When he left, the room seemed to exhale.
Her reflection stared back from the glass table. Professional, composed, unshaken. But beneath the polish, something in her had shifted.
Faith wasn’t blind—it just had to decide where to look.And for the first time, Norah wasn’t sure she liked what she saw.
CHAPTER 11
MARSHALL
An hour ago,Norah had texted him “Parking garage. Fifteen minutes.” He hadn’t moved since.
Marshall inhaled as Norah slid into the passenger seat. Her perfume reached him first—something light, familiar, expensive enough to belong in Summit’s marble halls. She didn’t look at him right away. Just drummed her fingers on her leg.
“I sent everything I found,” she said. Her voice was steady, but her fingers weren’t. “Everything I could reach without tripping an audit trail, anyway.”
Norah leaned back against the seat, eyes closed. She inhaled deeply. He could tell something was wrong—the hard lines around her eyes, the tension in her shoulders. But he could be patient.
He watched the shadowy line of her throat when she swallowed hard. He remembered her like this—too brave to cry, too proud to look away.
She opened her eyes again. “What do you know about Senator Morris?”
He didn’t hide his surprise. Not at Morris being involved. She was one of the first thread of the Syndicate that Black Tower hadunraveled. In fact, he thought they’d snipped it and thoroughly discouraged her involvement. “I know enough. Why?”
“She’s involved. She’s driving the NorthBridge acquisition. Using Summit so the optics are clean for a presidential bid.”
Marshall bit back a curse. He couldn’t imagine something worse for his country than that woman at the helm. The Senator was greedy and underhanded. More divisive than any politician he’d ever seen actually reach office in DC. And she was willing to do just about anything to keep her claws in the power she had acquired over the years. As evidenced with her involvement in the attack on Fiona Raven.
“And where does that leave you?” Marshall asked.
Norah shook her head. “I don’t know. I don’t agree with her, and I don’t understand why Richard is so determined to support her. But I still don’t think he realizes how dirty it is. I want to keep looking, see what else I can find.”
Marshall thought back to Joey’s comments. About what else she needed to nail NorthBridge. And apparently Senator Morris.
“If you do this much longer, you won’t be able to explain it away and go back to things as they were.”
Norah sighed. “I know. I’m starting to think my life is going to be divided intobeforeandafterI found the falsified data.”
He huffed a laugh. She wasn’t wrong.
“Norah, I hate to do this. But I promised my team I would ask.”
The wrinkle between her brows deepened. “What is it?”
He sighed. “The day you first saw me at Summit, we were trying to get access to the internal servers. Joey needs physical access for a backdoor into the system.”
Norah’s eyebrows lifted, her mouth dropping into the most adorable O shape. He tore his eyes away from her lips.
“I wasn’t able to get it that day, so we’ve been working with what you could give us. But if we had more...” He trailed off, trying to let the implication settle.
“You want me to help Joeyhackinto Summit Capital? Are you crazy? I could lose my job. Heck, I could go to jail.”
Marshall waved away her second concern. He’d never let her go to jail. And he liked to think President Coulter wouldn’t either. Not if she was helping take down the Syndicate.
“I wouldn’t be worried about prison. And to be fair, you’ve probably already done enough for Summit to fire you.”
She glared at him. “Thank you for that reassurance. You’re such a good friend.” Sarcasm dripped from every word.
Friend. The word sat uneasy in his gut.
