Chapter 30 Inside the Wire
Sloane’s POV
The footage kept looping on the big screen, the moment of impact replayed from three angles until my eyes throbbed. Smoke, masked faces, Eli slamming one of them into the wall by the fire door. My voice overlaid in the audio as a faint echo through the mic. We had watched it enough times that I could hear every cough and shout before it came.
“Pause there,” I said.
Mila froze the frame where the intruder’s badge swung out from his chest. Contractor laminate, Mercer logo.
“Zoom,” Eli said from where he stood by the bank of monitors.
The number was clear in the enlarged shot. So was the grain of the plastic, which made something ugly twist in my gut.
“That ID was revoked three months ago,” I said. “He is not on site lists anymore.”
Diaz held up a tablet. “Building logs show that exact badge number was reactivated two days ago under a service request from our new compliance vendor,” he said. “Request came through their secure email channel.”
The alarm pattern graphs were already on the wall. Spikes and dips and one ugly little detour where the fire signal had routed out through an external address before coming back in to scream at our exits.
“Alarm five seven four was triggered from inside the automation controller,” Mila said, tapping the graph. “Code path took a scenic trip through an address range tied to a third party firm the board engaged. You see this block of IPs?” She circled a cluster. “Belongs to the compliance outfit Mariah brought in last quarter for governance review.”
I stared at the numbers. Rage prickled at the edges of my vision.
“That firm is officially separate from Sentinel Gate,” Diaz said. “But their secure mail runs through an infrastructure provider that is knee deep in funds with RyeSec money. Shared cloud resources. Shared administrators.”
“Mariah recommended them,” I said. My voice did not sound like my own. “She told me they would keep the board safe from regulatory surprises.”
Plot twist, my brain muttered. The safety net is made of the same rope they are trying to hang you with.
We dug deeper. Domain registries, routing tables, old consulting agreements. Every arrow we traced from the rebadged contractor IDs and the alarm reroute pointed back to that compliance firm and from there, through two cozy loops, to a financial vehicle tied to Noah’s ecosystem.
It settled slowly, like a stain spreading across a white shirt.
Mariah Chan, the lawyer I had thought of as my ally in a room full of men who spoke in risk and return, my early guide through the swamp of taking Mercer public, was the one quietly opening side doors. Every time she said words like independent oversight and additional eyes, she had been feeding in outsiders aligned with Noah and his friends. She had helped put Ward on trial and offered Sentinel Gate as a clean solution.
I felt sick.
“I hired her,” I said. “The board signed the check, but I was the one who said yes. She sat in my office and told me she was here to protect me from their worst impulses.”
Mila looked pissed enough to chew through the table. “She is protecting someone,” she said. “Just not you.”
Eli’s jaw was a hard line. “She has been using the language of safety to smuggle in the enemy,” he said. “She pushed for ethics review, for an extra firm in your circle. All roads lead back through her.”
The instinct to burn her to the ground right now rose hot. I wanted to call an emergency meeting, throw these diagrams in their faces, watch her smooth expression crack.
“We confront her,” I said. “Publicly. We force her to explain why my fire alarm sings in Noah’s infrastructure voice.”
“No,” Eli said at once. “Not yet.”
I rounded on him. “She is inside my walls.”
“She is a lawyer,” he said. “Half evidence just gives her more room to paint you as paranoid and herself as the reasonable adult. We take this to the board with a full mosaic, not some lines and vibes. We need a smoking gun that even the most scared director cannot ignore.”
“So we sit and let her keep inviting his people in,” I snapped.
“We sit for as little time as possible and gather the piece that nails her to the wall,” Mila said. “Email where she over commits. Contract language that ties her pocket directly to RyeSec’s. Something.”
I hated that they were right. I hated more how all of this confirmed what I had already learned too many times. The people closest to power were always the ones with the sharpest knives.
My urge was to cut everyone out. Start over with a board half the size and a legal team made of strangers. Instead I found myself moving closer to Eli’s chair without thinking, my arm brushing his shoulder when I reached for a marker.
We spent another hour annotating, building a case on glass and glowing light. By the time the room emptied, my head pounded.
On the balcony the city stretched below, a smear of headlights and windows. This high up, it always looked like a board I could still control with the right moves. Tonight it felt more like a map of all the places they could be watching me from.
I heard the soft slide of the door and knew it was him without turning. He joined me at the rail, a step away, not touching, energy radiating like a second heat source.
“You are the only person in that building who is not using the words protecting me as a way to control me,” I said quietly.
“That is because I am trying very hard not to,” he said. “But I am not going anywhere.”
For a moment the knot in my chest loosened. It did not last.
Inside, my secure work screen pinged. I went back in to find a new invite on my calendar. Ethics review interview. Participants: Sloane Mercer, Eli Ward, Independent Investigator. Organizer: Mariah Chan.
Of course.
They wanted to talk about judgment.
I stared at the notification, feeling the ground tilt again, and wondered how much more of my life they planned to turn into evidence before I was allowed to speak.