"Then we catch her," I said.
The words hung in the air, heavier than I intended.
I stood up and picked up my tablet. "Come on. Let's see what the Architect is building now."
We moved to the library.
The door was ajar. We didn't enter. We stood in the shadows of the corridor, a quiet, predatory audience.
Rowan was sitting at the heavy oak desk. She had rejected the comfortable chair Juno had tried to get her to use, opting instead for a stiff-backed wooden one, as if comfort was a distraction she couldn't afford.
She had turned the library into a crime scene investigation of paper.
Stacks of files, things we had pulled from the public record, things Juno had scraped from the dark web, were all arranged in precise, grids on the floor. She was in the center of the web, shoeless, her hair falling out of its severe bun in messy, golden-brown strands.
She was muttering to herself.
"...shell company links to Aegis... transfer protocols don't match the timestamps... verify the IP address..."
She reached for a highlighter. Her hand shook. She gripped her wrist with her other hand to steady it, forced the line to be straight, and capped the pen with a sharpclick.
I watched her hands. They were slender, ink-stained, delicate. Hands that had spent a decade turning pages and signing documents. Hands that were currently dismantling a billion-dollar enterprise that bordered on criminal, if not outright crossed the line into it.
I felt a pull in my chest that had nothing to do with the law.
It was the same pull I had felt in the car when I drove her away from the alley. She had been shivering, smelling of rot and fear, but she had looked at the biometric scanner on the garage door and I'd been able to tell that she wanted to ask about the encryption protocol.
Competence. It was the most dangerous drug in the world to a man like me.
I looked at Mateo. He was leaning against the doorframe, his eyes hooded. He wasn't looking at the papers. He was looking at the nape of her neck, exposed by the falling hair. He was watching the pulse beating there.
He looked like he wanted to cover that pulse with his hand. To guard it. Or maybe to feel it jumping against his palm.
And Juno... Juno was watching her like she was the only character in the book that mattered. His head was tilted, a small, enigmatic smile playing on his lips. He was enjoying the show. He liked the chaos she brought, the friction.
"She found the network," I whispered, recognizing the diagram she was drawing on a legal pad. "She's tracing Vance's money through the consulting fees."
"She's finding the bodies," Juno whispered back.
Rowan stiffened. She didn't turn around, but her posture changed. She locked up.
"I can hear you muttering," she said. Her voice was scratchy, tired, but sharp. "If you have something to say to me or something to discuss then come and talk to me like adults."
I smiled. I couldn't help it.
"We were admiring the workflow," I said, stepping into the room.
Rowan turned in her chair. She looked wrecked. There were dark circles under her eyes, and her skin was pale. But the intelligence in her gaze was a laser.
"The workflow suggests that Julian Vance is sloppy," she said, tapping the paper. "He reuses the same three accountants for his offshore entities. I could pierce the corporate veil with a jagged spoon."
"We prefer legal injunctions," I said, walking over to the desk. "But a spoon shows initiative."
I stopped beside her. I was close enough to smell her now.
She smelled of peppermint and the sharp tang of graphite from the pencils she used. But underneath that, there was something else. A faint, sweet warmth. And... us.
There was the cedar of Mateo on her sweater and the white tea of Juno clinging to her hair. I wanted my scent to be mixed in as well.
