The bed behind him is unmade. Sheets tangled from our bodies. My sweater draped over the dresser where he tossed it. The physical evidence of what we did together, of how completely I surrendered to him, fills the room.
My face burns, but I don’t look away.
“I think better when I talk,” I say, my voice steadier than I feel. “Would you… Could I use you as a sounding board? I need to work through what I found.”
Something shifts in his expression—relief, maybe, but deeper than that. Like he’s been waiting for my silence to end, hoping I’d come to him instead of hiding behind awkwardness. There’s an eagerness there that catches me off guard, a genuine interest that has nothing to do with duty and everything to do with wanting to help me work through this puzzle.
The tension that’s been crackling between us since I walked out of that bedroom doesn’t disappear, but it transforms. Academic curiosity—my need to process, to understand, to solve—cuts through the awkwardness like a blade. This is safe territory for both of us. Familiar ground where we can meet without navigating the minefield of what happened between those sheets.
“What did you find?” he asks, and his voice is rougher than usual.
I gesture toward the kitchen. “Can you… Would you look at something? I need another perspective.”
“Absolutely.” The immediate response surprises me. “What did you find?”
My shoulders hunch instinctively. “It’s—it’s probably overmost people’s heads. Linguistic analysis and cryptographic theory aren’t exactly … I just need to talk it through.”
Something like amusement flickers in those green eyes. “What, you don’t think this brute can keep up with your brain?”
Despite everything—the danger, the awkwardness, the memory of his hands on my body—I find myself smiling. “I think you can keep up with anything.”
He rises from the chair in one fluid movement, all controlled power and lethal grace. In the confined space, he seems bigger than I remembered. Takes up all the air in the room. When he moves past me in the doorway, his scent hits me—clean soap and something woodsy and darker.
The same scent that filled my lungs when he held me down and made me beg.
Focus, Eliza.
Back in the kitchen, I open the laptop and pull up my analysis. Cooper positions himself behind my chair, close enough that I can feel his body heat but not quite touching. The proximity makes it hard to concentrate, especially when his breath brushes the back of my neck as he leans in to see the screen.
“Okay,” I begin, falling into lecture mode because it’s familiar territory. “See these frequency patterns? In legitimate ancient ciphers, you get mathematical distributions that follow historical linguistic evolution. Caesar’s thirteenth legion used substitution ciphers with specific characteristics—the letter ‘E’ appears roughly 12% of the time in Latin military documents, ‘T’ and ‘A’ follow predictable patterns, and bigram frequency—two-letter combinations—creates a mathematical fingerprint that’s consistent with their era.”
Cooper’s attention sharpens. I can feel it, the way his focus zeroes in on what I’m showing him.
“Ancient Roman ciphers were essentially shift ciphers,” I continue, warming to the subject. “Caesar reportedly useda shift of three—A becomes D, B becomes E, and so on. Simple but effective for field communications. The frequency analysis shows natural language patterns because they’re just shifting the alphabet, not fundamentally altering the linguistic structure.”
I scroll to another section of data. “But look at this.” I highlight a section of code. “The encryption signatures are completely modern. AES-256 protocols—Advanced Encryption Standard with 256-bit keys, developed by the NSA and adopted in 2001. Elliptic curve cryptography that wasn’t even theoretical until Neal Koblitz and Victor Miller’s work in 1985. Digital signatures using RSA algorithms that require computational power Caesar’s Romans couldn’t have imagined.”
I pull up a comparison chart. “Roman ciphers show linguistic drift—natural evolution of language patterns over time. These supposed ‘ancient’ fragments show perfect mathematical randomness, entropy levels that only computer-generated encryption can achieve. Someone’s using our research database as camouflage for real-time communications.”
“Show me,” he says, and his voice carries the same authority it held when he commanded me in bed.
I click through the data, pointing out anomalies. “Every file Sarah, David, and Lisa flagged shows the same pattern. Modern encryption masquerading as historical analysis. But it’s not random chatter or simple communications.”
Cooper leans closer, his hand bracing on the table beside me. “What is it?”
“I don’t know yet.” I shake my head, frustrated. “The encryption is modern, but what are they encoding? Why hide it in our research?”
His eyes narrow. “What does an organization like Phoenix need to coordinate? Logistics. Shipping routes. Inventory management. Personnel deployment. Finances.”
“Finances,” I breathe, the word triggering something in mybrain. I pull up another screen, cross-referencing the encrypted data with financial transaction protocols. “Oh my God. Cooper, look at this.”
The comparison results flood the screen—perfect matches.
“Holy shit.” The words burst out of me as understanding crashes down like an avalanche. “This isn’t communication. It’s their financial infrastructure. Transaction authorizations, fund transfers, routing numbers—Phoenix is using our academic research to coordinate their financial operations.”
My hands shake as I scroll through more data. “This is why they killed my colleagues. This is why they want me dead. We didn’t stumble onto their communications—we found their bank.”
Cooper goes very still behind me. When he speaks, his voice is rough with understanding. “Show me the scope.”
