Chapter 36 Unauthorized Channels
Sloane’s POV
Jace’s shadow did not feel like protection. It felt like a leash.
“Heads up, corridor is not cleared yet,” he said, hand lifting almost to touch my elbow, then thinking better of it. “I would prefer you wait for me before you step out of your office, Ms Mercer.”
I was literally going to the bathroom.
“It is the internal hallway,” I said, teeth tight. “The only thing likely to attack me is the espresso machine.”
His jaw flexed, polite as ever. “Threat assessments do not differentiate between corridors, maam. You are a high value target at all times.”
Eli would have said something like Maybe let me walk first. Eli would have already scanned the hall fifteen seconds ago and been leaning there, pretending not to, when I opened the door.
“Fine,” I said, stepping back and letting Jace move past me. “Lead the way.”
Every meeting for the last two days had been like this. Jace reviewing attendee lists before I walked into my own conference rooms. Flagging internal huddles as potential risks and asking if I really needed to be in the server room during a patch push. His protocols were textbook perfect. Clean. Heavy handed. They also tasted like someone else’s playbook, one that cared more about what regulators wanted to see than how I actually worked.
“You cannot walk unescorted even between departments,” he had told me that morning. “We are tightening internal routes. Every door, every meeting, pre cleared.”
Some of it made sense. I knew that. My rational brain could see the logic in not wandering into unsecured labs while half the industry seemed to be auditioning for Most Creative Way To Kill Me. The rest of me felt like I had been turned into a very expensive package being tracked from door to door.
Which was why, by eleven that night, I was on a mostly unused rooftop of the building adjacent to Mercer, with my phone on airplane mode and my calendar blocked as solo work.
The wind up here had teeth. It knifed through my coat and tugged at my hair, whipping strands free of the knot at my neck. Below, the city hummed. Above, the sky was black velvet with a smear of cloud. Between those two layers, there was us.
Eli stepped out from behind a vent, dark coat open, no visible weapon but I could feel the weight of one on him anyway. Even in the half light, my chest tightened.
“You are late,” I said, mostly because if I did not start with irritation I was going to start with something softer.
“You are the one crossing roofs in heels,” he replied. “I am impressed you are only five minutes late.”
He shrugged out of his coat and wrapped it around my shoulders before I could object. The wool smelled like soap and the faint metallic tang of the range. I opened my mouth to protest. The wind bit my exposed throat before I got a word out.
“I do not need this,” I muttered.
“You are shivering,” he said. “Humor me.”
I did not shrug it off.
We moved to the low wall that ringed the roof, standing side by side so close our arms brushed. From here I could see my own building, glass and steel lit up like a ship. Somewhere in there Jace was probably cataloguing my calendar changes and wondering why the solo work block after ten p m came with no project code.
“Mariah has a call with a burner labeled N G scheduled for tomorrow,” I said. “Rhea pulled the header. Time lines up with Sentinel Gate’s internal risk committee.”
He made a low sound. “So she is still talking to Noah about how best to babysit you.”
“He texted me,” I added, cold for a different reason now. “Told me to say yes to Sentinel Gate. That he was dying to be closer to me again.”
His fingers tightened on the concrete. “He is not getting near you again.”
I let that sit in the space between us for a second, warm in an ugly way. “Sentinel Gate’s contract is in final negotiation,” I said. “Board wants them as ‘supplemental’ to Ward. Mariah is selling it as optics.”
“And as a pipeline for Noah’s toys,” he said.
Wind whistled around the vent shafts. Somewhere below, a car horn blared and cut off.
“We cannot stop the board from flirting with Sentinel Gate,” I said. “We can show them what happens when they do.”
He turned his head slightly, enough that I could feel his gaze on my profile. “You want to bait them.”
“Yes.” I met his eyes. “We leak a fake internal memo. New safe facility under consideration. Only mention it in channels Mariah sees and Sentinel Gate touches. Harper can draft something bland about exploring alternative secure locations. We sit back and watch who shows up at the wrong door.”
“And if they send more than scouts?” he asked.
“Then we will be ready,” I said. “You have wanted to drag them onto ground we choose. This is our ground.”
We hashed out the details in low voices. Which committee thread to seed. Which fake provider name would make them greedy. When Harper should “accidentally” cc the wrong alias. It felt less like CEO reporting to head of security and more like two criminals planning a heist. I found that I liked it.
“We are co conspirators now,” I said, half joking, when we finally stepped back from the plan.
He smiled, small and real. “We have been for a while,” he said. “We just stopped pretending otherwise.”
The word we warmed me more than his coat.
Silence settled for a moment. Not uncomfortable. His hand rested on the wall a few inches from mine. If I moved my little finger, I could touch him. I did not.
“You hate all of this,” I said quietly. “Jace. Sentinel Gate. Ethics review.”
“I hate that people who almost got you killed are now being invited into your circle,” he said. “I hate that they sidelined me with a performance review while keeping Noah’s name off any formal document. I do not hate meeting you on rooftops.”
Heat rose in my cheeks that had nothing to do with the wind.
We walked back toward the access door together, steps in sync. At the shadowed mouth of the stairwell I stopped. The words were out before I had decided to say them.
“For luck,” I muttered, and leaned up to press my mouth to his.
It was quick. Soft. The kind of kiss that could almost be dismissed as nothing if not for the way my whole body registered it, a jolt of right under my skin.
I started to turn away, already half embarrassed by my own impulse. His hand closed around my wrist.
He tugged me back, slow. His other hand came up to cup my jaw, thumb brushing my cheek, and he kissed me properly. Unhurried, deep enough that my knees went a little weak, the city noise dropping away until there was only the slide of his mouth on mine and the steady heat of his body.
When he pulled back, his forehead rested against mine for one brief heartbeat.
“We make our own,” he said.
Luck. Fate. Whatever this was.
I did not look up at the sky as I went down the stairs. If I had, maybe I would have heard the faint mechanical buzz above the wind, seen the tiny red blink far off against the dark.
Instead, I walked into the building wrapped in his coat and the memory of his mouth, telling myself the only eyes on us tonight had been the ones I had chosen.