CHAPTER 7 Maeve #2
I click on the link. The text expands.
Federal authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Maeve Gallagher, 26, a junior auditor at a prominent Chicago accounting firm.
Gallagher is the primary suspect in a massive embezzlement and money laundering operation involving offshore accounts.
Internal digital signatures trace the unauthorized wire transfers directly to Gallagher’s terminal.
Authorities suspect she has fled the state.
I stare at the words. I read them three times, my brain refusing to process the syntax.
Digital signatures trace the transfers directly to Gallagher’s terminal.
"He framed me," I say. The sound of my own voice is completely foreign. It’s distant, like it’s coming from underwater. "Richard didn't just hide the money. He used my login. He used my IP address."
"He built a paper trail," Leo confirms softly.
"Every illegal wire transfer for the last six months has your digital fingerprint on it.
When the cartel started asking questions about the missing funds, Richard pointed them at you.
And when you actually found the ledger, he panicked and sent the hitmen to silence you before you could go to the cops. "
I grip the edge of the desk. The metal is freezing, but my palms are sweating.
If I had gone to the FBI this morning like I planned, they wouldn't have protected me. They would have cuffed me. They would have looked at Richard’s perfectly fabricated evidence, and I would have gone to federal prison.
I have no job. I have no apartment. I have no name.
I am a ghost with a forty-million-dollar bounty on my head.
"You knew," I say, my vision blurring slightly at the edges. I look at Leo. "You decrypted the drive hours ago. You saw the authorization logs. You knew."
"I found out this morning," Leo admits, rubbing the back of his neck.
"And Declan knew."
"Yeah. He knew."
A cold, absolute fury ignites in the center of my chest. It burns away the shock, burns away the nausea, leaving nothing but a sharp, blinding anger.
I spin away from the desk and march toward the stairs.
"Maeve, wait," Leo calls out, the sound of his chair scraping against the concrete. "Don't go up there swinging. He was trying to protect you."
I don't stop. I hit the steel stairs, my socks slipping, but I grab the handrail and pull myself up.
I push the heavy door open and storm down the hallway.
I find him in the kitchen.
Declan is standing near the marble island, a glass of water in his hand, looking out the dark window at the blizzard. He has taken off the shoulder holster, but the quiet, lethal energy radiating from him is exactly the same.
He turns his head as I enter the room. He takes one look at my face, at the rigid line of my shoulders and the absolute fury in my eyes, and he sets the glass down.
He knows exactly what I found.
"You lied to me," I say. My voice doesn't shake. It is terrifyingly steady.
"I omitted a piece of intelligence that you were not psychologically prepared to process," Declan replies, turning fully to face me. His tone is infuriatingly calm.
"I am not a piece of hardware you get to manage, Declan!
I am a human being!" I cross the kitchen, stopping three feet away from him.
I have to tilt my head back to meet his eyes, but I refuse to back down.
"My face is on a federal warrant. My boss framed me for a cartel laundering operation.
My entire life is gone, and you sat across a chessboard from me and pretended everything was fine! "
"Nothing is fine," he says, his voice dropping to a low, hard register. "But you are breathing. You are safe. That is the only metric I care about."
"Safe?" I laugh, a sharp, bitter sound that scrapes against my throat. "I'm a fugitive! If I step outside this house, I get arrested by the FBI or shot by the Sinaloa cartel. I have no money. I have no leverage. I have nothing!"
"You have me."
The three words hit the air between us like a physical blow.
He doesn't yell. He doesn't move. But the absolute, unwavering certainty in his dark eyes is suffocating.
"I don't want you," I lie, the words tasting like poison. "I want my life back."
"Your life is gone, Maeve." Declan steps forward.
The space between us vanishes. He looks down at me, his presence completely overwhelming the room.
"Richard Evans burned it to the ground. There is no apartment.
There is no job. There is no version of reality where you walk back into Chicago and pretend this didn't happen. "
"Then what am I supposed to do?" I demand, my voice finally cracking. The anger fractures, revealing the desperate, terrified girl underneath. "Just sit in this glass box for the rest of my life? Be your little pet project? Your stolen property?"
Declan’s jaw tightens. A muscle ticks near his temple. He reaches out, his large hands gripping my shoulders. His touch is firm, grounding, holding me in place when I feel like I am spinning out of control.
"You are not a pet," he says, his voice a dark, rough murmur. "You are the smartest person I have ever watched work. You found a discrepancy in a cartel ledger that a team of federal auditors missed for six months."
I stare up at him, my breath catching in my throat.
"If you want to be angry, be angry," Declan continues, his thumbs pressing into the fabric of my shirt, right over my collarbones.
"If you want to hate me for keeping you here, hate me.
But do not stand there and tell me you have no leverage.
You know how Evans routes his money. You know the encryption keys.
You know the architecture of his fraud."
He leans down, his face inches from mine. The scent of him—cedar, cold air, and danger—wraps around my senses.
"I am going to dismantle Richard Evans," Declan promises, the words vibrating with quiet violence. "I am going to tear his operation apart piece by piece until the cartel realizes he is the liability, not you. And you are going to help me do it."
The air leaves my lungs.
He isn't telling me to hide. He isn't telling me to sit quietly in the guest room while he handles the threat.
He is offering me a weapon.
I look into his obsidian eyes. The obsessive, controlling monster is still there. He will never let me leave this house. He will never let me go back to a normal life.
But right now, standing in the middle of his kitchen, with my name on a federal warrant and a cartel hunting my ghost, a normal life isn't what I need.
"I want access to the servers," I say, my voice dropping to a whisper.
Declan’s eyes darken. A slow, dangerous satisfaction spreads across his features.
"You will have unrestricted access to the offline terminal," he agrees, his grip on my shoulders shifting, his thumbs sliding up to brush the sides of my neck.
"And I want to be the one who finds the kill switch in his accounts. I want to bankrupt him before you destroy him."
"Done."
I swallow hard, the pulse in my neck jumping against his skin. "I'm still mad at you."
"I know," Declan murmurs, his gaze dropping to my mouth. "I can live with your anger, Maeve. I cannot live with your absence."
He doesn't kiss me. He holds me there on the edge of the precipice for three agonizing seconds, letting the heat and the tension burn between us, before he slowly releases my shoulders and steps back.
The cold air of the kitchen rushes in to fill the space he left.
"Get some sleep," he says, turning away to pick up his glass of water. "We start tearing down your old boss tomorrow."
I stand in the kitchen for a long moment, watching the rigid line of his back.
I am a fugitive. I am trapped in a mountain fortress with a man who stalked me. I should be terrified.
But as I turn and walk back toward the guest room, the only thing I feel is the dangerous, thrilling adrenaline of a woman who just realized she isn't prey anymore.
I am the bait. And Declan Vance is the trap.