Page 65 of Reluctant Bride

“Dawson.” She doesn’t look up. “Sage’s credentials. Not the cover ones. They just logged into a restricted Sullivan Transport system. From inside this house. This office. Nine minutes ago.”

Sage goes very still beside me.

“That’s impossible,” she says. “I haven’t touched that terminal all day.”

Mackenzie finally looks up, and there’s nothing in her face that makes either of us feel better about what comes next.

“I know,” she says. “That’s the problem.”

TWENTY-ONE

SAGE

The evidence says I broke into a restricted Sullivan Transport system nine minutes ago, and the worst part isn’t that it’s fake. It’s that everyone standing in this office already has a decent reason to believe I would.

Mackenzie’s screen is still lit on the desk in Knox’s office, right where she set it down when she told Dawson that’s the problem, and nobody’s moved since. My pulse is louder than anything else in the room, adrenaline that hasn’t caught up yet to the fact that thirty seconds ago I was standing in my family’s kitchen with my hands fisted in Dawson’s shirt, and now I’m standing here being watched like a suspect.

The room filled up fast once Mackenzie made the call. Knox and Holt were already here. Gideon arrived before Mackenzie even texted Dawson, which means somebody phoned him before either of us knew there was anything to report. Tate and West came in behind Dawson and me, laptops already open before they’d cleared the doorway. Maren stepped ahead of both of them like she already knew she’d need to referee. Erin’s dropped onto the arm of the sofa, boots crossed, watching the room like a shooting range, patient, already sorting who’s a threat and who isn’t.

“Walk me through it.” Knox stays on his feet, arms crossed, using the voice he uses on hostile witnesses and difficult horses. “From the top.”

“There’s nothing to walk through. I was in the kitchen. With Dawson.” I don’t look away from my brother while I say it, because looking away is what guilty people do and I’ve spent my whole life learning not to look like anything I’m not. “I haven’t touched a Sullivan Transport terminal. I photograph his desk, Knox. I don’t need a login to do that.”

Tate’s already halfway into the laptop Mackenzie handed off to him, thumbs moving fast enough that the keys sound like rain on a tin roof. “Her badge cleared a restricted tier. Not the general account she’d have as Dawson’s wife. Not the cover credential I set up for her either, the one that only pulls border contracts and freight manifests. This is her real one. The deep tier. Financial routing, federal exposure files, the stuff even most of dispatch can’t see.” He doesn’t look up from the screen. “Nobody’s supposed to be able to use that without swiping the physical card.”

“Which somebody did.” West’s already cross-referencing something on his own screen from the corner, without being asked, as he’s been doing since the fence line. “Give me a minute.”

My dad breaks the silence next, and I feel it land in my spine before he even finishes the sentence, because I know exactly which direction he’s about to point this.

“You’ve had legitimate access to Sullivan systems since the wedding.” He says it like a fact instead of an accusation, which is worse, because Gideon Blackwater has never once in his life needed to raise his voice to make something sound like a verdict. “That was the arrangement.”

“That was your arrangement.” I don’t blink. “You want to be the one who explains to this room what that arrangement actually was, or should I?”

Tate’s fingers go still on the keyboard, which is the closest thing to silence Tate is capable of. Knox doesn’t move. Even Erin sits forward an inch, boots uncrossing.

“Say it,” Dawson says, quiet, from where he’s leaning against the doorframe with his bandaged arm tucked against his ribs. He’s not asking me to. He’s telling me I’m allowed to.

So I do.

“Paper only.” I look at my father while I say it, not at anyone else, because he’s the one who’s earned every word of it landing directly on him. “That’s the condition Gideon gave me the night of Knox’s wedding. Live in the boundary house with Dawson. Learn his routes, his contracts, his federal exposure. Bring it home. Feelings weren’t just off the table. He made it treason.” I keep my voice level, like I’m reading a hostile deposition back to the room that produced it. “I’ve been photographing Dawson’s desk since the first day I lived there. That’s the whole operation. A camera roll and a folder I’ve never once shown anyone but him.”

Tate lets out a whistle, still not looking up. “Turned his own daughter into a spy on her honeymoon.” A beat, thumbs still moving. “Efficient.”

“It wasn’t a honeymoon, Tate.” I don’t have the energy left to make it sharp. It just comes out tired.

“It was absolutely supposed to be one.” Finally he glances up, just long enough to catch my eye. “That’s what makes it worse.”

“Dawson already knew,” I say, before anyone in the room can decide that’s news. “He brought it up himself, riding the fence line, calm as anything. Said he’d noticed things on his desk sitting half an inch off from where he left them. He wasn’t angry about it. He’d already decided to leave things out for me on purpose instead of catching me at it. That part isn’t new. That part we settled between us days ago.”

Dawson pushes off the doorframe. He crosses halfway into the room, close enough now that I catch the shift in him before he says a word, jaw set, eyes gone dark, done performing for anybody watching.

“What’s new,” I say, and this part comes out rougher than I mean it to, “is that he never told me why he already knew to expect it.”

Every head in the room turns to him.

“Declan gave me the mirror order the same night Gideon gave you yours.” He says it plain, no performance in it, no attempt to make it sound smaller than it is. “Learn what Blackwater’s actually planning to do with the mountain access. Feed her whatever keeps her thinking she’s winning. Everything I left on that desk for you the first two days was on his list.”

“I watched him say it to you at the wedding. I’m not stupid, Dawson. I knew he gave you something.” My voice cracks, and I let it, because I don’t have the energy to sand it smooth before anyone hears it. “What I didn’t know was that you did it. I thought those files were you. I thought leaving them out for me was the one honest thing you’d done since the courthouse, and the whole time I was carrying your father’s homework home to mine.”