“David Thornton. Rebecca Vance. Miguel Santos. Karen Whitmore.”
“Cross-referencing against witness protection databases.” A pause. “No matches in the accessible records. Either these are aliases, or they’re in systems I can’t reach without flagging federal attention.”
Morgan opened her eyes. Her head throbbed. It had been throbbing for three days now, a dull pulse behind her temples that never fully faded.
She didn’t mention it. She could suck it up.
“What about the account numbers?” she asked instead. “The ones from the Treasury breach.”
“I’ve traced three to shell corporations in the Caymans. Two more to a holding company in Delaware that leads nowhere.” Lincoln’s jaw tightened. “Whoever set this up knew what they were doing. The money moves through so many layers that by the time it lands somewhere real, the trail is cold.”
More dead ends. More puzzle pieces that refused to connect.
Morgan took a breath and kept going. “KILO-SEVEN-TANGO. ECHO-FOUR-NOVEMBER. BRAVO-NINE-ALPHA.”
The military codes. Randall had read these to her while the hackers worked, his voice flat and professional, the knife already in his hand. She’d memorized them perfectly because she hadn’t had a choice. Because the alternative was another line carved into her skin.
She could still hear his voice when she said them. Could still feel the cold press of metal against her forearm, the particular anticipation of pain that had become its own kind of torture.
Her head throbbed more now.
“Military designations,” Lincoln said. “But they don’t match any standard protocol I can identify. Could be internal codes—something specific to an organization rather than a branch.”
“Or something made up entirely.” Morgan rubbed her temples. “That’s the problem. I have thousands of pieces, but I don’t know which ones are real intelligence and which ones are noise.”
“The coordinates are real. The agency breaches were real.” Lincoln turned to look at her. “The pattern will emerge. We just need more data points.”
More data points. More recitation. More hours ofdragging Randall’s voice out of her memory and listening to it echo in this room full of screens and servers.
Morgan stood up too fast. The headache spiked, and she pressed her palm against the edge of the desk to steady herself.
“I need a minute.”
Lincoln didn’t argue. He just nodded and returned his attention to his screens, giving her space without making a production of it. She’d noticed he did that—withdrew when she needed room, advanced when she needed presence. It was like he’d studied her the way he studied code, mapping her patterns until he understood the architecture underneath.
She walked to the window. The Wyoming sky stretched endlessly beyond the glass, pale blue fading toward the mountains in the distance. She wondered if she’d ever see her home in Montana again.
Ms. Delacroix would have loved this view.
The thought rose unbidden, and Morgan reached for the memory automatically. The way she always did. Her mentor’s face, the particular warmth of her smile, the sound of her voice reading poetry in the library after hours?—
The image came.
But it took a beat longer than it should have.
Morgan’s hand tightened on the window frame. She tried again, deliberately this time. Ms. Delacroix at her desk, afternoon light falling across her silver hair, reading glasses perched on her nose. The details should have been instant, crystalline, as sharp as the day Morgan had first seen them.
Instead, they arrived slightly soft. Like a photograph left in sunlight too long.
Her pulse stuttered. She reached for something else. Apoem. Ms. Delacroix used to quote Edna St. Vincent Millay when Morgan was overwhelmed, the words wrapping around her like a blanket.
“My candle burns at both ends; It will not last the night…”
The next line. What was the next line?
“But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends?—”
Morgan stopped breathing.
