Page 4 of Prey

He’s wrong. It belongs to whoever knows how to use it.

My office is dark except for the glow of my laptop. Board meeting ended an hour ago; the others scattered to their dinners, families and their little lives. I stayed. Told them I had numbers to review. It wasn’t a lie. There are always numbers.

But tonight, the numbers are in the background. Tonight, the feed is front and center.

Camera 12: Executive floor reception. Empty.

Camera 15: Hallway outside Cain’s office. Dim, the way I prefer it when I watch.

And there.

Grey.

He sits at his desk, shoulders rounded, head bent, lit only by his screen. The rest of the floor is dark, the way it always is after hours, but he stays. He always stays.

Five months ago, I watched Cain bring him into this building for the first time. A new hire with a clean résumé and a polite smile. Nothing special. Nothing obvious. Just another secretary with good references and better posture.

Then he looked at Cain.

Not the way most people look at him with polite respect, fear, and greed. It was hungrier. Sharper. Like he’d been starving for years and had finally found something, he thought could fill him.

I recognized that look. I’ve had it myself.

I remember the night he made his first million. He called me at 2 AM. Not his Ex. Me. We sat on the floor of his empty office and drank cheap champagne. He said, "You're the only one who gets it." I believed him.

Years of small observations and smaller victories. Which coffee he actually drinks versus what he orders in front of clients. The way his shoes drags when he’s tired. The exact moment in a negotiation where his voice changes and everyone else loses without realizing it.

I built a file on Cain, and everything that makes him Cain.

Then Grey walked in and tilted the axis.

On the screen, he’s still typing. But I’m not looking at the words. I’m watching the tabs at the top of his browser. The shitty little details most people never notice.

Net worth. House. Divorce. He’s googling Cain again. I zoom the feed. His cursor hovers over a search bar. He hesitates then types: Cain Micheals dating.

I smile.

Of course.

He’s not even subtle about it. Doing it from his own desk, on his work machine, like no one has ever explained what audit logs are. Like the whole office isn’t wired to notice when someone spends twenty minutes refreshing an article about Cains’ marital status.

Pathetic, I think. But it’s not contempt, not entirely. There’s a sliver of fascination in there too. Most people hide better than this. He doesn’t. Or doesn’t know how. He clicks away from the search. Opens a folder at the edge of his screen. The name is minimal and clean. Just a single letter.

C.

My fingers tighten on the edge of my laptop. I’ve seen the folder before, in passing, when I walked by his desk this morning and his screen flashed just enough for me to glimpse it. I couldn’t stop. Board members aren’t supposed to snoop, at least not openly.

But the cameras don’t care about supposed to.

Grey scrolls. Columns of files flick past, too fast for the camera to render every name, but I catch enough. Schedule. Audio. Photos. Contacts. Hundreds of images. Cain in conference rooms. Cain getting out of his car. Cain at the window in his office, a ghost in gray light.

One frame holds too long.

Cain’s living room.

My breath catches.

It’s an interior shot. Not from the hallway feed; not from building security. It’s closer. Intimate. The angle is wrong for any legitimate camera.