Page 48 of Property of the Bikers

“That’s the only viable response,” I agree. “Doc handles everything that can be handled internally. Any external referral requires my personal verification of every person involved before the appointment is scheduled, not before she attends it. Before it exists.” I pull up the monitoring protocol I’ve been drafting since I found the IP address. “I’m expanding the monitoring to cover all medical databases that hold her records. Daily checks, not weekly. Any access from an unverified IP gets flagged immediately, and the appointment or record change gets reversed before anyone has time to act on it.”

Cade reads the protocol. “Do it,” he says.

He stands up and looks at the screen one more time. The transfer authorization with its Tuesday date. The appointment that no longer exists in anyone’s system. The administrator whose morning is about to become significantly more complicated.

“She needs to know,” he says.

“Yes,” I say. “She does.”

He leaves, and I sit in the security office with the screen in front of me and the morning coming through the narrow window above the desk, the compound starting its Saturday, boots on gravel, the workshop doors going up, and someone’s voice carrying across the yard.

I close the laptop and go to find Mira.

She’s in her apartment, sitting at the table with a mug and a book she isn’t reading, and she looks up when I knock. I come in, and I sit across from her, and I tell her everything, the same way I told Cade, sequentially and completely, because she deserves the full picture more than she deserves to be managed.

She listens without interrupting.

When I finish, she’s quiet for a moment.

“The administrator,” she says. “How much?”

I tell her the number.

She looks at the table. Something moves through her face, too fast and too controlled to name, and then she looks back up. “You ran the check this morning,” she says. “The same check you run every morning.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s the only reason I’m sitting here.”

I hold her eyes. “Yes.”

She’s quiet for another moment. Then she says, “Thank you,” in a voice that is completely level, and she’s not performing gratitude but simply stating a fact about what something cost and what it was worth.

I nod once and stand up and go to the door.

“Reeve,” she says.

I stop.

“He’s going to try again,” she says. “Through a different system, with a different contact, with paperwork that looks different from this one. He doesn’t stop when a method fails. He files the failure and builds a better version.”

“I know,” I say.

“So do I,” she says. “That’s why I’m telling you. Not because you need the information. Because I need you to know that I know.”

I look at her for a moment.

Then I leave.

Chapter Twenty-Two

MIRA

Cade comes to my door at nine that night.

He doesn’t announce himself. He knocks once, and when I open the door, he’s standing in the hallway in his cut with his hands loose at his sides and something in his face that I haven’t seen there before.

“Can’t leave you alone tonight,” he says.