Chapter 62
SIXTY-TWO
EVELYN
It had been three weeks since Kade told me he needed space to keep me safe. Twenty-one days, sixteen hours, and twelve minutes since I last laid eyes on Kade, but I wasn’t counting or anything. He had spent the last three weeks working from home and taking some time off.
Everyone in the office had their speculations, including myself, but I wasn’t one to add to the gossip mill. Kade could take his “I’m keeping you safe,” and shove it up his perfectly sculpted ass.
I had worked half that time remotely from my apartment. I continued to help the Hive’s data by coding stronger firewalls. When I wasn’t doing that, I was running configurations to attempt to find who was sending Badger strange texts and letters with cryptic messages.
Chief had me on a tight leash after speaking with Kade about my safety. Trying to come to some sort of compromise with Chief was like trying to argue with cement. His decision was firm and unmoving. Today I had one of our new recruits from the Bureau, Tyler Monte, to escort me to RSS.
“You know you don’t have to follow me, right?” I asked Monte.
He had dark eyes, a trimmed beard, and shoulder-length chocolate-brown hair that was tied up in a man-bun. In another time, I would think he was attractive, but my heart and head were so fucked-up that I couldn’t even think about looking at another man.
He gave me a smirk. “I am under strict orders, you know that, Phantom.” Monte got a kick out of our nicknames. He was the first team member that was part of our squad who had no relation or previous experience with Ricci or Ricci Enterprises.
I rolled my eyes. “I feel like I've gone back in time and I am getting escorted by my big brother to school.”
Monte chuckled. “As soon as Chief tells me it’s safe, I promise you we can throw a party and let you go buck-wild.”
I looked up at the large man and gave him a small smile. “Fine.”
The Hive was buzzing with intense energy when we entered. I placed my enormous coffee cup, a bag of marshmallows, and saltines on my desk. “What’s going on?” I asked as I slid a pair of duck-themed Snoozie slippers onto my feet and chucked my heels under my desk.
Ollie looked up from her computer. “I think I finally figured out who tried to take down our system. The person who was responsible for the discrepancies you found when you first started here.” She went back to looking at her screen and typing away.
I leaned on the edge of my desk and took a sip of coffee.
I must have used some bad milk, because my stomach churned as soon as the liquid hit my stomach.
I brought my hand up to my lips and rushed out of the room and into the closest bathroom where I heaved up what little I had in my stomach.
“Looks like I need to go down the street to get a coffee,” I grumbled to myself as I got cleaned up.
Thankfully the team didn’t ask any questions when I got back into the office. “So what did you find?”
Jax looked up at me, along with Ollie and Lennie. “So we don’t have an ID on the person. That’s where we need your hacking help to cross-reference the facial recognition software we have compared to other sources.”
I smirked, knowing she meant federal databases.
“After recovering some of our lost surveillance and cross-referencing the employee logs, I was able to find a clip in the video surveillance that I think has our culprit placing a thumb drive into a machine that caused all hell to break loose.” Ollie moved her screen to face me.
My face blanched. “Um…” I stammered.
The team looked at me with concern. “What’s the matter?” Jax asked with a worried expression.
I gulped, trying to hold down the bile that was rising up for a completely different reason. In the paused frame there was a tall, broad-shouldered man. I would recognize that face anywhere. “We don’t need facial recognition.”
“How come?” Lennie asked.
“That’s my brother.”