Page 81

I looked at him.

"I didn't mention it before because I thought it was an internal error. I'd been going back through the project files. Someone accessed the shared drive two Saturdays ago and made a change to the drainage document. Small change. The kind of thing you'd only catch if you were looking for it."

"Who has access to the drive?"

"Our team. Harvey's office. The civil engineer." He paused. "And anyone who got into the civil engineer's system."

Code Drakos was going to have a busy week.

I picked my coffee back up, more for something to do with my hands than because I wanted it. The sabotage at the site, I could get my head around. Pacific Rim was a California investment group that wanted fifty-seven acres of eastern Tennessee for a development that would price out half the county and line their portfolios.

They'd tried bureaucratic harassment and financing pressure. Now they were hitting the physical operation. It was a logical escalation. But this was something that could have been deadly.

"We need cameras," I said. "Not just a watch rotation. Actual cameras on every piece of equipment and both access points by Monday."

Renzo nodded. "Onyx is already on it. They can have equipment on-site by Sunday afternoon."

Of course they were.

"One other thing," I said.

He waited.

"Nobody on the crew talks about this. Not to their wives, not to their buddies at Maverick's, not to anyone. The fewer people who know what we know about how the sabotage was done, the better."

"Agreed." He uncrossed his arms and picked up his coffee. "How was your evening?"

The shift was so abrupt I almost missed it. Then I saw the look on his face—tired, yes, and tightly wound from the night he'd had, but underneath it, genuine.

"Good," I said.

He waited.

"Really good," I said.

His face relaxed. "Good," he said simply. "Let’s go get your kid."

James was in the small guest room, tucked into a double, one arm flung out sideways and his mouth slightly open. His sneakers were lined up neatly at the foot of the bed, which meant Millie had made him do it, which I appreciated.

I stood in the doorway for a moment.

He had a smear of something on his chin that I was reasonably certain was strawberry. He looked content.

I went in and gathered him up. He stirred but didn't wake, just turned his face and snuggled into my shoulder like he’d been doing since he was an infant. Something settled inside me. We might have sabotage going on, but everything was now right in my world. An image of Zoe sleeping in her bed flashed before my eyes. Yes, everything was definitely right in my world.

The drive home was quiet, James asleep in his car seat, the hills dark on either side of the road and I let my mind wander.

Hydraulic lines. Shared drive access. A man on the ground with a concussion.

Zoe asleep in her house with her garden outside the window.

The two things sat in my head side by side. The project was under real threat, the kind that was going to require more than cameras and watch rotations before it was done.

And Zoe. Zoe, who owned a shop on Main Street in this town and had no idea that the project her town was counting on was under coordinated attack from people who played a long, methodical game. Of course, I wasn’t going to tell her. Which kind of felt like a betrayal, but it was what I had to do.

I pulled into my garage and cut the engine.

James slept on in the back seat, one hand curled loosely open, dreaming whatever four-year-olds dreamed about. Something told me I would be hearing about his day out at the orchard for weeks.