“Why?” I’m surprised he has anything to add that Enzo and Ava don’t have.
Does he want to ask me if I pulled the other case up yet?
“He’s really interested in this. Not entirely sure why, but it seems personal. You know him.” She hooks her thumb toward Enzo. “If you think this one is a grumpy closed book, Rio has been working on that for three minutes longer, so he has the edge.”
Enzo glances up and cocks his eyebrow, apparently not appreciating that his twin is better by three minutes at anything than he is.
I finish making an herbal tea for myself and pour a cup of coffee for Anton, who should be here any minute.
Ava’s already opening windows on her screen, her bunbobbing as she leans forward. “Okay,” she says, “Enzo and I pulled everything you sent last night. There’s a lot to cover. So?—”
“Wait.”
The word leaves me before I think it through. Ava pauses, brows lifting.
I set both mugs down. “I want to wait for Anton.”
Ava studies me for half a second, then beams. “Sure,” she says. “It’s up to you.”
I wrap my hands around my tea. I’ve never been someone who waits. Waiting has always felt like inaction.
But now?
Now it feels like a step toward everything that will make my life better.Partnership.
I trust Anton’s assessments. His instincts. And more than that, I trust he wants this case over as much as I do. I don’t want him to miss a single detail anymore because he could potentially catch something I miss.
Footsteps sound on the stairs a minute later. Anton walks in, hair wind-mussed, bright blue eyes finding mine instantly. A softening crosses his face when he sees the two mugs.
“Morning,” he says, and the tone is normal, but the way his gaze sears through me, it’s like he’s ready to take me back to bed.
“Your coffee’s here.” I smile demurely and push it into the spot next to me at the conference table.
He shrugs off his Carhartt jacket and places it on the back of the chair, his hand squeezing my shoulder as he sits down. A shiver skates down my spine and right back between my legs.
Ava doesn’t notice a thing as she finishes typing something on her screen. “Okay,” she says, now clicking hermouse. “Let’s get into what we found. Starting with the Andy Tarmigan angle.”
I sit up straighter. “Go.”
Ava pulls up a window full of logs, then turns to us to explain what’s on her screen. “First off,” she says, “we looked into Andy’s insistence that he wasn’t near the quarry on the day Zoe died and tried to find him an alibi so we can rule him out.”
“Was he at home?” I ask.
“We’ve confirmed that,” she says, “Andy was logged into a porn site at the time of Zoe’s incident.”
A porn site?
So many questions flood my mind, and none of them have to do with Andy’s desire.
Enzo and Ava are hackers by nature—unstoppable when pointed at a problem—and I don’t have a warrant for any of this. “How did you get that information?”
I probably shouldn’t ask.
But I need to start thinking about due process.
Enzo catches my concern instantly. “It’s all above board. GhostEye provides cybersecurity and fraud protection for several major adult-content platforms. They’re high-risk targets for identity theft, minors trying to bypass age-checks, and, unfortunately, sex-trafficking patterns. We’re contracted to secure their systems and flag anything that crosses into criminal territory.”
He tips his head toward Ava. “That gives us legal access to authentication logs—timestamps, IP data, verification pings. Nothing invasive. The fact that his account hit one of our security queues was luck…” He quirks an eyebrow and tips his head toward his fiancée. “Wasn’t it, Scottie?”
