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The security office was uncharacteristically bright when they entered. Boone watched as Payton flinched away from the glare, blinking rapidly before recovering enough to move farther into the room.

Remi and West were so engrossed in their tasks, they didn’t even acknowledge their arrival. However, Drake—who sat on a chair between them, looking at something on his phone—spun around, looking almost irritated when he saw the four of them. West and Remi turned then, giving them their full attention. Mac leaned against the wall, and Archer joined him, his back to Mac’s chest.

“Tell me you found something on her phone,” Boone pleaded. “Anything.”

“There was nothing on her phone,” Remi said, sounding oddly excited for someone who was telling them he had been unsuccessful.

Boone huffed out a sigh through his nose. “So, we have nothing? No clues at all?”

“I didn’t say that,” Remi retorted. “It’s what’s not there that’s the interesting part.”

Boone closed his eyes and counted to ten. He was a level-headed person. He had this job thanks to his even temperament and his ability to let things roll off him. Even when those things were a girl blowing up an entire lab or a student and teacher playing sex games in the classroom. But it had been a long day with very little sleep, and someone had tried to bash in his boyfriend’s skull after killing one of his students.

To say he was on edge would be an understatement.

“Remi, darling,” Payton said. “My brain feels two times too big for my skull. I beg you not to talk like the Riddler right now.”

Remi rolled his eyes. “I’m not talking in riddles. I’m telling the truth. It’s what’s not there that’s the interesting part,” he repeated.

“Explain,” Boone barked, grabbing an office chair and planting himself in it.

Payton sank onto his lap, resting his head on Boone’s shoulder. His arms went around Payton’s narrow waist without thought. West arched a brow but said nothing. Drake scoffed. Remi smiled.

“Well, for starters, Navy wasn’t using a cell network to communicate with the bad guys,” Remi said.

“How do you know that?” Payton asked.

“When people make normal calls, there are records. Every single call that goes through a cell tower gets logged—who you called, when, for how long. Even if Navy had erased the call on her phone, the data would still exist in the carrier’s system. But Navy was using VOIP.” When Boone gave him a flat look, he clarified, “Voice Over Internet Protocol. Instead of connecting through a tower, she was connecting through the internet.”

“How does this help us?” Boone asked. “You just said there’s no digital footprint.”

“Oh, there are footprints,” Remi promised. “Just not where most people would look. VOIP calls don’t show up in the usual call history, but they leave digital traces—data packets, network logs, encrypted connections between servers.”

“And you found that?” Mac asked.

Remi shrugged. “Not all of them. But enough. Every call left a ping in the system. They thought they wiped it clean, but nothing really disappears online. I traced the connection logs back to an unregistered VOIP server. That’s how she was talking to them without leaving a trail—except, now, we have one.”

“How does that help us?” Payton asked.

“When I realized she wasn’t using a SIM card, I went into her app history and saw she’d downloaded two apps that were deleted this morning. One was WhatsApp, the app of choice for people who want to keep their private stuff private. The other was a spy app that allowed her to record both sides of a phone conversation.”

“If they were deleted this morning, it had to be the killer,” Archer said. “Trying to cover their tracks.”

Remi nodded. “I also noticed that she had one failed call that lines up with Navy’s meeting with her killer last night. She may have been attempting to contact the killer when they showed up at the rendezvous point.”

“Why would she call them if they were meeting?” Drake asked.

Remi shrugged. “Maybe they were late? Maybe she changed her mind and wanted to bail on the meeting? I don’t think we’ll ever know for sure.”

“Is that it?” Boone asked.

Remi scoffed at him. “I’m just getting started. I used a forensic recovery tool to attempt to retrieve any deleted files and stumbled upon a generic-looking folder labeled ‘user data.’ When I clicked on it, I found a bunch of file names, but no files attached.”

“Why is that important?” Payton asked. “User data sounds pretty generic.”

“It is. By design,” Remi said. “Navy was hiding files there. Better to hide things in plain sight than on a secret folder that could easily be found by the right person.”

“How do you know these files were important?” Boone asked.

It was West who answered. “The file names. She saved them all the same way: year_day_month_VR. We’re assuming VR means voice recording, but that’s just a guess.”

“But the recordings themselves are gone now?” Archer pressed.

“That’s what I thought at first, too,” Remi answered. “That, somehow, the killer had figured out they were being recorded and deleted them. But I don’t think that’s what was happening at all now. I think Navy was deleting them.”

“Why’s that?” Payton asked, shifting his weight on Boone’s lap in a way that made him grunt and grip Payton’s waist a little tighter in warning.

Remi leaned forward, tongue darting out to lick over his bottom lip. “There’s a cloud sync program still running in the background.”

Boone absently wondered when the last time Remi had stopped to eat or have some water was. He was looking a little crazed.

“Navy was uploading these conversations to the cloud?” Payton leaned forward, dragging another grunt from Boone. Drake snickered at Boone’s obvious predicament before returning his attention to Remi.

Remi nodded. “It’s still trying to connect to an external server.”

“What are the chances we could recover those voice recordings from the cloud?” Boone asked.

West shrugged. “We’re not sure yet.”

“I’m attempting to trace the cloud sync process to see where the data was sent,” Remi explained. “If I can do that, I can get into her account and get us the files.”

“So, we just have to wait and see?” Boone asked.

“Not exactly. I have been scanning the phone for the last hour or so looking for anything she may have missed and I found something.”

“Found what?” Boone pressed.

“A scrap of a voice file from last night,” Remi answered. “It’s not great. I ran it through an app to try to clean up the audio, but I don’t think it’s going to get any better than what it is right now.”

Boone’s heart rate accelerated wildly. “Can you play it?”

Remi nodded. “Yeah.” They waited impatiently as he pulled up the voice file on the large screen overhead, then looked at each of them. “Ready?”

Mac and Archer floated closer. Everyone else seemed to lean in instinctively, like that would help them hear it better. The slow, raspy whisper coming through the speaker was the stuff of nightmares. It took Boone a moment to realize the person on the other side of the line was using a voice-disguising app.

“—Navy. Look at you. So much trouble for nothing.”

“That’s it?” Payton asked.

“Play it again,” Boone demanded.

They played it once more. Then again. The voice was saying something just before Navy’s name but it was too difficult to understand.

“What are they saying?” Payton asked. “You hear it, too, right? Just before Navy’s name?”

Remi isolated the small sound then attempted to amplify it. But no matter how many times they listened, it wasn’t any clearer. “Is it initials?” Boone asked. “It sounds like I.A., doesn’t it?”

“Maybe it’s just the last part of a bigger word?” Payton suggested.

“We can only speculate. Maybe it will be easier when we hear the entire conversation,” Mac said.

“How long is that gonna ta—” Mac started, only for a loud beep to cut him off.

Remi spun around in his chair, looking almost manic. “Hopefully not long now.”

“What is it?” Payton asked. “What did it find?”

Remi grinned, looking at the others. “It found her cloud storage. Now, I just need to log in.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to crack her password?” Drake asked.

“If I’m right, I won’t have to,” Remi said, typing in Navy’s school email address for user name then a series of keystrokes under password. He gave a triumphant shout as the app opened and a list of files appeared—ten or so over the last few months, all dated with the same title names as her phone.

“Why was that so easy?” Mac asked.

“Navy approached me a while ago about upgrading her laptop for her. I noticed she had a bunch of malware so I asked if I could clean up her system. She handed over her password like it was nothing.”

“You were fixing her laptop,” Mac pointed out.

Remi scoffed. “When I told her she shouldn’t be so quick to give that information up, she joked that she was the type of person who used the same password for everything. I joked back about how I could now ruin her life with that information so she should probably change it. She just waved her hand like I was crazy.”

“Yeah, that’s…not smart,” Archer murmured, like he was struggling to say something not unkind.

“You’d be shocked at how many people use passwords like God12345 and things like that. They’re very cavalier with information that, in the wrong hands, could destroy them. I encouraged her to change her password to something more complex, or at least use multiple passwords, but she said she wouldn’t remember them.”

“Well, I guess it’s lucky for us she was a dumbass,” Drake muttered.

Remi shook his head but looked at Boone. “Which voice file do you want to start with?”

“The most recent one,” Boone said. “Then we can go back to the beginning.”

Remi gave a stilted nod, his hands looking a little shaky as he clicked on the voice file.

The first thing they heard was a click.

“You shouldn’t be calling me.”

Even with the voice disguiser, the killer’s irritation was obvious. Boone’s lip curled at the disturbing whisper. Navy was clearly used to it. She ignored the pleasantries just as the person on the other side of the line did.

“You said Remi was the only one who would look bad.”

Payton had mentioned hearing Navy saying something to that effect last night as well.

“If you had done your job in the first place, we wouldn’t have been put in that position. You were supposed to bring him into the fold. It was your only job. Once he created that backdoor, we had no choice but to discredit him before he exposed us.”

Navy made a frustrated sound. “I did everything I could to get him to like me, but it was useless. It’s not my fault he doesn’t like vagina.”

Drake snickered as the tips of Remi’s ears practically glowed with embarrassment.

“Excuses, excuses,” the other one taunted.

“He’s too hung up on that ivy-eating psychopath—” This time, it was Remi who snorted; Payton too. “You didn’t have to make me look like some kind of frat-boy rapist. They’re calling my family. I could get kicked out of school. My parents are going to come here and see that video. All for what? Because I couldn’t get some gay guy to fall in love with me?”

The person on the other side of the call scoffed. “Do you think we’re punishing you because you couldn’t seduce one stupid boy?”

Navy was silent for a moment, then asked, “What else could it be?”

“A warning. To the both of you.”

“What did I do?” Navy cried. “I’ve done everything you asked me to do.”

“Do you think we’re not tracking your every move? Did you think you could do anything within our system and we wouldn’t see you? Your skills are rudimentary at best.”

There was a long beat of silence before Navy managed to choke out, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m not snooping.”

There was a disappointed tsking sound. “That’s not true, now is it?

Navy made a frustrated noise. “I don’t know what you think you found, but you’re wrong. You’ve got the whole school turning against me. Because why? You think I was in the school’s system? I’m not a hacker. Isn’t that the whole reason you wanted Remi in the first place?”

The laugh on the other end of the line reminded Boone of a hissing snake .

“We just wanted to remind you that you can’t outsmart us and that you certainly better not even think about betraying us.”

Us? Payton and Boone exchanged glances.

“I don’t even know who you are. How do you think I could betray you?” Navy whined, sounding baffled.

“Navy. Navy. Navy,” the voice crooned. “Your acting skills are terrible. Maybe you should be honest with yourself and with us before you get yourself killed.”

“Don’t threaten me,” Navy snapped, her confusion evaporating in an instant.

“Or what?” they taunted. “You can’t hurt us.”

Boone tensed. They were baiting her, dangling her own ego in front of her, leading her right where they wanted her to go.

“I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Navy countered, like she was trying for smugness but unable to control the way her voice wavered. “I-I know everything.”

Christ. Just shut up. Why hadn’t she come to him when this started? What could they possibly have on her that would make her a willing pawn in whatever it was they wanted from Remi?

Another ss-ss-ss sound came from the speaker, then another laugh. “Aye hey, Navy. Look at you. So much trouble for nothing.”

“Don’t be condescending,” Navy shot back. “I know what you’re doing. I know why you’re doing it. I have…proof.”

She wavered a bit during that last part. Navy was way out of her depth with whoever was on the other side of that line and they both knew it. Navy signed her own death warrant by revealing she had proof.

“Oh? Do tell? What kind of proof?” the voice asked, sounding bored.

“Access logs. Unauthorized transfers. The off-network calls. I have copies of everything.”

“Bullshit,” they countered.

“Try me,” Navy said, this time sounding far too sure of herself. “I have everything I need to burn you.”

Another disconcerting laugh . “Yet, here you are, calling me. Why not just take all that information and do it, then? Hmm?”

They had a point. If Navy intended to sell out whoever she worked for, she was stupid to give them a chance to silence her.

“ Oh, that’s right. You can’t. If we go down, she goes down, too. How much are you willing to sacrifice?”

“I just want what I was promised,” Navy said. “You said Remi would look like the bad guy. Instead, they all think he’s some kind of victim now.”

Silence stretched with only the sound of someone’s modulated breathing.

When they finally spoke again, they seemed…disgusted.

“This isn’t a game. This isn’t about petty revenge. This is about righting a wrong. You have no idea who you’re messing with.”

A wrong? What wrong were they righting?

“Oh, please. I fell for your bullshit at first, but now, I see this for what it really is.”

“And what’s that?”

“Money. This is about you picking up where Kendrick left off. This is about you getting rich. And I don’t even care. I just want you to make sure my mother stays out of jail like you promised. But, so far, you haven’t done shit. So, maybe I should just let the others know there’s a traitor in the school.”

“You’re playing a very adult game. I suggest you destroy whatever evidence you think you have. Before it’s too late.”

Navy scoffed. “Why would I ever do that? It’s my insurance policy. If anything happens to me, everything gets dropped for the whole school to see. Even I know how to do that.”

Another long string of silence ensued before the person said, “ Fine, you win. Let’s meet in the common room tonight. I’ll send you the time. I’m sure we can come to some kind of…resolution that satisfies both parties.”

“Good,” Navy said. “But don’t forget, if I don’t check in by a certain time, every file will drop. Got it?”

“Don’t be late,” was their terse reply.

When the recording ended, the six of them stared at each other.

Archer shook his head, scrubbing the back of his neck with his hand. “Fine, I’ll say it. What the fuck?”

“Does anyone know what Navy’s mother might be in trouble for?” West asked.

“She’s an art broker, right?” Payton asked Boone.

“I believe so, yes. Her father owns Nexus holdings, which owns pretty much every major brand on grocery store shelves today,” Boone said.

“Let’s listen to the other recordings,” Payton suggested, nudging Remi.

The smaller boy nodded, then clicked the first file.

It opened with a single question. A highly modulated voice asking, “Have you thought about it?”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

Navy. She sounded suspicious.

An almost robotic laugh. “What choice do you have?”

“Not good enough,” Navy countered. “You’re asking me to betray my country.”

There was a weird exhalation, like someone sighing in exasperation. “It’s not that dire. This is how the espionage game is played. Nobody’s innocent. Especially your mother. But if you don’t mind her being humiliated on a global scale, we can find someone else to help us.”

“Why are you doing this? What’s so important about Remi, anyway?”

Remi startled at that, his gaze snapping to Drake’s, then Boone’s. It wasn’t the first mention of his name, but it was the first implication that Remi was something more than an afterthought.

“We’re recruiting,” the voice said.

“Recruiting?” Remi muttered.

“Then why not go straight to him?”

“We both know he’s not the type to bend the rules. We need you to help us ease him into hearing our proposal.”

“Why me? ”

“Because it’s a win-win for both of us. We get Remi and you get your mother’s name cleared.”

“I don’t even know him that well. I’m pretty sure the idiot fell in love with his asset.”

Once more, Remi flushed crimson, looking everywhere but at the asset in question. Drake was staring a hole into the side of Remi’s face.

“Well, that’s too bad for you. If you want to clear your mother’s name, you’ll need to get us Remi. It’s that simple.”

“Who even are you?” Navy asked, clearly reeling from suddenly being thrown into this.

“Pray you never find out.”

There was a click, then the recording ended.

“So, Remi was the target all along?” Payton asked.

“But why?” Remi added. “Who are these people? What would they want with me?”

“It seems pretty obvious they want your hacking skills,” West said. “I told you, someone with your talent is a huge asset. You’re honestly wasted as a handler. You should be working for us in an entirely different capacity.”

“Let’s listen to the next recording,” Remi said faintly, double-clicking the next file.

“Is this a test?”

“If it is, you’re failing miserably,” the voice said. Less mechanical this time—more like some kind of dramatic movie villain.

Whoever they were chose a new voice each conversation. Was that on purpose or just artistic license?

“No, I mean…is this some kind of loyalty test? Like, are you with the school, checking to see if I can be trusted?”

The person on the other end chuckled. “If I was, would I tell you?”

“No, I guess not,” Navy muttered, sounding defeated.

“Since this isn’t a test, I will tell you that your mother’s time is running out. It’s only a matter of time before people realize art isn’t the only thing she’s brokering. Have you made any inroads with Remi?”

“Sort of, I guess. I asked him to fix my laptop to try to make friends. I convinced him to go out to the bar with us on Friday. I tried flirting with him, but he didn’t seem to notice.”

Drake snorted, a scowl of derision on his face.

“Listen, our clients are getting antsy. Kendrick’s death fucked up everything. We need you to get us Remi so that he can get us what we need to get back in business. Keep us posted.”

“What does Kendrick have to do with me?” Remi asked, bewildered. “What business? What was he up to?”

The answer crashed down on Boone’s head like an anvil, all the pieces starting to click into place. “The servers.”

Payton turned enough to look at Boone. “What?”

Boone looked at West. “What’s the one place on this whole campus that only Kendrick could access?”

West’s gaze flew to the door of the server room. “You think this is about the air-gapped servers?”

Boone nodded. “What else is worth this level of effort?”

“But they’re attacking the school’s servers. The air-gapped servers aren’t accessible through there or anywhere,” West reminded him. “They have to have figured that out by now.”

Remi gasped. “But the security system is.”

“What do you mean?” Payton asked. “What servers?”

Mac and Archer seemed confused as well.

West sighed. “When the school was built, Kendrick removed several servers from a secure location and moved them here. He said they contained information so highly classified that it could prove catastrophic in the wrong hands. He had me build one of the most elaborate security systems ever created for something like this.”

“The air-gapped servers aren’t attached to any network. That makes them unhackable remotely,” Remi explained. “In order to access them, you have to actually hardwire in. But to do that, they’d have to be able to get into that room and past West’s security system.”

“Do they not know they can’t access them remotely?” Payton asked.

“They know,” Remi said. “They have to know. But Boone’s right. They’re not trying to get to the servers. They’re trying to get to the security systems that control the server room, which are on the school’s servers.”

“That seems like a dumb call,” Drake muttered. “Who would do that?”

“It only works on a network, dumbass,” West retorted. “But they don’t seem to understand that getting past the door codes—if they could even do it—would only drop them in the middle of a trap unless they understood how to proceed. Whoever is trying to get into those servers clearly doesn’t know the extent of the system.”

“Say that’s true. That these…people are trying to hack their way into the server room. Why do they want Remi?” Payton pressed.

Remi huffed out a disbelieving laugh. “I think their hacker keeps failing. They’re either not skilled enough or they need someone who can do it from inside the school. They think I can crack West’s security system.”

“Can you?” Mac asked.

Remi shrugged. “Maybe. I’ve never tried it before.”

“So, we think some kind of hostile foreign government blackmailed Navy into trying to seduce Remi into joining their faction so they can download dangerous government secrets to do…what? Sell them to the highest bidder?” Archer asked.

“Are we going to gloss over the part where it seemed like Kendrick was already working with them?” Payton cut in. “Do we think Kendrick moved the servers here so that he could auction off classified information for foreign governments?”

“I wouldn’t put it past him,” Archer muttered. “He was a piece of shit through and through. What better way to not get caught than to move the servers off-site so he could be the only one with access?”

Payton let out a thoughtful hum. “The person making these deep fake videos…are they the hacker? They have to be, right? So, it’s not a student. This isn’t an inside job with the exception of Navy, who downloaded the rubber ducky that gave them access in the first place?”

“Does that mean we need to notify the higher-ups?” Archer asked. “We certainly have to notify Thomas and Molly.”

Remi frowned, then turned back to the monitors, returning to banging away on his keyboard. “Navy couldn’t have been the mole.”

“Why’s that?” Boone asked. “It makes sense that they would go for her if she was someone they could manipulate into recruiting you. No?”

“Yeah, but that’s the thing. Do you see these numbers here?” Remi pointed to a string of numbers on the screen.

“The IP addresses,” Boone noted, satisfied there was at least one thing they didn’t have to explain to him. “They’re the same.”

“Exactly. The calls were coming from inside the house,” Remi said. “Whoever is trying to recruit me didn’t just sneak onto a highly guarded military base last night just to kill Navy. They’ve been here the whole time.”