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The phone on my desk rings, another call from someone who only reaches out when they smell smoke. I answer without checking the name. “Blackwell.”
“Nathaniel.” Armitage’s voice comes through the phone. He always sounds like a man smiling into a mirror. “I am hearing whispers. Tell me they are wrong.”
I straighten automatically and force my tone flat. “That depends on which whispers you mean.”
“The leak,” Armitage says. “If you do not get ahead of it, you lose more than the prototype. You lose investor confidence.”
“There is no confirmed external exposure.”
“Then prove it. I want timestamps, affected directories, and every credential before markets close.”
My gaze moves toward the monitor. “Every credential?”
“Unless sentiment has already compromised your judgment.”
“You will have the report.”
“Good. Sentiment is expensive at this level.”
The call ends before I can respond.
Only then do I realize I have been gripping my phone so hard the corner has dug a deep, sharp crescent into my palm.
Suddenly, the office is suffocating. The glass walls that usually make the space feel expansive now resemble a cage, every movement visible to the people outside it. Heads lift when I stand.
A brief knock breaks the pattern, and Elias enters and closes the door behind him. I sit back in my chair. “What did security find?”
“No anomalies or unauthorized entry. Her office workstation never left the fourteenth floor, but that only confirms its location. The command could've been planted earlier by someone with access.”
His gaze drops to the monitor and then returns to me. “You told me you would investigate everyone.”
“I am.”
“Then why is hers the only file open?”
I say nothing.
“You have a way of finding the most painful possibility and calling it preparation.”
“That habit built this company.”
“It may also destroy what you built outside it.”
“I have work to do.” I turn back to the computer.
“You always do.” He walks out, leaving me alone again.
Once I am certain there will be no more interruptions, I reopen Sloane’s audit. Her access history is clean. Her badge activity matches her schedule, and her devices show no unusual transfers or connections. The results should move her farther from suspicion.
They do.
What they don’t explain is the precision of the breach. Whoever used her credentials left nothing behind except exactly what they wanted us to see.
Sloane laughs somewhere beyond the frosted glass. Yesterday, the sound would have been a summons I couldn't ignore.
Today, I keep reading.
forty-two
