Page 121 of Twins for Three Bad Boys

That makes him swivel dramatically in his chair. “Ah. The worst kind. Emotional quiet or legal quiet?”

“Legal.”

He squints at me. “Define legal.”

I stare at him.

He sighs. “Fine. Sit. If we go to prison, you’re explaining it to my mother.”

I tell him about the email. The accusations. The ex.

Pike listens without interrupting. He doesn’t emote much, but his eyebrows do a lot of heavy lifting.

When I finish, he cracks his knuckles, a pianist about to ruin someone’s day.

“School district servers,” he mutters, pulling up a terminal window, “are held together by budget cuts and vibes.”

“I’m not asking you to break anything,” I say.

He glances over his shoulder. “You absolutely are. You’re just using eye contact to pretend you’re not.”

Fair.

He types fast, muttering under his breath.

“Okay… parent portal… submission logs… wow. They really trust people with internet access.”

“You enjoying this?” I ask.

He shrugs. “I enjoy systems that think they’re secure. It’s like watching someone lock their front door and leave the windows open.”

Twenty minutes pass in near silence except for keys clicking and the low hum of machines. Pike occasionally makes small judgmental noises at the screen.

Finally, he leans back.

“Well.”

I don’t like that tone.

“There were reports,” he says. “Multiple. Logged formally. Complaints about her being inappropriate with fathers. Overly familiar. Allegedly sleeping around.”

My jaw tightens. “That doesn’t sound like her.”

Pike tilts his head. “It rarely does, when someone’s being set up.”

That gets my attention.

“But,” he continues, lifting a finger, “volume matters. Schools don’t ignore volume. Liability departments panic when volume shows up.”

“Can you see who filed them?”

“Not directly,” he says. “They’re anonymized through the portal. But…”

He smiles.

And that’s never a small thing with Pike.

“But IP traces are my favorite bedtime story.”