Chapter 23
Mira
The conference room lights were too bright. It was either that or the fact there wasn’t enough coffee in the world to get me through this Monday morning. Not after this weekend.
Yesterday I’d been in bed most of the day, well, until noon when Micah and Noah had showed up with takeout and vague excuses about “checking in.”
Now, I had taken over the conference room on the executive floor, spreading papers out in careful, deliberate rows.
I was surrounded by network diagrams, access logs full of time stamps I could recite from memory, but we were reviewing them again.
Whatever we came up with, had to be airtight, and we were running out of time.
Micah stood at the whiteboard, one hip leaned against the edge of the table like this was just another late afternoon problem to solve. How had he explained this to his team? Hell, what was Stan thinking?
“If the breach came from inside,” he said, tapping the board, “it had to be someone with tier-three access. Or someone piggybacking off something else.”
I nodded, my eyes glued to the laptop screen in front of me, my fingers scrolling through more logs.
We’d started this problem as if someone had hacked from the outside, but that had been ruled out very quickly.
It just made all of our stomachs churn with the thought there was someone here we couldn’t trust. Someone with systems access.
“No piggyback,” I said. “The authentication sequence is too clean. Whoever it was knew exactly where to step in and when to step out.”
Micah glanced at me, his brow raised. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” I hated that I was because of what it meant, but it was the only thing that made sense. I shifted through a stack of papers and highlighted a line and pushed the page toward him. “See the delay here? Three seconds. That’s not latency. That’s intent.”
He leaned closer, reading it line by line. “So someone patient.”
“And confident,” she added.
The room felt tighter suddenly. Too bright. Too quiet. Saturday lingered at the edges of my focus, not as memory so much as residue. My body knew before my mind caught up, a faint, unwelcome echo beneath my ribs.
I forced my attention back to the screen.
God, I needed to focus.
Micah set his marker down on the table and disappeared. When he returned, he set a cold orange juice and protein bar in front of me.
“Still feeling the drop?”
I glared at him, hating that he knew, but at the same time, glad I had someone to share it with and look out for me. Sighing, I twisted the cap off the bottle anyway, taking a long drink, letting the sugar hit before I started shaking.
Micah picked up his tablet and opened to something before handing it to me. “Mr. Cross flagged this last night.”
I scanned the numbers.
“How much?”
“Another ten thousand,” he said. “Not enough to flag accounting.”
He hesitated.
“It’s still under the monthly variance. Barely.”
I clenched my jaw. “So they knew the thresholds?”
“Or they wrote them,” he replied, not hesitating this time.
Sentinel Tech dealt with a lot of vendors and clients, both domestic and international, so money coming in and out wasn’t abnormal. Ten thousand here or there wouldn’t flag anyone. It was a day doing business for Sebastian Reid, but these didn’t fit.
I glanced at the door, wondering where Mr. Reid was today.
“Any idea where he is?” Micah asked.
I’d gotten a text on my way to work this morning. Or more accurately, while I was dragging myself out of bed, still half caught in the wreckage of too much sleep but not enough at the same time.
Mr. Reid: Something came up that I need to deal with this morning. Ethan should be flying back today. He was able to smooth things over, but Victor is in Arizona recruiting some new talent. Hope it’s not all a waste.
I rubbed at my eyes before texting back.
Me: You will figure this out.
Mr. Reid: Have a good day, Ms. Rhodes.
Micah tapped his marker against the table, sharp enough to cut through my thoughts. “You okay?”
I didn’t look up. “I didn’t sleep well.”
Not a lie. Not the truth either.
“Let’s go over this again,” he said. “Mr. Cross wants an update.”
We walked through the numbers more slowly this time, letting the repetition do its work. Dates. Access points. Withdrawals spaced carefully enough to disappear into routine unless you already knew where to look.
I took notes as Micah adjusted the code we’d been building, refining it until it stopped being a safeguard and started becoming something else entirely.
Once the trio approved it, Mr. Hale would handle the upload.
A mirrored environment, one that was clean and isolated.
It was designed to behave exactly like our real system, quietly pulling the actual one offline, protecting it.
We couldn’t keep it offline for long, but we hoped whoever was doing this would make a move.
It wasn’t a solution, and it wouldn’t fix what had already been done, but it was a trap. And if it worked, if they reached for the system the way we suspected they would, it might be enough to stop the bleeding before it became fatal.
The conference room door opened, pulling us both from the numbers.
Sebastian Reid stepped inside as if he’d been there the entire time and we’d only just notice. Not that he’d ever go unnoticed. Dressed in a black tailored suit and dark blue shirt, his steel grey eyes sought me out.
“Any progress?” he asked, walking around behind us.
Micah straightened. While he’d crossed paths with Hale, he had rarely worked with the other two before. “Mirror environment is ready, pending approval. As long as whoever is doing it isn’t online when we make the switch, no one should notice.”
Reid nodded as he moved closer, scanning the figures, the code that the average person would just see as gibberish. His expression shifted, telling the moment everything clicked into place.
“How long?”
“On an empty network? A matter of minutes,” Micah said. “If the pattern of withdrawals holds true, we should have what we need in the next week. We should be able to do it locally without involving any of our outside systems.”
Reid pursed his lips, processing then his focus shifted to Micah. “You should get back to your floor before people start wondering why you’ve been gone so long.”
Micah didn’t argue. He gathered his tablet, shot me a look, then slipped out, the door closing quietly behind him.
The room felt smaller without him. Or maybe it was just the sudden nearness of Mr. Reid that made the space contract. The scent of cedar lingered in the air, unmistakable now that it didn’t have anywhere else to go. Wood and leather, clean and restrained, unmistakably him.
He turned toward me, bracing his hands on the table, leaning in just enough to make the distance disappear.
“Ms. Rhodes.”
I met his eyes and gulped. “Yes, Sir.”
Something sharpened in his gaze, the intensity tightening as his Adam’s apple shifted with a slow swallow of his own.
“My office.”
He turned and left without waiting.
I scooped up the papers strewn across the table, my laptop tucked under my arm, and followed. My pulse was already racing when I reached him, standing in the doorway of his office, holding it open with quiet expectation.
I stepped past him, the scent of food cutting through the sterile air immediately. My stomach betrayed me with a low growl, and I could have sworn the corner of his mouth curved in response.
“Have you eaten today?”
I started to shrug, but the lift of his brow stopped me cold. “A protein bar.”
“Sit.” He gestured toward the table as he took his seat, draping a paper napkin across his lap before handing me a fork.
I did.
“We’ll go over the mirror again,” he said, “and then you’re going to tell me exactly how confident you are that whoever’s doing this will take the bait.”
The way he said it made one thing clear.
This wasn’t just about the numbers anymore. I opened up the laptop and set it off to the side of the table where we could eat and still go through the code.
He didn’t look at the screen. He looked at me.
“You’re not operating at full capacity,” he said.
It wasn’t a question.
I kept my voice steady, careful not to give anything away. “Neither is the system.”
A corner of his mouth twitched. “Explain.”
I shifted the laptop slightly, angling it so he could see without breaking the space between us. “They won’t be able to help themselves,” I said. “Because the mirror doesn’t just copy our environment. It behaves like a system that expects to be trusted.”
He remained still, his attention fully locked onto me, not the screen.
“Whoever’s doing this isn’t forcing access,” I continued.
“They’re comfortable. Familiar with the rhythms. They know when checks run, when oversight relaxes, when no one’s watching because no one thinks they need to be.
When the live system goes quiet, they’ll assume we’re doing maintenance. A patch. Something routine.”
“And they’ll try again,” he said.
“Yes. Especially if we let everyone know the system will come down for maintenance. They’ll use that.” I nodded once. “Because that’s what they’ve been doing all along. Waiting for when we’re doing other things.”
“You’re certain?” he asked.
“I am.”
“How certain?”
I met his gaze. “Enough that I’d stake my job on it.”
Silence settled between us, but I didn’t back down.
“Confidence like that usually comes from rest,” he said evenly.
I opened the takeout container, then paused. The paper liner, the familiar stamp in the corner. Bastian’s. Of course it was.
“Or experience,” I said, lifting the fork.
“Experience leaves marks,” he replied. “So does exhaustion.”
His eyes stayed on me, not the food, as if the answer he was waiting for had nothing to do with either.
I took a bite, more for grounding than hunger. “I’m functioning.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
I swallowed. “I didn’t sleep,” I said after a moment. “But it won’t affect my work.”