Page 22 of Code Name: Hunter (Club Opus Noir #2)

Fitz frowns. "Wolfe’s supposed to be dead."

"If he is, then someone’s using his old code," I say.

“You think he’s alive?”

“I think he could be."

Vivian crosses her arms. "Why Wolfe? What the hell is he doing?"

The analyst taps a few keys. "Cross-reference ping location. The signal came from just outside Monaco. Then bounced."

"Where?" Fitz and I ask in unison.

"Corsica. Off-grid site flagged as inactive three years ago. But there's recent traffic—encrypted comms routed through backdoor NATO protocols. Not ours. Not official."

My jaw locks.

Vivian’s expression hardens. "Corsica had two MI-6 assets once. One was Wolfe. They know I was there."

The realization hits like a body blow. My lungs constrict. Two pings. That means someone tracked her before the rooftop. Before I even reached her.

A flash fires behind my eyes—Prague. That damn site. The smell of wet ash and diesel, the smear of blood on a cracked floor tile. The encrypted logs we never decrypted. The ghost we never buried.

Back then, I’d refused to consider it. Refused to picture a world without her.

Now, that refusal feels dangerous. Na?ve.

Because whatever this is, it didn’t end in Prague.

It started there. And part of me wonders if I missed the pattern because I didn’t want to see it.

Because I couldn’t bear the idea that the betrayal wasn’t buried with Wolfe—that it might’ve been sitting beside me this whole time.

I thought we’d sealed it off. Closed the file, burned the bridge. But the burn site never stopped smoldering, and in fact it may have sparked back to life.

I glance at Vivian. She’s holding herself too still again, like she’s listening not with her ears, but her instincts. And I know that posture. That look in her eyes. She’s bracing for betrayal.

My hand flexes at my side. I want to reach for her. I want to believe this isn’t what it looks like. But I’ve learned the hard way—every instinct has its blind spot. And mine? They all start with her.

I nod. "So we go now."

"You and her," Fitz says.

Vivian blinks. "Together?"

Fitz’s voice is granite. "You two stirred a hornet’s nest. That tracker wasn’t Cerberus—wasn’t even on our radar. This smells like an inside game. And Logan?"

"Yeah?"

"You’ve got field command. She’s your shadow."

Vivian opens her mouth to argue. I cut her off. "Fine."

Fitz narrows his eyes. "There’s more. That metadata? Some of it traces back to Prague. Code strings embedded in that device mirror part of a locked file set from the first burn site. Only one person had access."

He doesn’t say it. Doesn’t need to.

Vivian goes quiet.

I glance at the screen. My gut twists.

Because I recognized that encryption pattern. And I know for a fact where I’ve seen it before—inside a closed MI-6 intel packet from a Prague mission only three agents ever had keys to.

One was me. One was Wolfe. The other was her.

I say nothing.

Fitz pivots. "You leave in four hours. Go dark. Don’t contact anyone not in this room. Assume we’re compromised."

Vivian nods once. Crisp. Controlled.

I turn to leave.

"Logan."

I glance back.

Fitz’s voice lowers. "Watch her." He thinks for a moment. "Hell, watch out for each other."

We head for gear-up in silence.

Vivian stops outside the locker bay, arms folded, her posture deceptively casual but her eyes sharp. "Something you’re not telling me?"

There’s a flicker in her expression—cool, composed, but I catch the faint shift beneath it.

Not anger. Not fear. But something rawer.

Her weight shifts minutely onto the balls of her feet, like she’s bracing for whatever I’m about to drop.

Doubt. Maybe even hurt. And that stings more than I want to admit.

I school my face into impassivity, but inside, something twists.

I hate the distance I see there—worse; I hate that I’m the one putting it there.

It reminds me of Prague—of the silence in her voice after the op went south, and of the way she’d looked at me like she expected me to vanish too, and before she faked her own death.

Maybe that’s the part that hits hardest. Because after everything, I want to be the one person she doesn’t brace against. I want to be the line she can count on, not the shadow she has to outrun.

I pause, meeting her stare. "Plenty."

She narrows her eyes. "So we’re doing that again? Secrets and shadows?"

I lean in, just enough that my voice goes low. "Until I know for sure? Yeah. We are."

Her jaw clenches, and the light in her eyes flares—frustration and fury braided together with something more fragile. "Don’t expect me to play dumb forever."

"I never have."

She storms off, her boots echoing sharply against the tile. I let her go. But my chest is tight. Because if she’s doubting me now—if Wolfe’s ghost is still between us—this whole op may unravel before it even begins.

If the code really traces back to her... either she’s being set up or this runs even deeper than I thought.

And I’m not sure which option is worse. And for the first time since Prague, I wonder if the real danger isn’t the mission—it’s what’s already cracking between us.