Her husband blinked at her. “We do?”
“Not a tracker per se. My phone. I always leave it locked up with my purse when we come here.”
Dev’s mouth curved briefly. “This is why I love you, Greta.”
She flushed.
Her husband ignored the comment completely and hauled Greta into a fierce hug.
“Track it,” Leland ordered.
Michael was already pulling out his phone. “I’m on it.”
“Good,” Callan grunted. “Because I want to check something else.”
His fingers flew over the keys, pulling up a second screen. He scrolled. Stopped. Leaned closer.
“Huh.”
Leland’s patience had ended. “What?” he snapped.
Callan didn’t answer immediately. “Remember those glitches?”
Nobody spoke.
“The timestamp drift. The sync problems. That happened here, too.”
“Which means?” Dev prompted.
Callan clicked again. “This is the access log. The suffixes identify authorization tiers,” he explained. “Devlin & Associates users are tagged zero-four. Devil’s Pointe personnel are zero-five.”
Dev pointed to one out of sequence. “And this one?”
“Zero-one.” Callan looked up slowly. “Strickland Security Systems.”
“I knew it,” Cari uttered, not gloating but with dread.
“It’s either him or someone on his payroll,” Callan stated. “But whoever it was, they accessed our system remotely at 9:08 tonight, just before we went dark.”
“Got the location,” Michael announced, already moving toward the door.
Leland was right behind him.
Dev slowed enough to say, “Call it into Deerfield Beach PD.”
***
The boat drifted just beyond the point, the engine idling low enough to get lost in the breeze. Light flared across the dock too late. Figures converged on the shoreline. The first ripple of panic. Even from this distance, he could sense it building. Confusion first. Then fear.
He would’ve liked to stay longer. To see the moment Hale understood. To watch Devil’s carefully constructed world crumble beneath the weight of something he hadn’t predicted and couldn’t contain.
But timing mattered and by the time they grasped what had happened, he needed to be gone.
He glanced at the woman stretched along the cushioned bench behind him. A strand of blonde hair shifted across her cheek as he accelerated slightly. Her breathing stayed slow and steady—for now.
After dragging her aboard, he’d secured her wrists and injected the sedative. Enough to keep her quiet until they reached their destination. Her last.
A shame. She was beautiful. But beauty had never been the point.
