Page 54 of Reckless

The poker chip rolls once across the backs of Sin’s fingers before disappearing into his palm. “So, what now?”

“Now I finish mapping the shell companies.” My gaze follows another encrypted transmission as it flashes across the screen and vanishes again. “Then I keep pulling on this thread until it tells me who’s sitting on the other end.”

Sin nods once, the kind of nod that says the decision’s already made. “You’ll get there.”

It’s confidence, not expectation, and there is a difference.

“I will.”

By the time I leave the Chapel, he’s already reopened the folder, but I know he isn’t reading it. His mind is still on Calloway.

Mine is too.

When I sit back down at my workstation, the computer is still quietly doing its job. Tiny bursts of encrypted traffic ripple across the screen before disappearing behind another layer of encryption, giving me just enough to know there’s something there and nowhere near enough to understand it.

I settle back in my chair, shifting the toothpick between my teeth as another transmission comes and goes.

Every system leaves a trail.

It just takes the right person long enough to find it.

Whoever built this one believes they have buried it.

They are about to find out they’re wrong.

Chapter Twelve

GHOST

The Next Night

Her building doesn’t have security worth mentioning, which is a problem I’ve been meaning to fix for weeks and keep not raising with her, because I already know what she’ll say about it.

She opens the door before I knock, like she heard the bike two streets over.

Maybe she did.

“You look like a man with a laptop,” she says, stepping back to let me in.

“I look like a man who got tired of texting you ‘Go to bed’ and being ignored.”

She almost smiles at that, but it doesn’t quite land, and I clock the shadows under her eyes before she turns to clear space on the dining table. The mess is worse than I expected. Manila folders stacked three deep, printed photographs fanned out like she’s been looking for a pattern in faces instead of numbers, a legal pad covered edge to edge in her handwriting, getting smaller the further down the page it goes.

“Sage.”

“I’m fine.”

“I didn’t ask.”

That gets me a look, tired rather than sharp. Sage drops into her chair like her legs have been waiting all day for permission. “I didn’t invite you over to fuss.”

“I invited myself.” I set the laptop down on the one clear corner of the table I can find. “What’s all this?”

“Occupancy discrepancies.” She drags a folder toward her without much enthusiasm. “Group homes reporting numbers that don’t match their licenses. I’m trying to cross-reference every facility against every management company before I hand any of it to the State, because if I get one number wrong, they’ll throw out the whole file.”

“How many facilities?”

“Fourteen. So far.”