Chapter 9 #2
The humor sifted out of her expression as my words landed.
Then she smiled as she carried her tablet to the end of the table nearest the windows, spread her notes across the dark wood without asking another question, and tucked one foot beneath her while she settled in.
I took the opposite end, satisfied to have her inside my line of sight while we worked.
The study’s household terminal gave me access to every camera and sensor on my property, along with the sanitized feeds covering the public approaches beyond it. The previous night’s alert had produced no physical breach, so I widened the search.
The outermost camera sat where the private road joined the county route, and I skimmed the footage from the night before until I spotted a dark SUV entering the turnout before it stopped, facing our access road.
The driver killed the headlights but remained there for almost six minutes, long enough to study my security and decipher whether it had increased after Bex moved in.
I enlarged the footage for a closer look.
The rear plate had been deliberately obscured beneath a dark cover, leaving only the final number visible in the moonlight.
A crack split the left taillight, and one side of the rear bumper carried a pale scrape that might narrow the vehicle if it appeared on another camera.
By the time the SUV pulled away, I’d determined that whoever sat behind the wheel had been scouting the approach, although I couldn’t yet prove whether the vehicle triggered the alert or merely arrived to watch what happened afterward.
Bex looked up from her tablet, reading the change in my stillness before I said anything. “You found something?”
“Dark SUV.” Although I was reluctant to share anything that might frighten her, I’d promised to keep her updated. So I explained what I’d seen and how I’d reached my conclusions about the vehicle.
Her face paled slightly before her chin lifted. “They were watching the road to your house.”
“Our house.” I saved the clearest frame and looked back at her. “And yeah.”
The correction caught her for half a heartbeat, but warmth flickered through her expression despite the threat we were discussing. Then she asked, “Can you find them from one number and a broken light?”
“Eventually.” I carried the secure laptop to the reinforced door, opened the biometric lock, and went inside, sealing the secure office behind me before opening the off-book correlation program.
The search would reach into several legitimate databases and some systems I had no authorization to touch, which meant the method stayed on my side of the door even if the result affected Bex.
I fed the program the vehicle details then returned to the study while it worked. Bex had gone back to her coursework, but she looked up when I entered and sealed the door behind me once more.
“You’ll find it.” Her words were more statement than question.
It was clear that she wasn’t treating the closed door like a personal rejection. She understood that I would tell her when I knew something useful and leave the other shit where it belonged. And that just made me even more convinced that this woman had been made for me.
“I will.” I took my seat across from her, my gaze sliding briefly over the warm curve of her mouth before returning to the dispatch timeline. “They used a public road and drove an SUV that’s registered somewhere. That leaves traces.”
Her shoulders eased by a fraction. “I almost feel sorry for them.”
I snorted. “No, you don’t.”
“No.” Her mouth curved as she lowered her gaze to the tablet again. “I really don’t.”
I got back to work, too. The independent mirror I’d built Tuesday was already preserving every administrative action outside county control, but knowing what someone changed didn’t explain how the legitimate users normally behaved around those systems. I organized the records and eventually came across a question I knew Bex could answer.
“When Stowe’s company connects remotely, what happens on the dispatch side?” I asked.
Bex set down her stylus and thought before answering, her brows drawing together while she separated routine from exceptions.
“Mr. Hendrick usually gets an email first. Then Stowe calls and has him open the maintenance bridge from his terminal. A banner appears on our screens while they’re connected, and the supervisor logs when they start and finish. ”
“Emergency support?”
“They still call.” She leaned back in her chair, gaze shifting toward the ceiling while she searched her memory.
“The recording archive crashed last winter, and Eric called Mr. Hendrick himself. He had him open the bridge from the office, and the rest of us got the banner about thirty seconds later.”
None of the suspicious sessions carried those surrounding actions. Which meant someone had used Stowe’s valid support credentials without following the human procedure that normally accompanied them. The account could have been stolen, but Stowe could just as easily have bypassed the rules himself.
“Who uses the terminal in the deputy workroom after evening shift change?”
“Almost anyone on patrol.” Bex tapped the stylus lightly against her thigh as she considered the question.
“They use it for reports, overtime forms, schedule requests, and checking court dates. Tuesday night would’ve been worse than usual because the evening shift stayed late to give statements after Nina’s call, and the overnight deputies came in early when Dad locked everything down. ”
“Busier room means fewer people noticing who sat at the terminal.”
“Exactly.”