Page 28 of Code Name: Hunter (Club Opus Noir #2)

LOGAN

L ater that evening, I feel better—still sore and running on adrenaline fumes, but functional.

The ops van sits parked in the shadows, engine idling just enough to keep the electronics humming.

The space smells of stale, over-brewed coffee and the hot, dry bite of overworked circuitry from racks of hard drives along the wall.

The vinyl seat under me is cracked and sticky from years of use, and I can feel the subtle vibration of the engine through my boots.

Outside, Rome murmurs like a restless animal—layers of distant traffic, bursts of scooter engines, and the wail of a siren fading down some unseen street.

Inside, every sound is amplified: the soft whir of cooling fans, the rhythmic click of Vivian’s keys as she leans into her monitor’s glow, the faint rasp of her sleeve against the built-in desk when she shifts her weight.

The van is parked in a blind spot near the edge of the district, engine idling low.

I’ve shifted into the passenger seat, my body angled toward the bank of monitors, eyes locked on the main feed.

With no need to drive, every ounce of my attention is on what’s unfolding on screen.

Our drone tracks a known fixer named Mancini slipping along a narrow alley behind the fish market, hands buried in the pockets of his camel overcoat.

He’s not here for dinner. The overhead cam catches him pausing beneath a dead streetlamp, scanning the shadows like he’s expecting company.

“Zoom in,” I murmur into my mic.

The drone responds instantly, bringing the grainy black-and-white image closer until we can see the set of his shoulders, the slight lift of his chin like he’s giving a signal. A shape peels out of the dark—hood up, face obscured, movements too controlled to be random street traffic.

Mancini’s hand slips from his pocket. Something small passes between them, quick and practiced. The hooded figure doesn’t linger, just turns and disappears into a break between buildings.

Vivian leans back just far enough to glance at my screen. “You think that was Wolfe.”

“I think it walked like him, carried itself like him. But thinking isn’t proof.”

A metallic tang creeps up the back of my throat, a taste that matches the tight knot in my gut.

Wolfe’s good—better than good—one of those rare predators who can melt into a crowd or vanish down a blind turn like smoke in a high wind.

And here he is, maybe, a phantom brushing the edges of our net, just close enough to taunt but not close enough to catch.

I tap the video feed back a few seconds, frame-by-frame, to the exchange.

Mancini’s face is lit for half a breath by the dim glow from a high window.

Calm. Almost smug. The object—too small to make out, but the angle of his fingers says flash drive or keycard.

Either way, the thing that can kill a lot of people without ever firing a shot.

Beside me, Vivian’s already sliding her chair back to her terminal. “Give me ten minutes. I can find where they went.”

“You’re good, Vivian, but even you can’t pull a ghost off a camera that never saw his face.”

She tilts her head just enough for her hair to spill over one shoulder. “Maybe not. But people leave trails in places they don’t mean to. You just have to know where to look.”

There’s that razor edge in her tone—part challenge, part something she isn’t willing to put into words, an inflection that makes the air in the van feel a shade tighter.

I let her work, but my senses stay tuned to every subtle shift in her breathing, every faint hitch of the keys as her focus sharpens, while my gaze keeps sweeping the other monitors, scanning the grid for movement, for any flicker that might turn this tense moment into something explosive.

Nine minutes in, she freezes, then types faster. “Found something.”

I glance over. The drone feed on her monitor has vanished, replaced by dense columns of Cerberus log entries—rows of timestamps, file tags, and coded identifiers scrolling in a relentless stream.

The screen’s cold light flickers across her focused expression, each line of data reflecting off her eyes like she’s reading a language few people alive could understand.

“Tell me you didn’t just...”

“Hack into MI-6? No,” she says, though the little smile tugging at her mouth tells me she’s enjoying this way too much. “I found a way in. Someone left a door unlocked.”

I move in close behind her, my palm settling on the worn leather at the back of her chair, feeling the faint tremor of her movements through it as my eyes lock on the code cascading down the screen.

Lines of symbols and numbers stream by in hypnotic rhythm, and even without touching the keys I can sense the intent woven into them.

This isn’t just a vulnerability—it’s a hidden artery running deep in the system’s bones, camouflaged so artfully that at a glance it could pass as native code, the sort of hidden door only the best ever think to build.

“That’s not amateur work,” I say quietly.

She shakes her head. “It’s surgical. Whoever did this had to have top-tier clearance and didn’t want anyone knowing they were in there. Could’ve been Wolfe.”

Wolfe—MI-6’s ghost in the machine. Brilliant, ruthless, and so far above most of the team’s pay grade that his moves become whispered rumors rather than official reports.

Everyone in the inner circle knows the name, and everyone else assumes he’s long dead.

Even those of us who’ve seen the ripples he leaves behind aren’t always sure if they’ve seen the man himself or just the echo of what he’s set in motion.

The alignment of the nested calls makes something in the back of my brain itch. Not new code—old scaffolding. A flaw baked in when the system was patched years ago. If you knew it existed, you could sidestep layers of clearance in seconds. But you’d only know if you’d been inside back then.

But the style… my gut shifts, a cold ripple threading down my spine.

There’s a cadence in the code's rhythm, an almost musical timing to the way each patch nests itself into dormant functions, weaving through the unused architecture like it knows exactly where it can sleep unseen. It’s more than competent—it’s intimate familiarity you only get from building something with your own hands or studying it until it becomes part of your pulse. Too familiar.

It’s hers... Vivian's. My pulse ticks faster, the same way it did the first time I watched her ghost into a network everyone swore was sealed. Back then, it had been a rush. Now it’s a cold weight settling in my gut, because this isn’t just skill—it’s authorship. Her authorship.

The realization hits like a splash of ice water in my veins.

She’s always kept some of her cards close to the vest—hell, maybe the entire deck—but this?

If she really built this, it means she had an escape hatch from MI-6 quietly waiting in the shadows long before Operation Persephone ever came into being.

A contingency plan threaded through the code like a lifeline only she could pull.

“You’re quiet,” she says without looking up.

“Thinking.”

“Dangerous habit.” Her voice is light, but there’s a tension in it, the kind you only hear if you’re listening for it.

I don’t answer. Not yet. My jaw stays tight as I weigh every angle, knowing this isn’t a conversation I can risk having here—in a cramped van where every word could be overheard through thin metal walls, caught on a hot mic, or quietly pulled from a recording later by someone I can’t see.

If I’m wrong, if it’s not her, then I’ll have accused the one person in this city I should’ve trusted without hesitation. Once spoken, that kind of doubt can’t be pulled back; it hangs in the air, poisoning everything between us.

But if I’m right? If she really is what my gut is whispering? Then I’m standing on the edge of a truth so sharp it could cut everything I thought we were to pieces—and I don’t even want to imagine what’s left when it’s done.

I file it away, tucking the suspicion into the mental vault where I keep the dangerous things—sharp, heavy, and handled with care. Watch the angles. Wait for the opening. Let the tension draw tight enough so that when the truth finally shows itself, I’m ready to strike without hesitation.

She’s still working, tracing the last data packets pushed through that hidden channel. “There—north end of the Trastevere district. Whoever’s using this backdoor was pulling files from an off-grid terminal three hours ago.”

I lean over her shoulder, scanning the coordinates. The flicker from the screen paints her cheek in pale light as I take in the location—tight, winding streets hemmed in by old stone facades, their upper floors leaning toward each other like they’re conspiring.

By day, they choke with tourists and café chatter; by night, the crowds thin to a scatter of locals and the occasional drunk, leaving long corridors of darkness where footsteps echo and whispers carry.

It’s where a handoff could happen without a soul noticing—or where someone could vanish completely if they knew the turns.

“Could be our hooded friend,” I say.

“Could be your Wolfe.”

"He was always more your Wolfe than mine."

She laughs. "If you believe that, you didn't know him nearly as well as I thought you did."

“Could be someone else entirely,” I say, ignoring the taunt in her voice.

She swivels her chair to face me. “And if it is Wolfe?”

I meet her gaze. “Then we follow the trail until it ends. And if we’re lucky, it ends with him face-down and unarmed.”

Her mouth curves, but there’s no humor in it. “You really believe in luck?”

“No. I believe in bait.”

The words hang there for a beat, weighted with more than just strategy—they carry the promise of a trap neither of us can afford to spring too soon.

She knows exactly what I mean. Wolfe’s too calculating to blunder into a straightforward pursuit, but if we choose the right lure—something so tempting it cuts past his caution—he’ll have to come for it.

The real challenge will be making sure that when he finally lunges for the bait, we’re already several steps ahead—positions locked, weapons ready, contingencies in place—closing every possible gap before he even realizes the trap has sprung, leaving him no shadow, no alley, no heartbeat of opportunity to wriggle free. Not like Prague.

On the far monitor, Mancini’s figure is quickly swallowed by a surge of foot traffic, the glow of shop signs splashing color across slick cobblestones.

Umbrellas bloom like dark flowers under a sudden drizzle, breaking the drone’s line of sight.

A blur of headlights sweeps over the crowd, scattering shapes and shadows until the camera loses him entirely, the alley’s edge dissolving into wet light and motion.

Vivian turns back to her console, fingers flying again. “I’ll scrub the street cams near Trastevere. If he’s still moving, we’ll catch him.”

I give a slight nod, though it’s more reflex than agreement, my attention already knifing through the mental map—Wolfe’s possible return, Mancini’s involvement, the leak in MI-6’s logs, and the unnerving reality that the fingerprints on that hidden backdoor in the code feel achingly familiar.

Too familiar. The recognition coils low in my gut like a live wire, impossible to ignore even as I force my expression to stay unreadable.

The fragile thread of trust between us has already been frayed to the breaking point in the past twenty-four hours, each strain leaving the weave weaker.

I can’t afford to tug at it again without evidence I can stand on, without a clear picture of exactly what I’d be accusing her of—and the cost of being wrong. Could she really be working with Wolfe?

Still, the thought won’t shake loose, gnawing at the edges of my focus like a slow leak in the hull. If she left that backdoor, was it a lifeline meant to pull her clear when the storm hit—or a key she kept in her pocket to open any door, no matter which side of the game she was on?

I watch her work, the cold glow from the monitors carving stark shadows along the sharp line of her jaw and the determined set of her mouth.

Her eyes are locked on the code, movements precise and unhurried, like each keystroke is part of a larger design she’s already mapped in her head.

She’s focused, relentless, a predator in her own right.

And it hits me—not for the first time—that she’s been playing this game longer than me, and maybe with more pieces on the board than I can yet see.

It’s the kind of truth that doesn’t just sit in the corner and behave. It leaks into every decision, every glance, until one day it blows the hinges off the door you’ve been trying to keep shut. And I can already hear the hinges groaning.

One way or another, I’m going to rip the truth into daylight, and when that moment comes, there won’t be a corner dark enough or a lie deep enough for either of us to disappear into—no shadows left, no ground to retreat to, just the reckoning between us waiting to detonate.