Page 31 of Blake

Devon shot her a narrowed stare. “Don’t judge me.”

She returned her attention to the screen. Yesterday she’d found seven patient accounts with the same strange sequence.

Payment.

Adjustment.

Repost.

The amounts were small enough individually that most people wouldn’t notice. Nothing that screamed fraud or would cause someone glancing at a company’s monthly reconciliations to panic.

But seven wasn’t a coincidence. Not when they all had the exact same adjustment pattern.

Her program had been running since early that morning, comparing similar transactions across the data she’d been authorized to access. Now she had more.

A lot more.

Devon leaned closer in her chair and opened another account. Her gut tightened when she found the same thing.

A payment posted. An adjustment followed. Then a second transaction appeared under a slightly altered billing designation.

She clicked into the next account. Different patient. Different provider.

Her pulse quickened when she found the same sequence. Not from fear, but something else. The familiar spark that came whenever a problem stopped looking random and turned into a puzzle.

Devon opened a spreadsheet and began organizing the transactions by date, original payment, adjustment code, reposted amount, and destination identifier. Within twenty minutes, the pattern became impossible to ignore.

The transactions weren’t mistakes. At least, she didn’t think they were. Mistakes were messy, which this definitely wasn’t.

This was repetitive. Consistent.

Intentional.

She sat back in her chair. “Well, that’s not good.”

Willow blinked her mismatched eyes as Devon enlarged one of the columns. The destination identifier she’d noticed yesterday appeared again.

Then again. And again. But only on certain accounts.

Devon pulled up the company’s internal reference list. When she didn’t see it there, she searched a second directory. Again, she found nothing.

Where the hell are you going?

It didn’t make sense. Every transaction had to go somewhere. Money didn’t simply disappear. Not even digitally.

She clicked through the system again, following the trail as far as her access allowed. Devon stared at the screen, knowing she could probably get around the system’s security.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard for a brief moment.

Devon pulled her hands back. “Nope.”

She wasn’t going to do that. There was curiosity, and then there was knowingly accessing parts of the client’s system she didn’t have permission to enter.

Contrary to what Janie occasionally claimed, Devon did have boundaries. They were flexible, sure, but at least they weren’t nonexistent.

She reached for her coffee instead. The mug paused halfway to her lips.

What if you’re wrong?