server room on subbasement level 1. The past twenty minutes should do it.”
Charlie sighed. “Seriously? Do you have any idea the kind of security I have to get through?”
“You saying you can’t do it?”
“No!” Charlie sounded outraged. “Of course I can do it. I’m just saying it won’t be easy and you owe me one.”
“Good. Also, I need you to do it without looking at the footage.”
There was a pause on the other end. “Alec, what’s going on?”
At his worried tone, I piped in. “Hey, Charlie.”
“Eve?”
“Yeah. Don’t stress, OK? He’s just trying to prevent some poor Melior Group minion from getting an eyeful of my bare ass.”
There was another pause, and then Charlie started laughing, big infectious guffaws that had Alec and I both chuckling despite ourselves.
When he finally calmed down, he spoke between giggles. “You two horny fuckers are lucky I’m in the building. This would be way harder if I was trying to do it remotely, and the fact that . . . hmmm.”
Alec stiffened, his arm around me tightening. “Charlie?”
“Meet me in Gabe’s office.” The line went dead.
“Shit.” Alec pocketed the phone and led the way to the elevator.
As we stepped inside, I took his hand and gave him a worried look. “Alec? What’s going on?”
“Nothing good. Gabe’s office is soundproofed and the only place we can speak freely.” He gave me a pointed look, and I pressed my lips together.
As we walked through the halls and past offices and desks, it suddenly felt as if every person was watching us, every wall had someone on the other side listening in.
We reached Tyler’s door at the same time Charlie did. He was dressed simply in black jeans and a gray sweater, a laptop tucked under his arm, his expression blank.
We let ourselves in without knocking. Tyler lifted curious eyes at the intrusion, took in our serious expressions, and stood up from his chair.
Alec locked the door as Charlie dropped the laptop on Tyler’s desk and propped his hands on his hips.
Tyler didn’t speak. Didn’t ask unnecessary questions. He just let Charlie talk.
“Something’s not right. When I went in to get rid of the server room footage, I noticed something off.”
“In what way?” Tyler pressed. He didn’t question the fact that Charlie was erasing security footage, which made me wonder how often he did this for them. How many secrets did they have?
“I’m not the only one that’s been in the system, which isn’t surprising in itself, but I’m the only one that goes in and out undetected. The others I can track. I can see what they’ve done, changed, erased. With enough digging, I can find out who it was. But I think I just found evidence of someone else—someone as discreet as me.”
“What?” Tyler’s eyes widened as he leaned on the desk. “Do we have a breach? Should I be initiating protocols?”
“It’s not that simple.”
“What do you mean?”
“I need to do a little more digging, but so far, from what I can see, they’re not taking anything. They’re not copying data, trying to access the encrypted files. They’re doing the same thing I was doing—deleting security footage, maybe security pass logs as well.”
Behind me, Alec cursed under his breath.
“It doesn’t make sense. It’s like they’re trying to cover their tracks, but they haven’t actually done anything.”
“It makes perfect fucking sense,” Alec growled. He and Tyler exchanged a hard look.
Tyler hung his head and sighed. “This is worse than an external attack, a hacking attempt. This sounds like an inside job.”
“Fuck.” Charlie sank into a chair and dropped his head into his hands. “I wouldn’t have even seen it if these two hadn’t decided to have a quickie in the server room and needed me to cover it up.”
Tyler shot us an amused look before getting back to business. “All right. Charlie, I need you to keep digging—get me as much information as you can. You have complete access to my office. From now on, we work under the assumption that this building is no longer secure. Keep this between us. Stick to the secure channels—text only. And we discuss this in secure rooms. That’s this office, my office at Bradford Hills Institute, and my study at the manor. Alec, update Uncle Luce when you get back. I’m going to fill in Ethan and Josh, but Charlie, I think we should keep Dot out of it.”
“Agreed.” Charlie’s focus was already on his screen, his fingers flying across the keyboard.