24. Sophie #2
I walk him through it. Victor Hartman is still being monitored for the encrypted messages on his secondary device. Declan has been doing more background research on Diana Quinn but nothing so far—I’m rotating there next week to get closer to her. And then there’s Phoebe Brandt.
“Phoebe’s a dead end so far,” I say. “Almost two weeks and I’ve got nothing that connects her to the leak. The debt is there, but we haven’t found any proof that she’s passing information. If she’s the one, she’s really good at hiding.”
“Or she’s not the one.”
“Or she’s not the one,” I agree. “But until I can rule her out, she stays on the board.”
I pause.
“I want to bug her desk.”
The warmth in his expression disappears. His jaw sets and his shoulders draw back, just a fraction, and I already know what he’s going to say before he says it.
“No.”
“Finn—”
“No.” He pushes back from the desk and walks to the window, bracing one hand against the frame with his back to me, the late-afternoon light cutting across his shoulders.
When he speaks, his voice is quiet but tight.
“Phoebe is an employee. She’s a person who works here, who trusts us, who comes in every day and does her job in good faith.
I’m not putting a listening device on her desk based on a credit card bill and a hunch. ”
“I know she’s a good person, Finn. I actually—” I stop myself. Like her. The words almost come out, and I have no idea what to do with how uncomfortable that makes me.
“You actually what?”
“I watched a K-drama for her,” I say instead. “Last night. I stayed up until two in the morning watching some show about an alien who falls in love with an actress so I’d have something to talk to her about. To build rapport.”
His eyebrows shoot up, and then his mouth twitches. “Which one?”
“I don’t know. My Love from the Star or something. It was ridiculous.”
“That one’s actually good.”
“You—what?” I stare at him.
“What? It’s a good show.” He says it without a shred of embarrassment.
“Finn. I can’t be wasting my time watching K-dramas until two in the morning to build rapport. Bugging her would be much easier. You want to find the mole, don’t you?”
He turns from the window, and the light catches his face at an angle, throwing one side into shadow, tracing the line of his jaw. He drags a hand through his hair, leaving the blond strands disordered, and exhales through his nose.
And for some reason, exactly in that moment, I think about the kitchen. Maybe it’s the way he’s looking at me. The flashback hits fast. I remember how close he was. Those guileless blue eyes fixed on mine like I was the only thing in the room. How unfairly handsome he looked from that close.
No, Sophie. Now is absolutely not the time to be thinking about that.
“And if she’s innocent?” he asks, bringing me back to the present. “If she’s just a woman struggling with money, and we’ve recorded her private conversations without her knowledge or consent?”
God damn it, Finn. Why do you have to be so righteous?
The worst part is, he’s saying exactly what I’ve been thinking. But I don’t say that.
“Then we delete it and she never knows.” I keep my voice level. “Forty-eight hours. If there’s nothing, the file disappears and Phoebe Brandt remains what she appears to be—a talented employee with some credit issues. No harm done.”
He stares at me, and I stare back. The office is quiet—just the hum of the ventilation and the muffled sound of footsteps in the hallway beyond the closed door.
Then he crosses back to the desk and sits down.
“Forty-eight hours.” The words come out slow, like he’s having to push each one past his own conscience. “Not a minute more. And if there’s nothing relevant, you delete everything. Every second of it.”
“Done.”
He looks at me. The tension in his jaw eases, but his eyes stay serious, carrying a weight that has nothing to do with the investigation. He leans forward, his elbows on the desk.
“I trust you, Sophie.”
He says it simply, and the words hit me somewhere behind my sternum and lodge there.
Finn Preston. A week ago he would barely even look at me, and when he did, his eyes were hard. He stood across from me in every meeting like I didn’t exist.
Maybe he’s figured out what happened to me and he feels sorry for me.
I have a feeling though that it’s not that. That it wasn’t the moment I broke that changed things for him, but the moment right before it—when we were close enough to breathe the same air, reliving a night that happened what feels like a lifetime ago.
I plant the bug on Monday morning at seven, before the marketing floor fills up.
It takes less than ten seconds. A small adhesive-backed transmitter, no bigger than a shirt button, pressed to the underside of Phoebe’s desk where the modesty panel meets the desktop.
Standard Sentinel issue, with a relay booster I place inside the supply closet down the hall.
The audio feeds directly to an encrypted app on my phone.
Phoebe will never know it’s there unless she crawls under her desk with a flashlight and knows what to look for.
And just like that, I’m listening to someone’s life.
That night, I sit cross-legged on my bed in the residential wing with my headphones on and my laptop open, scrubbing back through the day’s audio in the encrypted app.
The first three hours are nothing. Office ambience—keyboards clacking, phones ringing, the muffled hum of conversations happening at neighboring desks. Phoebe’s voice appears intermittently, discussing campaign timelines, reviewing copy drafts, laughing at something Celine says.
I’m about to skip ahead when the audio shifts.
In the late afternoon, the office sounds thin out—most people gone for the day. Phoebe’s still at her desk. I can hear the click of her mouse, the soft tap of her fingers on the keyboard.
Then her phone buzzes against the desk.
She picks up. “Hello, Marc-André.”
But her voice sounds completely different. Low, warm, with a seductive quality that rolls through the syllables of his name like she’s tasting them.
“Yes, I’m doing well. How are you?”
Then she laughs and I have to press my earphones closer to make sure it’s actually her. Because it isn’t her bright, self-conscious laugh that I’ve gotten to know—it’s a lower, throatier sound.
“Yes, we’re still on for Saturday. Be at mine by eight. I’ll be wearing that thing you liked last time.”
She laughs at whatever he says in response—it sounds breathless and conspiratorial, a laugh I’ve never heard from her before.
I can hear her chair shift as she leans back, settling into the conversation the way you sink into a hot bath.
No time, really. Right. She must’ve been lying—this has to be her boyfriend. But why would she lie about having one?
Then her voice changes.
“What?” The seduction drops out of her tone like a trapdoor opening. “That’s two hundred more than last time.”
She’s trying to keep her voice low, but the panic bleeds through, her voice rising to a pitch she can’t control.
“No, I—I understand. I know rates change. It’s just—that’s a lot, Marc-André. That’s...”
She pauses, and I hear her breathing quicken. Whatever Marc-André is saying, it’s setting her on edge.
“Fine.” The word comes out resigned. “Fine, but you’ll have to stay until lunchtime the next day, and...”
Her voice drops to a whisper so low the desk mic barely catches it. I press the headphones harder against my ears, leaning forward on the bed.
“...I want you to fuck me all night. And no talking, like last time.”
She laughs softly at whatever he says in response.
Then the phone clatters against the desk.
I stare at the waveform on my laptop screen, the green line flat and silent now, and feel the pieces rearrange themselves in my head with the clean, decisive click of a puzzle falling into place.
Holy shit.
She’s not talking to a boyfriend. She’s talking to an escort.
Phoebe Brandt is using alpha escorts. That’s why she’s in debt and she keeps checking her phone. That has to be it. She has a secret double life behind that bright, friendly surface. She’s just a woman spending money she doesn’t have on—in her own words—getting fucked all night.
And just like that, my mind is back in Max’s office.
His hands around my wrists, his mouth hot against mine, the low growl in his throat when I bit his lip.
The way his body pinned me to the wall and I could feel every inch of him through his clothes.
The way I wanted more, not less. The way I arched into him like I was trying to climb inside his skin.
What would it be like if he fucked me all night?
Stop.
But the thought won’t stop. Because the need in Phoebe’s voice is starting to sound more and more familiar.
I turn off the recording and set a reminder to delete the files in the morning.
Phoebe Brandt is not the mole.
I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling, and I already know I won’t be sleeping tonight.