Page 154 of The Case of the Missing Love Stone

I set the empty mug aside. “That’s why we joined BESTF,” I say.

Scarlet turns toward me.

Wes continues stroking her back.

“We were already bonded when he entered federal service,” I say. “I worked in victim advocacy for the county courts. Wes kept seeing cases where the law protected the registration of a bond more fiercely than the people living inside it.”

“Registered bonds are supposed to provide protection,” Scarlet says.

“They often do,” Wes replies. “Until the paperwork becomes more important than consent.”

“One of my clients tried to leave an alpha who controlled her suppressants, finances, and medical care. The court ordered her to return because the bond remained legally intact.”

Scarlet’s fingers curl into Wes’s shirt.

“He helped me move her before the order could be enforced,” I say.

She looks at him. “You broke the law.”

“I interpreted it aggressively.”

“That means yes.”

“It means she survived.” His voice doesn’t waver.

My throat tightens. “You would do that for a stranger.”

“She wasn’t a stranger by the time it mattered,” Wes says. “No one stays a stranger once you’ve seen what they’re willing to do to survive.”

I smooth Scarlet’s hair away from her neck. “BESTF was forming a unit around bond coercion and interstate trafficking. Wes joined because he wanted enough authority to protect choice. I followed because he needs someone nearby who remembers that an arrest report doesn’t tell you whether a person feels safe.”

Wes looks at me. “You followed because you hated your supervisor.”

“He microwaved fish in a shared office.”

Scarlet’s mouth curves.

The expression fades when Wes’s laptop sounds from the table. Wes reaches for the computer, but Scarlet’s hand remains tangled in his shirt. He brings the laptop into the nest rather than asking her to release him.

Tom sent the preservation shed access records, six weeks of activity, all of it routed through one shared festival-services login. Every code expires after a single use, which means there is no master password to crack, only a long list of ordinary errands.

“Shared login,” I say. “No individual credential attached to any of it.”

Wes nods. “Anyone with the password could generate a code in their own name and never leave a fingerprint.”

Scarlet shifts higher against him to see the screen. “Who has the password?”

Tom’s attached list answers her before either of us can: festival chair, historical society board, Heritage Hall director, preservation committee officers, archive staff, and approved vendor coordinators. Myrtle Vane appears more often, but so do several names on the page. Years of managing the same displays will do that. Nothing on the list points anywhere by itself.

“Three entries are different,” Wes says, opening the comparison Tom’s analyst built. “These didn’t move volunteers or vendors.”

He lists them slowly.

“One, the copying request that gave someone access to your grandmother’s archive file. Two, the transfer code that moved a sealed museum container six days before the Love Stone went missing. Three, the codes Rusk used to collect his instructions from the shed.”

“All three are through the same account,” Scarlet says.

“Yes. It links the operations together. It doesn’t tell us who was typing.”