Miranda, already taking notes, didn’t look up. “What do you mean, rhyme? Is this poetry hour?”
“Structure, not sound.” Joey tapped her fingers and pulled up another set of documents. “You know how fake accounts on a message board all sound the same? Two random nouns, maybe a city name and a color? This is the shell company equivalent of seeing DenverGray328 replying to SeattleBlue912.
“CedarBlue, RiverStone, HarborCrest.” She pointed to the list. “That’s our pattern. Different names, same formula.”
She zoomed in. “But it isn’t just the name. We’ve got the same registered agent, same timestamps within minutes of each other, same Luxembourg routing. It’s like someone hitrefreshon their shell company generator five times. They put different decals on the same getaway car.”
Joey flicked to another document, showing the connections lighting up in red. “So yeah—different handles, same user. Andwe wouldn’t have had any idea if we didn’t have someone flagging the NorthBridge files.”
Ryder rolled the stress ball from palm to palm. “You’re saying Summit is working for her?”
“I’m saying someone inside Summit is,” Joey said. “Norah just happened to be the first one who noticed the smoke.”
Miranda’s pen stilled. “And now she’s standing in the fire.”
“Well, I’m afraid it’s going to get hotter. We need more. Ineedinside that server.”
Marshall shook his head. “It’s locked down. I can’t get in.”
“No, you can’t.” Joey pressed her lips together. “But she could.”
“No way,” he argued. “We’re not asking her to do that. She’s already risking too much.”
Joey threw her hands up. “What do you want me to do? If we are going to unravel the Syndicate, I need more information. Trip Harrington is our canary—but I think Summit is the coal mine. I need to see what he’s got hidden there.”
Every muscle in Marshall’s body was screaming at him, denying the option that Joey had laid out.
“She’s right,” Miranda said. “Norah’s our best option for getting inside.”
He shook his head.
“At least leave it up to her. Tell her what we need and let her decide if she wants to risk it.”
Could he do that? It sounded an awful lot like surrendering control. And he already knew Norah would do whatever it took. She didn’t do anything by half measures.
The words landed harder than they should have. Marshall looked at the map again, pretending it helped. “I won’t leave her out to dry,” he said more to himself than anyone else.
“She’s got instincts,” Joey countered. “And she’s sitting in the one building where Sidarov’s fingerprints actually mean something. If we lose this connection, we lose the thread.”
“She’s also a civilian with no clearance, no contingency plan, and no backup,” Miranda shot back.
“She’s the reason we even have this data,” Joey said, finally looking up from her screen. “She’s not a liability. She’s the linchpin.”
The two women stared each other down. Ryder glanced between them. “Wow, I missed church for this.”
Miranda didn’t look away. “Marshall, decide. Asset or liability.”
Every pair of eyes turned to him.
He bit the inside of his cheek, wishing he didn’t have to say what he was about to.
“She’s an asset,” he said at last. “But she’s off-the-book. No digital trail leading back to her. Joey, I want her communications sandboxed and her workspace mirrored for shadowing. If anyone inside Summit starts poking around, I want to know before she does.”
Joey nodded, already typing. “You got it.”
Miranda exhaled softly. “You can’t protect her from every angle, Marshall.”
He looked at her. “Watch me.”
