Page 11 of Cipher

CIPHER

Ispent the next day finding increasingly weak reasons not to drive to the sheriff’s department. Nina’s phone had given me several threatening messages to preserve, the call-routing breach still needed to be mapped against older incidents, and Black Castle had three other active cases demanding decisions from the director responsible for keeping information where it belonged. None of that stopped my attention from drifting toward the protected feed I’d built around the dispatch network or from remembering how sweet and competent Bex had been at the hospital the day before.

By late afternoon, I’d nearly convinced myself that checking the installation in person would qualify as work rather than an excuse to see her. Then an audit alert appeared, and it made the argument irrelevant. I opened the flagged sequence expecting another search tied to Nina’s incident, but the first screen showed Rebecca Raines’s county personnel file. Less than an hour after Nina’s ex had been taken into custody, someone had searched Bex’s home address, shift schedule, vehicle registration, and assigned parking space from a terminal inside the deputy workroom.

A second series of queries began ninety-four seconds later through the county-approved remote-support account assigned to Eric Stowe’s company. Those searches targeted Nina’s vanished incident, Bex’s operator identification, the direct channel she’d used to send help, and the unit Raines redirected to the protected address. The remote session carried a valid contractor token, while the personnel search had been authenticated locally, giving me two compromised access points and no clean answer about whether one person had stolen both sets of credentials or two insiders were working together.

Someone was building a picture of the woman who had ruined their plan. This had moved beyond a compromised system and into the opening stages of a target package.

I was out of my chair before the final report finished loading. Sending the relevant access records to my hardened laptop, I locked every screen behind me and stalked to my office door. It slammed against the wall when I yanked it open, and my executive assistant nearly fell out of his chair.

Tony looked up as I passed, but when he caught whatever had entered my expression, he lowered his gaze without asking whether I needed assistance. I barely noticed because I was already calling Raines on the secure line by the time I reached the elevator.

“Where’s Bex?” I snarled when he answered.

“At dispatch. Her shift started twenty minutes ago. And watch your tone, Ci—” His thoughts caught up to his mouth, and his voice hardened as he asked, “What did you find?”

“Someone searched everything they’d need to locate and follow her after Nina’s rescue.” I stepped into the elevator and pressed the garage level, watching my own reflection turn colder in the brushed-steel doors. “Personnel information came from a deputy workroom terminal. The related CAD queries ran through Stowe’s support account.”

“Meaning somebody inside my department?”

“Possibly. At least one set of local credentials and one remote credential are compromised. I’m on my way.”

Raines swore under his breath. “How fast?”

“Not fast enough.”

I made the twenty-minute drive from Black Castle to the department in less than ten, but the sight of the sheriff’s building finally appearing beyond the next intersection did nothing to loosen the pressure under my ribs. By the time the secured garage gate opened for me, I had already gone through all the ways I’d make them pay for targeting Bex.

She was behind her console when I entered dispatch. Relief struck first because she was exactly where Raines said she would be. Desire followed with its usual inconvenient timing, hardening my cock as my gaze moved over her.

Three weeks of distance had failed so thoroughly that even fear for her safety couldn’t stop my body from imagining her bent over that console while I held her hips and made her forget every reason we should remain apart. The thought lasted only until she turned and saw me, because the warmth that entered her hazel-green eyes made something more dangerous than lust close around my chest.

Her gaze locked on my face, and she immediately pulled off the headset. “What happened?”

I crossed the room without answering, caught the back of her chair, and turned it away from the console before she could touch another key. My hand settled around her upper arm as I brought her to her feet, then slid to the base of her spine and kept her tucked close while I guided her toward the secured interview room beside Raines’s office. Bex moved with me instead of fighting the hold, but her face had gone serious enough that the dispatcher at the next station wisely pretended not to watch.

“Cipher,” she muttered, irritation flashing beneath her concern. “Tell me what’s wrong.”

“Someone searched your files after Nina was rescued.” I opened the secured room door, moved her inside and over to one of the plastic chairs. “You stay here until I clear every route around you.”

Her face lost color, but she lowered herself into the chair without arguing about whether the threat was real. My thumb moved once along the soft skin below her lower lip before I heard Raines enter the room behind me.

The sheriff looked from my hand on his daughter to her pale face, then to mine. Something dark shifted behind his eyes, but he had enough discipline to prioritize the threat. I stood and turned toward him. “I need employee-garage footage starting from Tuesday night, every badge event, and the vehicle-access log.”

Raines’s jaw tightened. “Why Tuesday?”

“That’s when the first search happened and when somebody could’ve known Bex was still here completing statements.” I glanced back at her as she folded both hands in her lap to hide the slight tremor moving through them. “No one enters this room without you or me.”

“Treating me like a prisoner?” Bex’s tone carried more nerves than rebellion.

“No. But you’re the reason somebody’s about to learn that keeping them alive doesn’t mean leaving them whole.” I watched a little spark of heat flare despite the fear in her eyes, which probably said something unhealthy about both of us–-but fuck all if I cared. I couldn’t act on it now though, because her safety would always be my top priority. “Stay put.”

“I’m gonna pretend I didn’t hear that,” Raines muttered.

I shrugged. “Let’s go.”

Raines led me through an interior corridor to the small security office overlooking the employee garage. I barked at the deputy assigned to the room to pull up Tuesday’s footage. I watched it sped up like a time lapse until I spotted eleven minutes between ten seventeen and ten twenty-eight that showed a vehicle reversing beneath the same flickering light twice. I slowed it down and watched it twice more. The loop was clean enough to fool someone watching in real time, but a shadow crossing the far wall repeated at the exact frame and a moth struck the camera housing in an identical pattern six minutes apart.