Page 93 of Ironwood Ranch Cowboys

This is what she does. She sees structure beyond surface. She doesn’t just read data; she interprets how data behaves under pressure.

She flips to another page, then another, organizing them in fast, logical layers across the desk. “Cross-reference these against the access dates.”

I do.

The overlap is immediate.

Unauthorized file opens within twenty-four hours of payment approvals. Sometimes before. Sometimes after. Never random.

Always adjacent.

“Not curiosity,” she says.

“No.”

“Maintenance.”

“Yes.”

Shit. “They’re checking the trail.”

Or modifying it.

I don’t say that immediately because once it’s said, the room changes.

I open the deeper metadata extract and bring up file revision behavior. We both go still. Not all the records were merely accessed. Two were altered.

One had attached document labels adjusted. One had internal notation removed and reentered in a different field to preserve visible continuity while breaking search consistency.

The precision of it makes my stomach turn, because that isn’t guesswork. That’s someone who understands exactly where the system can be manipulated without setting it off.

I hear Annie inhale. “Okay, that’s bad.”

“That’s one description.”

She cocks a brow. “You have a more precise one?”

“Yes.” She waits. “This person knows how my system works.”

I lean back, adjusting my watch with more force than necessary.

“These changes avoid common alerts. They don’t disturb balances enough to flag. They preserve visual continuity for casual review. They redirect attention without severing the chain entirely.”

“Because if the chain vanished, someone would notice?”

“Yes.” She sits back too, widening her angle on the problem. “So we’re looking at someone careful and experienced. Not greedy in a messy way.”

“Right.”

“Methodical enough to understand how to take money without making the loss look like loss.”

I look at her profile as she says it.

The precision of her thought process should be purely satisfying. In professional terms, it is. There’s very little I value more than competence under pressure.

The fact that watching her do this produces a second, less professional response is inconvenient.

“The money bleeds out in increments,” I say. “Small enough individually to avoid notice. Consistent enough collectively to be intentional.”