Chapter 6 Evidence of Us
Sloane’s POV
For a second I honestly thought I might pretend it was nothing. Just shove the photo under the mattress, pull my mask back on, tell him I had a bad dream.
Then the door opened and there he was with a gun in his hand and my heart in his scope.
Eli moved first, eyes sweeping the room, corners, windows, under the bed, the way men like him were trained to see. The gun tracked with his gaze, not with me. When he was satisfied there was no one hiding in my curtains, his focus snapped to me.
I was sitting up against the headboard, knees drawn in, fingers locked around a glossy rectangle I could not seem to let go of. My hands were shaking. I hated that he could see that.
“What happened?” he asked. His voice was low, steady.
For one long beat I thought, Lie. Hide it. If he sees this, that night belongs to someone else now too. And another uglier thought, Maybe he already knew. Maybe this is his.
I looked down at the photo. At my own body leaned toward his in that Berlin hallway, at the way his head was lowered to mine, at the dress I had worn when I lied about my name. The red scrawl on the back burned through my palm. I can still get to you.
If he had done this, if this was some elaborate con, I would rather know now.
My throat hurt when I held it out. “Look.”
He took it from me carefully, as if it might explode. His eyes hit the image and something went dark and sharp in his face. Shock first, real and raw, then anger that had nothing to do with me. The kind that comes when someone stomps on a line you did not even know you had drawn.
He flipped it, read the back, jaw locking. No flicker of guilt. No flash of recognition like a man seeing his own work.
“Stay here,” he said. The gun was already holstered as he pulled his phone. “Mila, I need you and Diaz at Mercer residence now. We have sensitive personal media connected to Berlin and a probable physical breach in the master.”
His tone was so flat I almost did not catch the Berlin.
I slid off the bed as soon as he turned away, bare feet hitting cold wood. The bathroom mirror caught me in the harsh overhead light and I nearly flinched.
Sloane Mercer, security darling, expert on threat surfaces and zero trust architecture, standing in silk camisole and sleep shorts with her hair a mess and terror in her eyes because someone had crawled into her bed to leave proof of her worst lapse.
Someone had been there. In this room. Close enough to feel the warmth on the pillow where my head had been.
The last place I thought was mine alone had never been private at all.
My breath came too fast. I gripped the sink edge until my knuckles whitened, tried to force my brain back into numbers, into checklists. Who had access. How long that camera must have been there. What pattern of maintenance entries I had missed. Every answer tasted like failure.
When I stepped back into the bedroom Eli had the lights turned up and the curtains yanked open, bleeding city glow into the room.
“Berlin hotel CCTV is locked down under normal conditions,” he said, calm like he was giving a briefing and not holding the most intimate piece of evidence of my life. “Someone hacked it or paid someone to pull this. And whoever put this under your pillow had hands on physical access here.”
“In my bedroom,” I said. My voice sounded wrong. “In my bed.”
“Yes.” No softening. I had to respect that. “Probably weeks or months ago, when that was installed.”
He pointed at the smoke detector on the ceiling.
Mila and Diaz arrived minutes later, hair mussed from rushing, tool kits already out. They took apart my sanctuary like it was a crime scene, because it was. When Mila popped the hard shell off the detector and held up a dead microcamera the size of my thumbnail, something inside my chest folded in on itself.
A camera. Above my bed.
I was supposed to see things like this before anyone else. That was my job, my brand, my entire identity. And I had slept under an intruder’s eye for weeks without noticing.
“This has been dead a little while,” Mila said quietly. “Battery ran out. Whoever put it here did not bother to change it.”
“They did not need to,” I whispered. Berlin had more than enough.
Heat rushed into my face, then drained so fast I felt dizzy. “You walked into my life and suddenly my past is on my pillow,” I snapped, the words out before I could filter them.
His head came up fast. “This footage existed long before I got here,” he said, sharp. “The only difference now is you know about it.”
I hated that he was right. It made me want to hit something. Preferably whoever had written that red message.
Mila and Diaz kept working, sweeping walls and vents, scanning for other surprises. I barely heard them over the roar in my ears.
“You should not sleep in here tonight,” Eli said eventually. “We strip this room and rebuild it. Use the guest room or the couch where I can keep eyes on you.”
Every instinct rebelled at being moved. At letting him rearrange my space like I was a piece of furniture. At the same time, the thought of lying back down under that dead camera made my skin crawl.
“I am fine,” I started.
He just looked at me, and for once I saw no judgment there. Only a steady refusal to pretend.
My mouth went dry around the truth. “Do not leave me alone tonight.”
The words came out almost inaudible. I hated how small they sounded.
He nodded once. No comment. No victory.
Ten minutes later the couch in the living room had a blanket and one of my pillows. The lights were turned down low, city glow painting soft patterns on the ceiling. Eli took the armchair a few feet away, gun within reach on the side table, boots planted, body relaxed in that alert way of his.
I lay on my side, facing him. I told myself it was so I could see anyone who came through the door first.
His face in the half light was all clean planes and shadows, the man from Berlin and the professional from my doorway layered over each other. Somewhere between them was the only person in this building I trusted not to be looking for a way to use me.
My eyelids grew heavy, the last few hours crashing down like a lead blanket. As I drifted, the photo flashed again in my mind. Evidence that we were never really alone that night. Evidence of us, caught by someone else’s eye.
For the first time since the garage, I let myself sleep.
I did not know which scared me more. The fact that someone out there had been watching.
Or the fact that, even now, I felt safer with him in that chair than I did with any lock I had ever built.