Chapter 39
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
Annie
I know the exact time because Cody’s system clocks everything down to the second, and because the moment it happens, the atmosphere in the office changes so violently it feels like the air pressure drops.
Cody goes still.
His eyes lock onto the monitor in front of him, shoulders tightening beneath his dark henley as lines of system activity begin populating across the screen.
And beside him my own pulse starts hammering hard enough to make my fingertips cold.
“Oh shit,” I whisper.
The bait worked.
Someone took it.
The fake vendor payment, buried beneath livestock maintenance transfers and deferred operational costs, suddenly reroutes in real time across the system like a flare going off in the dark.
Approved. Moved. Redirected.
Whoever’s been bleeding Ironwood dry just exposed themselves.
Cody’s fingers fly across the keyboard beside me, as he opens tracking windows and access logs simultaneously.
“Timestamp locked,” he says. “Routing path confirmed.”
I pull up the secondary vendor sequence, cross-referencing the reroute behavior against the previous shell company patterns we already flagged.
And there it is.
The same laundering structure. The same staggered redistribution timing. The same disguised operational layering designed to make theft look like normal ranch movement.
My stomach twists. Because this isn’t theory anymore. This is real.
“Jeez,” I murmur. “They actually did it.”
“Of course they did,” Cody says flatly.
I glance toward him. He looks terrifying like this. Controlled down to the molecule. Which means internally he’s probably somewhere near homicide.
Cody opens another system tab.
“There,” he says abruptly.
I lean closer automatically.
The reroute authorization flashes across the screen.
ADMIN OVERRIDE CONFIRMED.
My heartbeat stutters.
No.
No no no.
Because admin-level permissions mean exactly what we already feared. This wasn’t an outside breach. This wasn’t random. This came from inside Ironwood itself.
Cody’s jaw tightens visibly.
“Tell me that’s fake,” I say.
“It isn’t.”
He zooms deeper into the authorization path.
The reroute chain branches across several linked permissions before finally disappearing beneath encrypted internal approval masking.
Which is sophisticated enough to make my stomach drop.
Whoever did this understood the system deeply.
Maybe as deeply as Cody does.
“Oh wow,” I whisper again.
Cody removes his glasses slowly, rubbing one hand across his mouth before putting them back on. A stress habit.
I’ve learned all their stress habits now, which feels weirdly intimate.
“We can still trace it,” I say quickly.
“We’ll try.”
I start exporting copies of the reroute logs onto an external drive while Cody digs deeper into the admin pathways.
My thumb taps rapidly against my camera body sitting beside the keyboard.
The room suddenly feels too warm. Too small. And underneath all of it sits one horrible realization: Whoever moved that payment probably knows by now that we saw it happen.
A cold knot tightens low in my stomach.
Cody must notice the shift in my expression because his voice lowers. “Annie.”
“I know.”
“You don’t know what I was going to say.”
“I know enough.”
His green eyes hold mine for one heavy second.
Then… the system kicks me out.
Just like that.
One second, I’m exporting files. The next, my screen flashes white.
ACCESS DENIED.
I blink. “What?”
I try again. Wrong password.
No.
Impossible.
I type slower this time.
Carefully.
ACCESS REVOKED.
My blood turns to ice.
Beside me, Cody straightens. “What happened?”
“My login…”
I try again.
Nothing.
Every folder locks. Every file path disappears. Every access point slams shut in front of me one by one like doors sealing during a fire.
“What the hell?”
Cody moves beside me fast, grabbing the mouse.
He attempts an override.
Denied.
Again.
Denied.
His expression changes from focused to lethal. “Who did this?”
As if summoned by the question, the office door opens. Sherry stands there clutching her clipboard so tightly her knuckles have gone pale.
Immediately, I know something’s wrong. Because Sherry is always composed, always cheerful, always organized.
Right now she looks like someone trying not to panic in real time.
“Morning,” she says.
The word lands strangely in the room.
Cody turns slowly in his chair. “Why was Annie’s access revoked?”
Straight to the point.
Sherry swallows. “Well…” Her fingers tighten harder around the clipboard. “Jake asked me to. He said it was… a directive from someone else. I just… I did what I was told.”
Every instinct in my body goes tight. Because Cody angry is dangerous. “Excuse me?”
Sherry’s smile flickers. “He said there was concern about account integrity while the audit was ongoing and—”
“He shouldn’t be able to suspend financial access without clearing it through me first.”
Sherry swallows hard. “He filed it through operations compliance. Said there was a potential internal breach and HR protocol required immediate suspension pending review.”
Cody goes deathly still. “That protocol is for ransomware attacks and external compromise.”
“I know,” she says quickly. “I just… I was told it needed to happen immediately.”
A coldness slides down my spine, because suddenly I can see it. The shape of the plan.
Jake isn’t just trying to move money anymore. He’s trying to control the narrative. Control the records. Control access.
And if things collapse?
Who’s the easiest person to blame?
The temporary accountant. The outsider. Me.
My stomach drops hard enough to hurt.
Cody seems to arrive at the exact same conclusion a second later because his expression goes frighteningly blank. “When did Jake tell you to do this?”
“This morning.”
“What exactly did he say?”
Sherry hesitates. “He said…” She swallows again. “He said sensitive financial records may have been compromised.”
The implication hangs there.
Ugly.
Intentional.
I feel suddenly nauseous.
Because Jake’s already positioning me inside the story. Making me look suspicious. Making me look temporary enough to disappear cleanly if necessary.
Sherry looks at me then, genuine distress finally cracking through her expression. “I didn’t know,” she says softly. “Annie, I swear, I didn’t realize—”
“I know,” I say automatically.
And weirdly, I do.
Sherry likes order too much for this kind of manipulation. She follows systems. Instructions. Structure.
Jake used that.
He wants me isolated.