Page 25 of Cipher

“That explains why it looks capable of surviving a siege.”

I moved the chair at the window out for her, then opened my hardened laptop at the opposite end of the table. Sitting at my desk, across the room from her, felt like too much distance between us. “Use whatever space you want.”

Her brows rose as she looked from the chair to me. “In here?”

“In the whole house.” I leaned one hand against the table and held her gaze. “You don’t ask permission to use a room, move something, or change anything that doesn’t work for you. That door is the only exception because the secrets behind it aren’t mine alone.”

Warmth filled her hazel-green eyes before a mischievous smile curved her mouth. “You realize I have opinions about your kitchen.”

“Fix it.”

Her laugh changed the room before she’d added a single thing to it. “That is a dangerous amount of freedom to give me.”

“You’re not a guest, Bex. I brought you home.”

The humor sifted out of her expression as my words landed. Then she smiled as she carried her tablet to the end of the table nearest the windows, spread her notes across the dark wood without asking another question, and tucked one foot beneath her while she settled in. I took the opposite end, satisfied to have her inside my line of sight while we worked.

The study’s household terminal gave me access to every camera and sensor on my property, along with the sanitized feeds covering the public approaches beyond it. The previous night’s alert had produced no physical breach, so I widened the search.

The outermost camera sat where the private road joined the county route, and I skimmed the footage from the night before until I spotted a dark SUV entering the turnout before it stopped, facing our access road. The driver killed the headlights but remained there for almost six minutes, long enough to study my security and decipher whether it had increased after Bex moved in.

I enlarged the footage for a closer look. The rear plate had been deliberately obscured beneath a dark cover, leaving only the final number visible in the moonlight. A crack split the left taillight, and one side of the rear bumper carried a pale scrape that might narrow the vehicle if it appeared on another camera.

By the time the SUV pulled away, I’d determined that whoever sat behind the wheel had been scouting the approach, although I couldn’t yet prove whether the vehicle triggered the alert or merely arrived to watch what happened afterward.

Bex looked up from her tablet, reading the change in my stillness before I said anything. “You found something?”

“Dark SUV.” Although I was reluctant to share anything that might frighten her, I’d promised to keep her updated. So I explained what I’d seen and how I’d reached my conclusions about the vehicle.

Her face paled slightly before her chin lifted. “They were watching the road to your house.”

“Our house.” I saved the clearest frame and looked back at her. “And yeah.”

The correction caught her for half a heartbeat, but warmth flickered through her expression despite the threat we were discussing. Then she asked, “Can you find them from one number and a broken light?”

“Eventually.” I carried the secure laptop to the reinforced door, opened the biometric lock, and went inside, sealing the secure office behind me before opening the off-book correlation program. The search would reach into several legitimate databases and some systems I had no authorization to touch, which meant the method stayed on my side of the door even if the result affected Bex.

I fed the program the vehicle details then returned to the study while it worked. Bex had gone back to her coursework, but she looked up when I entered and sealed the door behind me once more.

“You’ll find it.” Her words were more statement than question.

It was clear that she wasn’t treating the closed door like a personal rejection. She understood that I would tell her when I knew something useful and leave the other shit where it belonged. And that just made me even more convinced that this woman had been made for me.

“I will.” I took my seat across from her, my gaze sliding briefly over the warm curve of her mouth before returning to the dispatch timeline. “They used a public road and drove an SUV that’s registered somewhere. That leaves traces.”

Her shoulders eased by a fraction. “I almost feel sorry for them.”

I snorted. “No, you don’t.”

“No.” Her mouth curved as she lowered her gaze to the tablet again. “I really don’t.”

I got back to work, too. The independent mirror I’d built Tuesday was already preserving every administrative action outside county control, but knowing what someone changed didn’t explain how the legitimate users normally behaved around those systems. I organized the records and eventually came across a question I knew Bex could answer.

“When Stowe’s company connects remotely, what happens on the dispatch side?” I asked.

Bex set down her stylus and thought before answering, her brows drawing together while she separated routine from exceptions. “Mr. Hendrick usually gets an email first. Then Stowe calls and has him open the maintenance bridge from his terminal. A banner appears on our screens while they’re connected, and the supervisor logs when they start and finish.”

“Emergency support?”