Yesterday I’d been in bed most of the day, well, until noon when Micah and Noah had showed up with takeout and vague excuses about “checking in.”
Now, I had taken over the conference room on the executive floor, spreading papers out in careful, deliberate rows. I was surrounded by network diagrams, access logs full of time stamps I could recite from memory, but we were reviewing them again. Whatever we came up with, had to be airtight, and we were running out of time.
Micah stood at the whiteboard, one hip leaned against the edge of the table like this was just another late afternoon problem to solve. How had he explained this to his team? Hell, what was Stan thinking?
“If the breach came from inside,” he said, tapping the board, “it had to be someone with tier-three access. Or someone piggybacking off something else.”
I nodded, my eyes glued to the laptop screen in front of me, my fingers scrolling through more logs. We’d started this problem as if someone had hacked from the outside, but that had been ruled out very quickly. It just made all of our stomachs churn with the thought there was someone here we couldn’t trust. Someone with systems access.
“No piggyback,” I said. “The authentication sequence is too clean. Whoever it was knew exactly where to step in and when to step out.”
Micah glanced at me, his brow raised. “You’re sure?”
“Yes.” I hated that I was because of what it meant, but it was the only thing that made sense. I shifted through a stack of papers and highlighted a line and pushed the page toward him. “See the delay here? Three seconds. That’s not latency. That’s intent.”
He leaned closer, reading it line by line. “So someone patient.”
“And confident,” she added.
The room felt tighter suddenly. Too bright. Too quiet. Saturday lingered at the edges of my focus, not as memory so much as residue. My body knew before my mind caught up, a faint, unwelcome echo beneath my ribs.
I forced my attention back to the screen.
God, I needed to focus.
Micah set his marker down on the table and disappeared. When he returned, he set a cold orange juice and protein bar in front of me.
“Still feeling the drop?”
I glared at him, hating that he knew, but at the same time, glad I had someone to share it with and look out for me. Sighing, I twisted the cap off the bottle anyway, taking a long drink, letting the sugar hit before I started shaking.
Micah picked up his tablet and opened to something before handing it to me. “Mr. Cross flagged this last night.”
I scanned the numbers.
“How much?”
“Another ten thousand,” he said. “Not enough to flag accounting.”
He hesitated.
“It’s still under the monthly variance. Barely.”
I clenched my jaw. “So they knew the thresholds?”
“Or they wrote them,” he replied, not hesitating this time.
Sentinel Tech dealt with a lot of vendors and clients, both domestic and international, so money coming in and out wasn’t abnormal. Ten thousand here or there wouldn’t flag anyone. It was a day doing business for Sebastian Reid, but these didn’t fit.
I glanced at the door, wondering where Mr. Reid was today.
“Any idea where he is?” Micah asked.
I’d gotten a text on my way to work this morning. Or more accurately, while I was dragging myself out of bed, still half caught in the wreckage of too much sleep but not enough at the same time.
Mr. Reid: Something came up that I need to deal with this morning. Ethan should be flying back today. He was able to smooth things over, but Victor is in Arizona recruiting some new talent. Hope it’s not all a waste.
I rubbed at my eyes before texting back.
