can I go with you?”
She chuckled and tapped my screen. “You need to finish the basic training videos first.”
“Will do.”
She navigated back to her desk, threw a crossbody bag over her shoulder, and headed for the exit.
I’d never been able to read people like my brother and sister could. What would their impression of Claire be? She seemed nice. A bit competitive at the racing game yesterday, but so was I. She didn’t seem to be watching me, or even grilling me on security.
But she had grilled Will.
Maybe I wasn’t on her radar yet.
I put my headset back on and resumed the video. The woman on my screen explained priority levels—Critical, High, Medium, Low. The same four categories that existed in literally every tracking program I’d ever seen. There wasn’t even a speed selection to hurry it up.
At home, I had full rein of the system. I’d written most of the software Reynolds ran on from the ground up, aided by a few key members of my team whose application-building skills were on par with their hacking skills.
Here, I was stuck watching someone explain what a drop-down menu was.
My fingers drummed against the desk. My father had been in prison for over twenty years. A few hours’ delay didn’t mean anything to him, but it was pissing me off. We’d only found out about his being framed three months ago, when one of Fenix’s captains spilled the truth to Emmett’s girlfriend.
If Mum had been honest with us years ago, we could have helped earlier.
I wanted to move now. Wanted to do something.
As the quiet youngest sibling, the woman sitting behind the computer screen and running support for the team, I hadn’t expected an opportunity to fix this and bring him home.
I’d expected Scarlett to sneak into some building behind one of her disguises and walk out with what we needed.
Or for Emmett to buy courtside tickets next to someone with the right intel and sweet-talk them out of it.
But none of that happened. And instead, I was watching training videos.
I doodled on the notepad next to me, drawing a server, a key, and intersecting lines, then coloring in the shapes. What if I had to keep my head down for months before I got my yellow access? What if it took that long before I could search for the data I needed?
Could Will and I keep this fake marriage going that long? How many more kisses on the beach would that require? Heat flared between my thighs at the thought. A multi-month undercover op, holding hands, spending every spare moment together? Sleeping next to each other?
I shifted in my chair, chasing a little friction.
Stop that, Brie.
It wasn’t fair. The kiss had felt so good. So right.
But it was so—
“How’s it going?”
I jumped, flattening a hand on the notepad in case I’d written anything I shouldn’t have.
Ken stood beside my desk, coffee mug in one hand, looking friendly and relaxed.
The total opposite of jumpy me.
“Sorry,” he said with a slight grin. “I didn’t mean to sneak up on you.”
“It’s fine. I was just…” I gestured vaguely at the screen. “Getting through these.”
“The exciting world of incident response.” Ken pulled over a spare chair and sat. “You look about as thrilled as I was during my first week. Do you have any questions about the actual system? The one we’re currently running, not the museum piece from the video?”
I glanced toward the doors. Claire had only been gone for five minutes at the most. “I asked Claire about that, but she said I need to finish the modules first.”
“Right. The new training method.” Ken’s tone made it clear he wasn’t impressed. “More efficient, apparently. We used to do a lot of job shadowing, letting newer members of the team actually use the software and see how real calls are handled.”
“That makes more sense.” Although it would make snooping impossible. “Especially for people who’ve worked in similar environments before.”
Ken followed my gaze, then gave me the same look he’d given me in the gaming room after Claire left and everyone started talking about her.
“Tell you what,” he said, lowering his voice slightly. “Let me log in with my credentials and open the quality review database. From there, I can show you how the interface works and what it’s like to chat with our clients. Sound good?”
My stomach flipped. This was exactly what I needed.
And if Claire checked my access history, she wouldn’t find anything because anything I did would be under Ken’s credentials.
“Are you sure?” I asked. “I don’t want to get you in trouble.”
“It’s fine.” Ken was already pulling his lanyard off. He withdrew my ID from its slot, the screen went dark, and he inserted his own. “I can’t leave you alone with my access, but there’s no rule against showing a new employee how things work.”
The screen changed. New menus appeared in the navigation bar—Quality Review Database, Client Search, System Logs, and Asset Management.
Access to everything a yellow badge could see.
“This is the main dashboard,” Ken said. “You’ve already gone through the menus in the training, so let’s dig into the details. What do you want to do first?”
A too-specific request would be suspicious.
Too vague would waste this opportunity. But I had no idea what I was looking for.
If Ken weren’t sitting here, I’d search for Fenix.
Then the shell companies Mum had been investigating in connection with Dad’s framing.
And then the individual names. Twenty of them tucked inside my brain.
However, I couldn’t exactly type those in while Ken was watching.
“Can we search for someone famous?” I said it lightly, almost jokingly.
Ken laughed. “No celebrities in our client database, unfortunately—at least, not by their real names. But let me retrieve a client I was working with recently. They had an interesting setup with multiple subsidiary companies.”
He entered a search query, hit Enter, and the results loaded—three entries, each with a different company name but the same parent corporation. Ken pointed at the screen, explaining how the relationships were structured in the database, how authentication worked across subsidiary accounts.
I nodded along with what he was saying, but my brain was already racing ahead. As soon as he logged out, I’d lose this access. I needed to remember every detail of the interface, every menu option, in case I found a way in.
“Let’s open the recording of my call—”
The Bridge doors opened, and Claire walked in.
Shit.
Ken stood and stepped slightly away from my desk as she approached us.
“How’s the training going?” Claire’s smile didn’t waver, but something shifted in her eyes as she glanced at my screen. “You logged into her console, Ken?”
“Just showing her the client search interface. Thought some hands-on practice would help reinforce the training videos.”
“Ken.” Her tone stayed pleasant, but she gestured toward the corner of The Bridge, away from the other analysts. “Can I talk to you for a moment?”
Ken’s jaw tightened slightly, but he nodded. “Sure.”
They moved away from my desk, and I couldn’t hear the first few words. Claire’s voice rose just enough to carry. “—not protocol. The new training method exists for a reason.”
“When I started, we learned by doing.” Ken was clearly on the defensive. “It’s more effective than watching outdated videos for hours.”
As they moved deeper into the corner, the noise-canceling features in the room prevented me from hearing more of their conversation.
I had maybe thirty seconds before one of them came back. Ken’s body language shifted—arms crossed, weight on his back foot. Defensive but not backing down. Maybe I’d have longer.
My hands moved to the keyboard. Minimized the search results Ken had pulled up.
Opened a new search.
Search: “Fenix”
No results found.
Of course not. That would have been too easy.
I cleared the search box. Tried the shell companies.
Search: “Artemis Ventures”
No results.
Search: “Mariner Trust”
No results.
Come on. Give me something.
Ken had unfolded his arms and was holding up his hands in a placating gesture. I didn’t have much time left.
Search: “Black Crown Holdings”
The system churned for half a second.
One result.
Please, please, please.
The entry wasn’t a complete client profile—it was a comment thread attached to a support ticket.
Recent authentication problem. The analyst had noted in the comments: “Client initially provided company name as Black Crown Holdings. Authentication failed. Client corrected to Meridian Data Solutions. Authentication successful.”
Meridian Data Solutions.
My hands went still on the keyboard.
Meridian Gallery had been one of the shell companies—was Meridian Data Solutions related to it? It had to be.
I clicked through to the ticket details. The system loaded Meridian’s client profile, and I skimmed it, committing as much as possible to memory. Their headquarters were in Sydney, Australia. One server, on a ten-year rental agreement, with a top-tier service program.
Contact Name: S. Hayes.
Stephen Hayes! One of the names on Mum’s list!
I’d found them.
Server Location: A string of alphanumeric characters.
Shit.
Not a readable location code. A hash. Probably salted, which meant even if I had hours to work on it, I’d never decrypt it without knowing the algorithm and salt value.
I stared at the encrypted field, mind racing through possibilities. There had to be another way to find it. Were maintenance logs an option? Or work orders where someone had physically accessed—
Movement in my periphery.
Claire and Ken had finished.
I closed the Meridian results before Ken reached my desk. He didn’t look relaxed and friendly anymore. Maybe a little embarrassed. Definitely annoyed.
“Sorry about that.” He pulled his ID card from the slot, and my screen went blank. “Claire’s right. Probably better to stick to the training videos for now. Protocol and all that.”
“Of course. Thanks for showing me around, though. It was helpful.”
“Anytime,” Ken said, his voice full of sarcasm. He grabbed his coffee mug and headed back to his own workstation across The Bridge.
I re-inserted my own ID, and the training video popped up again. The boring woman was ready to tell me how to escalate tickets to supervisors. I put my headset back on and hit play.
Claire settled into the chair Ken had vacated. She said nothing at first, just watched the video with me for a few seconds. “How much of the system did you explore?”
A test. Obviously a test.
“We’d only started.” I paused the video and took off my headset. “Ken showed me how to search for a client, and we looked at one of his recent cases. A company with multiple subsidiaries.”
“Did he show you how authentication works across subsidiary accounts?”
“He explained each subsidiary can have its own authentication, but they’re all linked to the parent company in the system.” I kept my eyes on the training video. “It was fairly straightforward.”
“It is, once you understand the architecture.” Claire was still watching me, not the screen. “When you were at Redoubt, did you work with clients who had complex corporate structures like that?”
Like everything with Claire, the question came out casually. It was anything but.
“Not really,” I said. “Redoubt’s client base was mostly small to medium businesses. Pretty simple setups. This is definitely more complex than what I’m used to.”
“You’ll adjust quickly. Finish the training modules. Once you’ve completed them and demonstrate proficiency with the basics, we’ll get you into the client database properly.” Claire stood, apparently satisfied with whatever she’d been testing for. “With your own credentials.”