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Chey nods. “Then fine. But whatever you’re doing, just be careful, okay?
“You know me, Chey,” I say, tipping my head. “I’ve always got a plan.”
And with that, I peel away, tossing her a wave as I head back for my room to put it into motion.
8
I drum my fingers atop the wooden surface of the desk as I sit beside Harvey at his workstation in the IT hub, my knee bouncing agitatedly. I just wrapped up a grueling training session with the squad- hours of cardio hell led by the Raines brothers- and my racerback tank is damp with sweat, the backs of my thighs sticking to the leather desk chair I’m seated in. Most days, I shower off before returning to work at the hub, but Harvey called with an urgent matter and I rushed right over to meet with him.
As soon as he opened up the security logs from the night of the full moon, though, I realized that I’m already well aware of what’s caught his attention, and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t internally panicking right now.
Harvey Traeger is a tall, lanky guy with scraggly dark hair and honey brown eyes. We’ve been working together in IT for years,and he’s good at his job. A littletoogood. Nobody should have been able to pick up on the irregularity in the data from that night, buthedid.
I’m so screwed.
“Look, there’s data missing,” Harvey rushes out, pointing a long finger at the computer screen. “It looks normal at first glance, but if you actually go into the file, it’s been corrupted.”
I squint my eyes as I lean forward, making a show of examining the entries he’s indicating as if I don’t already know what the inconsistencies are. “Did you check the feeds?”
“Yeah,” he breathes. With a couple clicks of his mouse, he pulls up the video footage from the border of Westfield’s territory, hitting play.
I feign rapt attention as I watch it with him, all while knowing damn well that there isn’t anything on the video to corroborate the missing data. I was careful to cover my tracks when I erased the footage of Javi crossing the border, patching and looping prior footage in its place. Still, I hold my breath as the video plays, not releasing it until it ends.
“So nothing on video,” I confirm, the tension in my shoulders uncoiling slightly.
“No, but that doesn’t explain the lapse in data,” Harvey says, the frustration evident in his tone.
Guilt gnaws at me as I watch him click back to the data log, because I get why he’s so agitated. I’d be the same way if I found something that wasn’t adding up, and I’d stop at nothing to get to the bottom of it. I can only hope he doesn’t have the samelevel of persistence, or else I’m in real danger of having my cover blown.
“Must be a fluke,” I say with a shrug, the lie tasting bitter on my tongue as I lean back in my chair and twirl the end of one of my braided pigtails around a finger.
“Maybe…” he murmurs. Then he turns to look at me, his brows drawn together in concern. “Has this ever happened before?”
“A few times.”
More lies.
My stomach twists, my heart thundering against my ribs. It’s not only Harvey’s frustration that has me feeling guilty. It’s the fact that I’ve never used my IT skills against the six-pack before to cover something up for my own benefit. In concealing the truth, I’m basically lying to everyone around me, and that doesn’t sit well. This isn’t who I am.I’m better than this.
Harvey heaves a resigned sigh. “Well, if you don’t think it’s something to be concerned about…”
“I don’t,” I reply a little too quickly. “I’m more concerned about the bug in the VR simulation we’ve been using for gun training. Have you made any progress on that?”
“Some, and I think I’m getting close. But I paused that project to do the weekly log check.”
Harvey is thorough- that’s why he was assigned to take over the weekly log checks when Annie went out on maternity leave. I just never imagined it’d come back to bite me in the ass. Then again, it’s not like I expected to wind up as the fated mate to a potential enemy and start living a lie.
“There’s nothing on the video, so let’s chalk this one up to a glitch in the system,” I say nonchalantly. “As long as everything else looks good, go ahead and forward the report to me and get back on the VR bug.”
He nods slowly, swiveling his chair to face me. “Are you gonna bring it up with the squad leaders?”
“I go over the report with them every week,” I reply vaguely.
My phone vibrates atop the desk and I snatch it up, eyes catching on the message notification on my screen from a certain tall, dark, and handsome Latin boy whose contact I have saved as simply, ‘J’.
“I’ve gotta run. Can you get that report over to me ASAP?” I ask, hoping the urgency will push him to let this go and stop digging.
“You’ve got it, boss,” he replies with a respectful tilt of his head.
