Page 20 of Monochrome (ORCA #4)

CHAPTER

TWENTY

ETHAN

Three days later, I was seriously starting to regret my decision to lock down purchasing as I waded through a huge list of requisitions and approval requests.

It was a total pain in the ass, but it needed to be done.

Julius’s phone vibrated on the small conference table where he’d set up shop in my new office, and he cursed.

“What is it?” I wasn’t sure I could take any more bad news or another dead end, but I had a feeling that’s exactly what was coming.

“SPD found the Hellcat.”

“Do I want to know where?”

Julius raised his eyebrows.

“No, probably not.”

I sighed and made a gimme motion.

“Give it to me.”

“Abandoned at a self-storage facility out near Sea-Tac.”

“So, Holt is in the wind?”

“Yep. Pretty much. SPD has impounded the car, and Felix said Nero’s friend McMahon is personally overseeing the investigation, so I guess that’s something.”

“Barely.”

My computer dinged, and I mentally groaned, knowing it was probably yet another financial sign-off request. Oh, well.

It could wait.

“So, that’s another dead end?”

“It is. I guess now that we have the car, that’s one less thing to worry about, but yeah. Without being able to interrogate Holt, there isn’t a way to figure out who he was working for. At least not until we can figure out who’s been funding the shell companies and offshore accounts by pretending to be you and Tessa.”

My email dinged again, and I banged my mouse on my desk as I moved it to turn off the notification alerts, but my heart dropped out when I saw the most recent email that had come in.

“What the actual fuck?” My hand shook as the cursor hovered over the sender’s name.

“Ethan? What’s wrong?” Julius was already crossing the room to stand behind me.

“Jules, am I hallucinating, or does that say this email is from my sister?”

Julius took my trembling hand off the mouse.

“E, don’t open it. I’m calling Felix. I want him to look at this, and while I could probably figure out where the email came from, he’s spent a lot more time on the Grove Core servers.” Using one hand to tip my face toward his, Julius made me meet his gaze.

“Ethan, I need you to call Rebecca and tell her you are expecting Felix for a meeting. Can you do that?”

I nodded, even though it took a second for my brain to tell my hand to pick up my office phone.

A half hour later, Rebecca showed Felix into my office.

If she was surprised I was meeting with someone who showed up in a Spider-Man T-shirt, jeans, and beat-up red Converse, and carrying a fancy black backpack, she did a good job hiding it.

I probably owed her a raise.

The minute she was gone, Felix slid into the chair behind my desk.

“Okay, what am I looking at?”

“I got an email that looks like it is from my sister. From her Grove Core account.”

Felix whistled and pulled out his laptop.

“Before we open it, I want to see if I can run any sort of backtrace or see if I can find out where her server credentials were accessed from.” He plugged his laptop into mine and cracked his knuckles.

He worked in silence for a few minutes, rows of code populating on his laptop screen too fast for me to follow, but Felix apparently had no trouble.

“Anything yet?” Julius asked, breaking the silence and making Felix glare at him over his shoulder.

“Jules, let me work.” Felix’s fingers flew over the keys again, and I could feel Julius’s impatience rolling off him in waves.

I grabbed his hand and squeezed, trying to divert some of my own nervous energy as I tried to work out who would do something like this.

After what felt like an eternity, Felix finally looked up from his laptop.

“Okay. The email was definitely sent from the Grove Core server, but I can’t tell who used Tessa’s credentials. It’s weird, but it looks like she’s been perpetually logged into the server since well before she died.” His gaze landed squarely on me.

“Is it possible IT never terminated her access?”

“At this point, anything is possible, but I could swear her accounts were shut down.”

“Felix, we’ve both been on the Grove Core servers for weeks now. How did we miss this?”

The hacker turned his attention to Julius.

“I wasn’t looking for her. Were you? We were focused on tracking Ethan’s activity, and then on the transaction records. I didn’t even think to look at Tessa’s access. I feel like an idiot for overlooking that now, though.”

“No, but I feel like we would have noticed if it looked like Tessa Lin was logged into the server.” Julius shook his head.

“It doesn’t matter now. I can look into the access logs later and see if someone is manipulating the log-in data, but for now, let’s do what you asked me to come down here for.” He pulled the chair up to the desk again, this time using my mouse to wake up my computer.

“Just so you know, I have containment code running from my machine. If it looks like whatever is in that email is malicious, I just have to hit the enter key to contain it.”

I hadn’t thought about something like that.

“Thank you.”

Felix gestured to the computer.

“Did you want to do the honors?”

“No, please. You go ahead.”

He opened my email again and shot Julius and me a skeptical glance.

“The sender was what threw you? I’m honestly more concerned about the subject line.”

I’d barely paid it any attention, but now that Felix had called it out, I read it over his shoulder.

I’ve been watching you…

Fuck. Because that’s not creepy at all coming from my dead sister’s email account.

A shudder rolled through my body.

I hated every minute of this stupid cat-and-mouse game we were all tangled up in.

I just wanted this to end, and I’d only been dealing with this for a fraction of the time Felix and Julius had.

This had to be driving them mad too.

Felix clicked to open the email, but there was no text to read over his shoulder, only an attachment.

“It’s a video file.”

Julius put a hand on Felix’s shoulder, stopping him from opening the attachment.

“I don’t like this.”

“Neither do I, and I’m not going to risk the security of Ethan’s company. Let me download this to a jump drive, and I’ll open it on my computer. I can lock things down a lot faster if the file contains a threat.”

I had a feeling whatever was in the video was going to be threatening, but not in the way Felix was thinking.

It was clear that whoever was doing this already had access to the Grove Core systems, so the company’s security was already at risk.

Something about this felt far more personal.

“Okay.” Felix plugged the jump drive into his computer and located the file.

“Ready?”

I wasn’t, but I needed to be.

Julius dropped my hand and pulled me into him with an arm around my waist.

“Go ahead, Felix.”

Julius nodded, and Felix hit Play.

The video had no sound, but words scrolled across the screen, and Felix read out loud.

“I’ve been watching you, Ethan.”

Pictures of me and the twins at my house, of me coming out of a business lunch, of me getting into my car in the parking garage flashed up one by one, and my stomach turned over.

“I know who you have been spending your time with.”

This time the pictures were of Julius and me.

Of us the day he’d helped me get the twins into the car, of us walking into the bistro where we had lunch, of us making out in the car in the rain, of us in the ditch after the accident.

My stomach dropped out.

“Breathe, E.” Julius rubbed a hand over my back.

“Breathe.”

“He’s not who he says he is.” Felix hit the Pause button, freezing the video with those words splashed over Julius’s face, and turned around to look at us.

I was pretty sure Julius’s arm around my waist was the only thing holding me up.

“This is fucked up, Jules.”

“Beyond fucked up,” Julius agreed.

“Keep going. I want to see where this asshole is going with this.”

Felix hesitated for a moment, then nodded and pressed Play again, continuing to read from the screen.

“He has something I want, and I want you to get it for me.”

I dragged in a breath as the video moved to a picture of a painting I vaguely recognized.

“ The Evolution of Man . Goddamnit.” Felix paused the video again and swung around to stare up at Julius.

“It’s all fucking connected, Jules. All of it.” He rubbed his eyes, pushing his glasses up off the bridge of his nose.

“Holy fuck.”

Julius’s face was set in a tight frown as he tried to fit things together.

“How does whoever this is know we have it?”

“Maybe he doesn’t, and he’s trying to use Ethan to find out what we know.”

I pointed at the screen where the progress bar on the video said we were less than halfway through.

“I want to see the rest.”

Felix didn’t hesitate this time, turning back to his laptop and clicking Play.

This time, page after page of internal Grove Core transaction documents filled the screen.

Every single one of them had my name at the bottom, indicating I had approved the transactions.

“Those are the transfers to the offshore accounts you’ve been watching, aren’t they?”

Felix’s face was grim when he nodded.

The video continued.

“Find the painting and reply to this message. You have one week. Fail, and these documents go public.”

The video ended with a black-and-white picture of a dead orca on a beach, the words one week imposed over it in red.

The silence in my office was deafening and oppressive, broken only when Felix slammed his laptop closed.

He disconnected it and shoved it back into his bag, then he was on his feet.

“I need to get home and talk to Marcus. This motherfucker just gave us a deadline.”

Julius held up a hand.

“Wait. We’ll take you.” He let me go and grabbed my shoulders so I was facing him.

“Bring whatever you need. Tell Rebecca you’re working from home for the rest of the week. This asshole is stalking you, Ethan, and I can’t keep you safe here.”

I nodded because he was right, and started to pack up the things I’d need to work from the Hunters’ estate.

When Julius had originally moved the twins and me into his house after the accident, I thought it might have been overkill, but now, after seeing those pictures, the office and my house didn’t feel secure, and I was grateful to have another option.

One that whoever had been following me had failed to figure out so far. Or so I hoped.