Page 29 of Cipher

“Her skills have already made her an asset,” Corbin explained. “Accepting her help is the logical move.”

My father stared at him for a moment, a muscle jumping in his jaw. Finally, he exhaled hard through his nose. “Fine. Targeted questions only. She can help interpret dispatch behavior and assist with Nina if needed. Nothing that puts her in the field.”

“Agreed.” Corbin nodded, then shifted his attention to me. “There are conditions.”

I met his eyes. “I’m listening.”

“You only work on this from a protected location, and you use the secured phone.”

“That’s fair,” I agreed.

“And you do not go back to dispatch without controlled routes and someone on-site with you,” he added.

My nose wrinkled as I considered how I’d make that work with my schedule. It wouldn’t be easy, but I wasn’t in a position to argue. “I guess that’s the right call, just for while I’m at risk.”

“And the second anything feels off, you tell me. Immediately.”

His final demand was easy to agree to. “Okay.”

His gaze stayed on mine a moment longer, as though he was checking for any sign of hesitation. Whatever he saw must have satisfied him, because the tension in his shoulders eased a fraction. “Good.”

For the first time since this whole mess started, I felt like I had a real place in the fight.

11

CIPHER

When Bex and I walked into the Black Castle interview suite to meet Nina, it was set up exactly as I’d specified in the instructions I’d sent my assistant the night before. The overhead fluorescents had been replaced with warmer wall lighting. Nina’s chair was angled so she could see the door without sitting directly in front of it, and the visible camera was shifted far enough to one side that it no longer stared at her from across the room. Raines would watch through a secured feed from the adjoining observation room, so Nina wouldn’t have to sit between two large men while wondering whether anyone would let her leave.

Bex stopped inside the doorway and took in every adjustment. “I like the changes.”

“You said frightened people talk more easily when they don’t feel trapped.”

Her lips curved as she glanced up at me. “You listened.”

“Of course.” I brushed my thumb along her side, enjoying the warmth that entered her expression before footsteps approached in the corridor. “I’ll start the interview, but if she starts shutting down, take over.”

I knew she’d be able to calm Nina if she started to fall apart because it came naturally to her.

Bex nodded, her face shifting into the focused woman who had kept Nina grounded during a whispered emergency call. One of Black Castle’s female protection specialists escorted Nina into the suite a few minutes later, waited until she was settled, then withdrew, gently closing the door behind her.

The bruising along Nina’s jaw had begun fading from dark purple to sickly yellow, but she still held one shoulder carefully. Her breathing eased when Bex sat nearest to her, her body angled rather than squared off, while I took the chair farther away and kept my hands visible instead of looming against the wall, as I usually did during interviews. Nina gave Bex a faint smile that carried gratitude and exhaustion in equal measure.

“How are you feeling?” Bex asked softly.

“Better than I look.” Nina tried to laugh, but the sound thinned before it fully formed. “I’m sleeping at least. Not well, but some.”

“That’s still something. We have a few more questions, but if you need to stop, we can end whenever you need to.”

Nina nodded, glancing once toward the camera before returning to Bex. She knew Raines was watching and had agreed to the recording, but Bex’s presence kept the equipment from becoming the center of her attention. I waited until her hands loosened around the bottle of water Bex gave her before asking the question that had been sitting beneath every timeline we had reconstructed.

“Think about the week before Jeff showed up.” I kept my tone as close to gentle as I knew how to. “Any unexpected visitors, calls, deliveries, or vehicles near the house? Something that seemed strange but not threatening enough to report?”

Nina’s brows pulled together while she searched her mind. She shook her head first, then stopped with the movement barely begun and stared down at her hands. “There was a man. Two days before Jeff.”

Bex remained still, giving Nina space to reach the memory without filling the silence for her. I watched the tension return to Nina’s shoulders and cataloged the way her thumb began worrying at the edge of the water-bottle label. “What did he want?”

“He said he was looking for someone who used to live there. Something about a civil matter.” Nina swallowed and lifted her gaze toward me. “I didn’t open the door. I spoke through the doorbell camera and told him he had the wrong house.”