Dana swivels halfway in her chair, grinning now. "For the record, some of us adapted days ago."
Caldwell's attention comes back to me, but the wariness is different now. He's no longer looking at a large tattooed Alpha who runs a private security firm with an interest in his case. He's looking at the person Skylar just claimed out loud. The drifter who never stayed, standing in the middle of a pack and not making a joke fast enough to undo it.
The relief in my chest is quiet enough that I can keep it off my face. Mostly. I offer Caldwell my hand. "Rourke."
He takes it. "Caldwell."
"Thank you for coming."
"Thank Skylar. He said your people had something worth seeing."
"We do."
We move to the table, Dana throwing the transaction map onto the main screen, and the room's humor settles into work. That's one of the reasons I trust this company. They can laugh, but the second the evidence comes up, everyone's attention narrows.
Sloane lays out the printed records, each stack marked by source: Rourke approaches, Vesper overlap, offshore intermediary, task-force known shells, and the latest private consultation request. Skylar takes the place beside me. Caldwell stands across from us, arms folded, eyes on the screen before he briefs on the current state of the Hex case, not that we hadn’t already pulled much of the information we could before he arrived.
A serial killer with an organization wasn’t what I was expecting to find behind the Cardinal Network. Even more so, I didn’t think it would drag Emrys into this either. But with the serial killer now on the loose, we have a much bigger problem.
How the fuck did he get out and who wanted him out?
Dana cuts in and starts walking Caldwell through what we have. "The new request came through the other morning," Danasays. "Different front company, same family of shells as the prior approaches. Offer jumped from fifty thousand to two hundred and fifty for a private consultation dressed up as risk review and client-flow evaluation."
Caldwell's expression tightens. "A quarter-million to get a meeting with a security company."
"Not even a good meeting," Dana says. "A suspicious meeting."
Sloane points to the next line on the screen. "The offer moves through three accounts before the number lands. Not unusual by itself, but the intermediary overlaps with a large donation processed through the Vesper Hotel two weeks ago."
Caldwell leans in slightly. "No direct Cardinal label."
"No," I say. "No clean tag, no convenient name. Just the same structure, same timing behavior, and enough overlap that coincidence starts looking lazy."
"That matches what Caldwell found," Skylar says, his finger resting near the Vesper line. "Hex took meetings at the Vesper before he was caught. Task force tracked him there three times. They never got a clean ID on who he met."
Caldwell's gaze stays on the map. "We had surveillance, but the hotel was a nightmare. Private entrances, donor events, staff movement, people paying a lot of money not to be seen. The first legal response gave us sanitized garbage."
Dana snorts. "I hate polished garbage."
"I remember." Sloane looks at her. "You called it spreadsheet perfume."
Dana's smile goes sharp. "I stand by that."
Skylar sets his ledger down and rubs two fingers against his temple, not tired exactly. Tracking. "There's still something I keep catching and can't place."
I look at him. "The scent."
He nods. "It’s got this chemical edge to it. I caught it near the stairwell at the station once, then again in passing whenMorrison moved the file. Kade you described something similar from the first night. I keep wondering if there's a person moving between the official side and the shell side, masking hard enough that they're leaving the mask instead of their scent."
Caldwell's eyes sharpen. "You caught it at the station?"
"Once clearly. Twice maybe. I didn't have enough to name it, and Morrison was already making everything difficult by then."
Sloane looks up from his tablet. "Do we have internal station access logs?"
Skylar's mouth tightens. "Not anymore."
"We might," Dana says, already typing. "Not directly. But if someone accessed the Rourke file through a shared system or requested external footage under a station credential, there may be vendor-side timestamps. People forget outside systems remember what inside systems delete."
