8. Chapter Eight #2
A cold unease settles in my stomach as my eyes drift away from the screen and around the room. The workstation. The filtration unit humming softly in the wall. The clean air filling my lungs with every breath.
Twenty-four hours ago, this place felt like a miracle. A comfortable room. Reliable food. Air that didn’t leave a metallic taste at the back of my throat. Now I’m seeing it differently.
I’m not in the Splits anymore.
I’m not hidden in a forgotten apartment that nobody important knows exists.
I’m inside House Sethrak, digging through secrets that somebody has already gone to considerable lengths to conceal. If I’m right about Profile Nine, those efforts didn’t stop at deleting records.
Whoever erased this operative doesn’t know I exist yet. But if I can follow the trail this far, eventually they’re going to realize someone is looking. The moment that happens, the logic becomes uncomfortably simple. A person willing to erase an operative won’t hesitate to erase a contractor.
The thought should make me want to back away. Instead, it leaves me feeling trapped. Because now that I’ve seen it, I can’t unsee it.
I lean forward and study the timeline again, tracing the broken edges of the record. I came here to audit a network. Somewhere between the redacted logs and the behavioral profiles, I stumbled onto something else. Something people are hiding. Something that may already have gotten someone killed.
I need to tell Zavin, but… once I do, everything changes.
Right now I’m a contractor conducting a security audit. An unwitting female digging through very private logs and looking for a mole. Handing him this makes me the person who found evidence that one of his operatives has disappeared.
For a few seconds I consider the alternative. Close the file. Keep digging. Tell myself I need more evidence, more certainty, more time before I say anything.
Yuki flashes through my mind. Standing outside the executive suite at Helix. Nervous. Uncertain. Looking at me as though I might know what to do.
I saw the signs and convinced myself I didn’t have enough information. It wasn’t my fight and I walked away.
The sound reaches me first. Footsteps in the corridor. Then the subtle shift in temperature that always seems to accompany his arrival. Zavin steps into the room carrying another data chip, and this time I barely notice any of it. My focus is fixed on the discovery sitting on the screen.
He needs to know. Not because of me. Not because of him. Because if I’m right, someone is already dead, and whoever made that happen may still be sitting inside his network. Every minute spent pretending this is just an anomaly in the data is another minute somebody else could pay for.
“Here is the supplementary junction data you requested—“
“I found something.” The interruption comes out sharper than I intended. His brows lift slightly. “Sit down. Please.”
Something in my expression must tell him this isn’t another progress update.
He closes the door behind him and crosses the room.
The suit he’s wearing should not be as distracting as it is.
Dark fabric stretches across broad shoulders and a chest that looks carved from something harder than flesh.
When he unfastens his jacket and settles into the chair beside me, the material shifts across his thighs and over the huge bulge between his legs.
I drag my eyes back to the projection. Get it together, Miro.
I rotate the hologram toward him and pull up the timeline. “I changed approaches this morning,” I say finally. “I wasn’t getting anywhere with the redactions, so I stopped looking for the mole.”
His attention settles on the screen.
“Instead, I started looking at everyone else.”
I expand the profiles, fourteen timelines spreading across the monitor.
“Most of these look normal. People develop habits. They work at roughly the same times, access the same kinds of files, move through the same parts of the system. Even without names attached, you can start to recognize them.”
I tap one of the timelines. “This one was different. For three weeks everything looks exactly how it should. Then it stops.” I trace the point where the activity ends. “There are no signs that this person was transferred somewhere else. One day they’re active. The next day they’re gone.”
I bring up the second layer of data. “At first I thought it might be an administrative issue. Then I checked when the profile disappeared. The last activity happens during one of the same windows I’ve been tracking for the mole.
Same part of the network. Same period where somebody is moving around without being seen. ”
His eyes hold level with mine. He knows.
This is not news to him. He’s not surprised I know.
And no one knows I’m here. No one will ask about my disappearance.
I work for him alone. Not the house. Him.
He made that very clear. Right now I’m deep enough in Sethrak territory that the corridors outside are his, the air is his, Percy is plugged into his systems, and nothing stands between me and whatever he decides to do next.
“Will I end up lost in the data too?” I don’t know how I keep my voice steady.
His head snaps up. His hiss echoes off the walls. His eyes flare burning gold. One moment he’s in the chair. The next he’s standing, and he’s so large, he takes up so much of the room. I lock up.
“Of course you would dig that far.” His chest heaves and then he drags one hand down his face and closes his eyes for a moment. When he opens them the gold is fading, and what’s underneath is exhaustion. “I should have expected you’d reach that conclusion.”
And I’ve just handed a crime lord something he’s covered up. Crime lords don’t do that without purpose. He specifically asked for me to find holes in his system. Not to come up with evidence against him.
The energy drains out of me. “At least look after Percy. He’s only a machine. He didn’t — he didn’t do anything I asked him not to.”
His head pulls back slightly, just a fraction. He looks, for a moment, completely lost.
“You’re begging for a machine.” A pause. “And not yourself?”
I shrug. “Percy is the only person who has never let me down.”
He leans down, one hand braced on the edge of my desk. There’s nowhere to put my eyes except up at him. The heat coming off his palm is a degree warmer than the recycled air. His gaze locks onto mine and holds there. Unrelenting. Focused.
His species uses pheromones, a subtle sweetness designed to make those around them more agreeable, more easily persuaded. I’ve felt it before, that honeyed edge beneath the air. It’s not there now.
The scent reaching me now is just him. Dark spice and expensive liquor, warm skin and something distinctly male beneath it. The smell shouldn’t be comforting. It shouldn’t make my pulse stumble the way it does.
“Who let you down, Miro?” His voice is quiet, but there is nothing gentle about the question. His jaw tightens. “Give me a name.”