Page 64 of Hunt Me

Her hands come up to grip my wrists, holding on like I’m the only solid thing in her world.

“Then you breached my firewalls with code so elegant it made me want to weep. Left your signature like a taunt, like you knew I’d be obsessed.” A rough laugh escapes me. “And I was. Am. Completely fucking obsessed with you.”

“This is insane,” she whispers, but she’s not pulling away.

“You’re it for me, Iris.” I say each word clearly, deliberately. “The end game. The variable I can’t control and don’t want to. You’re the only equation I want to spend the rest of my life solving.”

She breaks completely then, collapsing against my chest with sobs that shake her entire body. I hold her through it, stroking her hair and murmuring words in Russian I haven’t spoken since my mother died.

Words about love and devotion and forever.

Words I mean with every corrupted piece of my soul.

18

IRIS

Three hours later, I sit cross-legged on Alexi’s couch, my laptop balanced on my knees while he sprawls beside me with two monitors set up on the coffee table. Energy drinks litter the surface between us—mine, his, ours at this point.

“Show me how you got into the NSA archive.” He doesn’t look up from his screen, fingers flying across the keyboard. “Every step.”

I replay the breach for him, walking through each layer of penetration. He watches my code execute with the intensity most people reserve for porn.

“There.” He pauses the playback, pointing at a string of commands. “You left a microsecond delay between authentication and access. Nearly invisible, but not to someone looking for it.”

My stomach drops. “How invisible?”

“Enough that ninety-nine percent of security teams would miss it.” His green eyes flick to mine. “But if someone’s specifically monitoring for intrusions related to Nightshade, tracking Phantom’s signature...”

“They know I accessed the files.”

“They’ve known since the moment you breached last night.”

Fuck.

“Walk me through your methodology.” He pulls up a clean terminal. “I’ll show you how to move through systems like you were never there at all. No delays, no traces, nothing even I could detect.”

For the next hour, Alexi deconstructs my techniques with surgical precision. Shows me where I’m vulnerable, how to mask packet signatures, ways to manipulate audit logs that I’ve never considered. His methods are elegant and terrifying—the digital equivalent of walking through walls.

“Jesus,” I breathe, watching him demonstrate a rootkit that rewrites its own installation history. “How long have you been able to do this?”

“Since I was seventeen.” He grins. “The family business required certain... adaptations to traditional surveillance.”

We work in focused silence, building new tools to investigate Morrison and Nightshade without detection. Alexi’s creating a distributed network of compromised systems we can route through—digital camouflage that shifts constantly.

I’m cross-referencing Morrison’s known associates when something catches my eye.

“Alexi.” My voice comes out strange. Flat. “Look at this.”

He leans over, scanning the data I’ve pulled up. Financial records showing regular deposits into a Delaware-registered shell corporation. The corporation’s hidden ownership structure traces back through three layers of subsidiaries before?—

“Sentinel Operations.” His jaw tightens. “Private intelligence firm. Former CIA contractors, mostly. They handle things the government doesn’t want official fingerprints on.”

My hands start shaking. “They’ve been paying Morrison for three years.”

“When did you start your investigation into your parents’ death?”

The timeline clicks into place with sickening clarity.