Page 90 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

The house lights have gone softer with the hour, the main office illuminated mostly by the desk lamp at her elbow and the cool glow of the monitor in front of her.

Papers are spread across the surface in a pattern that still irritates and impresses me. Her camera sits beside the keyboard.

One hand rests on a stack of vendor files while the other moves across a calculator with quick, efficient taps.

She doesn’t notice me at first.

That’s unusual.

I stand in the doorway a second longer, watching the line of concentration in her face, the slight furrow between her brows, the thumb of her left hand tapping once against the camera body as she thinks.

Then I speak. “Come with me.”

Her head lifts, attention locking on target. “What happened?”

“I need you to come to my office. Now.”

When we reach my office, I open the door, step aside just enough to let her in, then close it firmly behind us.

She turns slowly, taking in the room as if she hasn’t already been in here before. It’s not personal curiosity. It’s situational awareness.

Exit points. Desk. Computer. Filing cabinets. Distance between us.

“What’s this?” she asks.

I move to the desk and wake the monitor. “Verification.”

Her eyes narrow. “That sounds ominous.”

“It isn’t.”

That’s not entirely true, but I’m not interested in dramatics. The situation is what it is regardless of tone.

I pull up the access logs I isolated a while back and angle the screen toward her without surrendering the chair.

She steps in beside me, close enough that I catch the scent of espresso and something softer underneath it. Vanilla, maybe. Rain.

I ignore that.

Mostly.

“What am I looking at?” she asks.

I point to the highlighted line. “Vendor file access. One of the accounts you flagged. At a weird time.”

She leans in. “Time?”

“Two-thirteen in the morning.”

Her gaze flicks across the rest of the line, then lower, then back again. Processing.

“And the credential used was mine?”

“Yes.”

“I wasn’t accessing anything at that time.”

“No,” I agree. “You shouldn’t be able to access this data either. Not without authentication.”