Page 18 of You, Only You

"You're very good at reading people," I said slowly.

"It's a survival skill."

"It's unnerving, is what it is."

"You get used to it."

"I doubt that."

He almost smiled again. I almost smiled back. Then I caught myself doing it and turned to my laptop with the kind of abruptness that probably told him everything my face was trying not to.

Focus. Work. Stop noting his expressions like they're items in a spreadsheet.

It was nearly midnight when I found it.

I'd been digging through Meridian Tech's quarterly reports, Reeves's publicly traded, respectable front, looking for anything that connected the corporate accounts to the shadow network. Most of it was numbingly legitimate. Board meetings, shareholder dividends, R&D expenditures. The kind of paperwork that could sedate a roomful of insomniacs.

Then I found the discretionary fund.

It was buried in a subsection of a subsection, the kind of line item that only existed for executives to move money without board oversight. Small amounts, relatively speaking, fifty thousand here, seventy-five thousand there. The memo lines were generic: "Security Consulting," "Project Retainer," "Logistics Support."

I almost moved on. Then I noticed the dates.

My fingers went still on the keyboard. I pulled up Will's timeline from the wall, the one tracking victim movements based on our utility bill analysis, and started cross-referencing.

The first transfer was dated October 15th. According to our data, a victim identified only as "Subject 7" had been moved from Phoenix to Denver on October 14th.

The second transfer was dated November 3rd. Subject 12 moved from Denver to Chicago on November 2nd.

The third. The fourth. The fifth.

Seven transfers. Seven movements. Every single payment was made the day after a victim was relocated. Like clockwork. Like invoicing.

The realization didn't come as a gasp or a revelation. It came as a slow, sick tightening in my stomach, the way the worst discoveries always did. Not the thrill of cracking a code, but the weight of understanding what the code meant. Somebody had built a payment schedule around moving human beings. Somebody had put this in a spreadsheet.

"Will." My voice came out strangled. "Will, I found it."

I turned to tell him, and he was right there.

He'd moved silently across the cramped space while I was lost in the numbers, coming to look over my shoulder at the screen. Close enough that his breath stirred the hair at my temple. Close enough that the heat of him registered against my back like a hand pressed flat, even though he wasn't touching me. He wasn't touching me anywhere, and I could feel him everywhere.

Neither of us moved.

"The discretionary fund transfers," I managed, and my voice sounded wrong, too thin, too aware. I pointed at the screen, not looking at him because looking at him from this distance would have been a terrible idea. "They're dated the day after each victim movement. Seven payments, seven relocations. This isn't a pattern anymore. This is proof."

His eyes scanned the document, and I felt his sharp intake of breath. "The authorization codes," he said, his voice low and rough in the quiet. "They'll show who approved each transfer."

"Reeves. It has to be Reeves. The discretionary fund requires executive sign-off."

"Then we have him."

He didn't move away. Neither did I.

The moment hung there, suspended in the hum of fluorescent lights and the smell of old paper and cold coffee. I was aware of my own breathing, of his, of the way they'd synced without either of us trying. My pinky finger was half an inch from his hand on the table, and I was thinking about that half inch with a focus and intensity I usually reserved for discovering offshore accounts.

This is not professional,I told myself.This is not data. This is a man standing behind you, and you are losing your mind.

"We should call Agent Bates," I said. The words came out in a rush, too fast, like I was trying to outrun whatever was building in the eighteen inches between us.