Page 19 of Blake

“I don’t know yet.”

She opened another window and searched the company’s internal code list. Nothing.

That doesn’t make sense.

Every destination code should have been there.

“Devon?”

“Sorry. Can I call you later?”

“Of course. And Dev?”

“Yeah?”

“Love you.”

Her fingers stilled. “I love you, too, J.”

“I’m still right about Blake, though. Just sayin’.”

“I’m hanging up now.”

Janie’s laughter was still coming through the phone when Devon disconnected the call. She went back to the beginning and started over from there.

Her gut grew tighter with each discrepancy she found. One account became three. Three turned into seven. None of the changes were big. Nothing large enough to set off an alarm.

Each one was small enough that most people wouldn’t ever bother questioning. But when it came to data and reports, Devon wasn’t most people.

She opened a fresh window and started building a script. Nothing too complicated . . . yet. She stuck with the basics, pulling the questionable transactions and comparing them against the rest of the month’s activity.

Dates. Times. User IDs. Adjustment codes. Payment routing.

Her fingers moved quickly. This was the part of her job she loved. Strangely, problems made sense to her. They always had.

For every problem, there was a solution.

You just have to know where to look.

Twenty minutes later, the program was ready. Devon clicked a button and let it run. She watched closely as lines of data began filling the screen.

At first, nothing seemed unusual, but her smile vanished when the results began sorting themselves.

“Well, that’s interesting.”

The same handful of adjustment codes appeared again and again. Not constantly, and not often enough to be considered frequent.

But it was enough to catch Devon’s keen eye.

The identical codes appeared across accounts that shouldn’t have had anything to do with one another. It was the first time since Carol’s call that she considered the anomaly could be intentional.

Maybe Carol’s data isn’t wrong. Maybe the software didn’t glitch. Maybe someone wants it to look that way.

Her pulse ticked a little faster. Not from fear, but rather intrigue.

Cracking her knuckles, she rolled herself closer to the desk. “Okay, let’s figure out what’s going on with this bad boy.”

Several hours later, Devon stepped out of the shower, pulled on a pair of soft pajama pants and an oversized T-shirt, then ordered a pizza she absolutely did not need.