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Something pulled me from sleep. Not a noise—the absence of one. The constant hum of my monitors had gone silent.

I opened my eyes. The couch. Katherine's blanket over me. My phone showed 3:47 AM.

The encryption pattern.

I'd been dreaming about it, my subconscious working through the problem while I slept. I'd been looking at it wrong.

I threw off the blanket and crossed to my workstation as quietly as possible. Katherine's bedroom door was closed, no light underneath. Good. She needed sleep more than I did.

My fingers flew across the keyboard, pulling up the malware signature I'd been analyzing for days.

There. The custom protocol wasn't military issue. It was modified military, adapted for civilian infrastructure. That narrowed the field considerably. Whoever built this had training but wasn't currently serving. Former NSA or DoD contractor, maybe. Someone with clearance who'd gone private sector.

I ran the signature through a different database, one Thompson had given me access to off the books. Cross-referenced coding styles, encryption methods, implementation patterns.

The search took eleven minutes.

Russell Dunlap.

I stared at the driver's license photo on my screen. Mid-thirties, thinning brown hair, unremarkable features. Didn’t look anything like the man from Pearl’s parking lot footage. Former employee of a now-defunct Bay Area tech start-up with undisclosed backing, laid off three years ago. Current address in Burbank.

My phone showed 3:02 AM. I texted Simon anyway.

"Got a name. Russell Dunlap. Need eyes on his apartment ASAP. Burbank address attached."

The reply came back in ninety seconds. Simon never really slept either.

"On it. Krause owes me. He's fifteen minutes from there."

I pulled up everything I could find on Russell Dunlap while I waited. LinkedIn profile, barely updated. Facebook account dormant for two years. No Twitter, no Instagram, no digital footprint beyond the basics. The guy was a ghost.

Twenty-three minutes later, my phone buzzed.

"Apartment's occupied but abandoned. Dishes in sink, food in the fridge, mail piled up. No computer equipment. No electronics at all."

My hands clenched into fists.

Russell had run. Taken his equipment and disappeared. Either he knew I was closing in, or someone had warned him.

I typed back to Simon. "He took the evidence with him."

"Figured. Keep digging. We'll find him."

I set down my phone and stared at Russell Dunlap's face on the screen. The unremarkable features that could disappear into any crowd. The bland expression that revealed nothing about the man underneath.

Somewhere out there, Russell Dunlap was sitting in front of a computer with deepfake files ready to destroy Katherine's career. And I had no idea where he was or how to find him.

The sun wouldn't rise for another three hours. I pulled up my search algorithms and started over from the beginning.

Hours blurred together. I barely noticed when the sky outside began to lighten, shifting from black to deep blue to pale gray.

At some point, exhaustion won. My head dropped forward, cheek pressing against the keyboard. The space bar engaged, filling the screen with a line of blank characters.

A knock at the door jerked me awake.

I lifted my head, disoriented. My neck screamed in protest. The clock showed 9:17 AM.