Page 37 of What We Burn

Everyone looks at me like they’re surprised I made a sound.

“He’s not trying to hack us. Or find the body. He’s trying to break her.” I look at Holden. “That’s not tech. That’s cruelty.”

Milo points at me without looking up. “What he said.”

“Has Odin’s team found anything on Stephen yet?” Micah asks. He’s looking at the floor, but the question is aimed at the room.

Eli is the first to answer. “The number he was using to contact Brock is⁠—”

He stops talking the moment Holden’s gaze cuts to him—a look that says not you without making a sound.

Eli closes his mouth.

“They’re stuck until Stephen makes a mistake they can track,” Holden finishes. “Odin told me at the hospital it’s all a dead end. I’ve been checking in with Fenrir daily, doing everything I can to find a thread, but . . . ” He shakes his head.

There’s nothing more to say. Nothing any of us doesn’t already know—Stephen was the only contact in Brock’s phone Odin’s team couldn’t account for. Brock kept him completely separate. No trail. Nothing.

“I’m doing everything I can too. But this guy is a serious pain in the butt,” Milo says. “We have exactly three things—he knew Brock, they were in some weird secret relationship, nobody that knew Brock admits to knowing Stephen. Not even Tyler, the self-proclaimed bestie.”

“And now that secret boyfriend is coming for our girlfriend,” Micah says.

“Worse than that, he knows what happened to her.” Holden’s voice tightens. “That text was specific. Just like the method he used to hurt her was specific. He knows what Brock was doing to her that night, and he knows how we stopped him—” He pauses. Resets. “That’s not a stranger on the other end of a phone. That’s someone who’s been watching. Not just Sage, either. All of us.”

“The question is how,” Eli says. “How is this guy watching without us seeing?”

The garage goes quiet. As though everyone is holding their breath, thinking the same thing and nobody wants to say it first.

“Milo.” Holden’s voice has dropped into that low, flat register that means he’s about to ask a question he needs the right answer to. “Your clone. Your server. How sure are you that it’s secure?”

Milo’s fingers stop. “It’s secure.”

“How sure.”

“It’s secure, Holden. I built it myself. Multi-layered encryption, isolated network, rotating access keys⁠—”

“You built it yourself. Which means you know exactly how it works. Which means if someone was good enough they’d have a single point of failure to target. You.”

Milo’s head comes up. It’s the first time tonight he’s looked anything but focused. He looks offended. “Nobody’s in my system.”

“You’re checking from a laptop on a crate in a garage at three in the morning.” Micah’s voice is quiet but pointed. “Can you actually verify that from here?”

The pause is a fraction too long.

“No,” Milo admits. “Not fully. I can see surface-level access logs remotely, and nothing’s flagged. But if someone breached at the server level—the actual hardware—I wouldn’t see that from a remote connection. I’d need to be in the room. Hands on the box.”

“Then you need to go and check,” Holden says. “First thing.”

“Fine. But if I’m checking my servers, then we need to check everything.” Milo hesitates. Rubs the back of his neck. “All devices. All your phones, laptops, tablets. Anything that could be hacked. If someone spoofed Brock’s number to text Sage, then I want to make sure nobody’s sitting on any of our devices listening in—especially on Sage’s phone.”

“I’m fine if you take my stuff,” Micah says. “But you can’t take Sage’s without telling her why.”

“I know. I’ll talk to her about it when she wakes up.”

“No,” Holden says immediately.

“Holden—”

“We’re not telling her. Not yet. She’s still recovering. Still having nightmares⁠—”