Page 14 of Rogue Hope (Hope Landing: New Recruits #4)

Three hours later, Zara looked up from her array of monitors to realize the Knight Tactical cyber lab smelled of coffee, electronics, and tension.

The overhead lights had been dimmed to reduce screen glare, casting blue-white illumination over Finn’s hunched form at the neighboring workstation—close enough to communicate, far enough apart to maintain emotional distance.

Even with the buffer, the tension radiating between the two of them could have powered the entire building. Maybe the whole Hope Landing airport.

He leaned toward her and stared at her screen. “You’re doing it wrong.”

The comment was so unexpected her fingers stilled above the keyboard.

Four monitors displayed cascading lines of code, network pathways, and running analytics—the complex digital pathway they’d been pursuing in their hunt for a way to find a tracer to embed in the intel they would deliver to Cipher.

“Uh. No. I’m not. I’ve been breaking encryptions since before most hackers knew what a firewall was.” She resumed typing without looking at him. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Not saying you don’t.” His voice remained frustratingly calm. “Just suggesting that maybe Cipher’s patterns have evolved in the past seven years.”

“And I’m suggesting that your hovering is distracting.”

“Not hovering. Observing.”

She gestured toward his abandoned monitor without breaking focus on her code sequence. “How about you handle your end of things? If you don’t figure out how Vanguard’s tracking us, this whole plan of yours fails.”

Among the million other ways this sketchy op could detonate in their faces.

There were too many ifs … and too little time to cover them all.

Despite Finn’s optimism, she had to design a Trojan horse good enough for Cipher to miss, and then hack into the most heavily defended network she’d ever come across.

And she had seven hours left to do it.

Finn returned to his station without argument, though she could feel his eyes periodically checking her progress. The weight of his attention made her hyperaware of every keystroke, every decision pathway—like taking a qualification test with the instructor breathing down her neck.

She was contemplating getting up to stretch and grab another mug of coffee when Finn grunted, pushing back from his station. “Whelp, we’ve got a good news bad news situation going.”

She waved a hand in an impatient signal to continue.

“Good news is they’re not inside your system.” He winced. “Bad news? They’re using external surveillance. Directional mics, thermal imaging, possibly even lip-reading technology.”

He pointed to his monitor bank. “See here? That signal’s repeating on an unusual frequency. Not standard commercial tech. That’s Vanguard’s signature. Similar to what I encountered in Belgrade last year.”

“What kind of range are we talking about?”

“Depending on equipment quality, up to two kilometers with clear line of sight.”

She assessed the building’s surroundings mentally.

Two kilometers encompassed most of downtown Hope Landing, including several tall buildings with excellent vantage points.

The team had already deployed countermeasures around the Knight Tactical building itself, but because of the constant air traffic swirling around them, their surveillance perimeter only extended about half a kilometer.

“If I can isolate the frequency pattern,” she said, fingers flying across the keyboard, “we might be able to triangulate the transmission source. Then the team can head out and shut it down.”

“Careful. That frequency modulation looks like?—”

“I know what I’m doing.” She cut him off.

A subtle shift in the data pattern caught her attention first—almost imperceptible, but to her trained eye, alarming. The trace wasn’t just analyzing the signal anymore; it was being analyzed in return.

Her fingers slammed across the keyboard, initiating emergency shutdown procedures. “Kill your connection. Now.”

To his credit, Finn didn’t question or hesitate. His station went dark instantly as he executed a hard shutdown.

“They’re backtracking our trace,” she explained, working furiously to sever the digital connection before Vanguard could pinpoint their precise network architecture.

“How far have they penetrated?” Finn was beside her, all pretense of maintaining distance abandoned in the face of immediate threat.

“Too far.” Red warning indicators flashed across her primary screen as the counter-intrusion measures struggled to contain the breach. “They’re mapping our system architecture. Identifying vulnerabilities.”

The taste of adrenaline—metallic and sharp—flooded her mouth as her fingers raced across the keys, executing command sequences designed to fragment their digital footprint.

The room felt too warm, the air too thin, as the implications crystallized.

This wasn’t just surveillance; it was active penetration testing.

Preparation for something bigger.

He lunged up, heading for her station. “We should cut power to your terminal too. Hard disconnect everything.”

She threw a hand up to stop him. “Can’t.

Not yet.” She was three steps ahead, implementing a specialized defense framework she’d designed for exactly this scenario.

“If we disconnect now, they’ll know exactly what security measures we have in place.

I need to feed them garbage first. They need to think they got something solid. ”

Heart hammering against her ribs, she built and deployed a false system architecture—a sophisticated shell program that would present Vanguard’s intrusion team with plausible but entirely fictional security sequences.

The pressure behind her eyes intensified with each passing second, the screen’s blue light burning into her retinas as she raced against an unseen opponent.

“There,” she breathed finally, executing the final command sequence. “Deception package deployed. Now I can disconnect.”

Finn reached past her and hit the emergency cutoff switch before she could protest, plunging her workstation into darkness. The abrupt silence of cooling fans and the absence of the screens’ glow left momentary disorientation in its wake.

“That was too close,” he said quietly in the dimness.

“No kidding.” Her hands trembled slightly with the aftermath of adrenaline as she leaned back in her chair. “They weren’t just watching us. They were waiting for us to initiate a trace.”

“Trap was set before we even started.” The grudging respect in his voice was unmistakable. “They anticipated our moves.”

“Because someone told them what to expect.” She couldn’t keep the accusation from her tone as she swiveled to face him in the dim emergency lighting. “Someone who knows exactly how I operate.”

His expression hardened. “Don’t even go there.”

“You’re the common denominator,” she pressed, the fear of the near breach fueling her suspicion. “You worked with Cipher. You know my methods. You conveniently appeared right before these threats escalated.”

“If I were working with Cipher,” Finn said with dangerous quietness, “I wouldn’t have immediately disconnected my system when you identified the counter-intrusion. I would have let you lead them straight to our network core.”

The logic was sound, which only intensified her frustration. “Then how did they anticipate our exact approach?”

“Because Cipher has been studying you,” Finn said simply. “Just like he’s been studying me. Just like he studies everyone he considers either an asset or a threat. This isn’t about me betraying you—it’s about him being ten steps ahead of both of us.”

She turned away, unwilling to concede the point directly but unable to dismiss it entirely.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket, breaking the tense silence. She extracted it cautiously, half-expecting another message from Cipher. Instead, she found a group text from the team.

Deke: Surveillance countermeasures fully deployed. No physical approach detected within 500m perimeter.

Kenji: Current office pool: 3-1 odds Z&F make it through prep phase without one murdering the other. Any takers?

Griffin: Put me down for $50 on mutual tolerance. Barely.

Ronan: Focus, people.

Despite herself, the corner of her mouth twitched upward.

A second text arrived, this one personal, from Izzy.

Heard you’ve got a blast from the past situation happening. Scale of 1-10, how badly do you need me to cut vacation short and come referee? I’ve got my “grown-ups behave” whistle packed just in case. xo

The unexpected message released some of the pressure that had been building behind her ribs. Even from a California beach, Izzy’s unfailing support remained a constant.

When Zara looked up from her phone, she found Finn watching her, his expression unreadable.

“We need to change tactics,” she said, deliberately steering away from personal accusations. “They’re expecting a direct response, so we give them something else.”

“Passive monitoring instead of active pursuit. Set digital tripwires rather than chase their signal.”

“Exactly.” She reached for the system restart switch, her mind already mapping out the revised approach. “Let them think they’ve scared us off. Meanwhile, we prepare a different kind of welcome for next time.”

As the systems hummed back to life around them, she felt the weight of more than just the immediate technical challenge.

Her medication schedule had been disrupted by the emergency meeting and subsequent cyber battle.

The persistent body aches warned of consequences she’d have to manage later, away from observant eyes.

The lupus remained her secret—one she intended to keep until this operation concluded. The team needed her focused, capable, not distracted by concerns about her health. Finn especially didn’t need any additional information that might be interpreted as vulnerability.

“Ready to get back to constructing the tracer?” Finn asked, his voice neutral but not unkind. “Timer’s running.”

She straightened her shoulders, pushing away physical discomfort through sheer force of will. “On it.”

The screens brightened, code sequences resumed, and they settled back into their uneasy partnership—two expert operators with shared history and divergent agendas, united only by the common enemy hunting them both.