Her Obsession. Chapter 9

**Conner**

Paranoia wasn’t new to me. It came with the job, like blood on knuckles or lies in the sheets. But tonight? Tonight it was more than a gut feeling. It was a scream in my bones.

"Lock the doors," I told Nico as he stepped inside. “No one in. No one out.”

He raised a brow. “What’re we hunting?”

“Bugs. Cameras. Mics. Anything that shouldn’t be here.”

To his credit, he didn’t ask questions. Just pulled his laptop from the messenger bag, then a black pouch filled with scanners, lenses, tools I couldn’t name but knew were expensive as hell. We started in the living room. I moved furniture, lifted rugs, unscrewed vents while Nico swept with one of his handheld detectors. The thing chirped, whined, then glowed red.

“Here,” he said, crouching behind the bar cabinet. His gloved fingers pulled back a wooden panel, revealing a pin-sized camera nestled in the wall trim, wired into the electrical system.

“Hardwired,” he muttered. “Clean job. Someone’s been watching you in real time.”

“Can you trace it?”

“Give me twenty minutes.”

We found a second mic in the base of a floor lamp. Another in the vent above the stairs. Nico cursed under his breath when we reached my office and found a micro-transmitter inside the damn smoke detector.

“This one’s recent,” he said. “Battery’s full. Maybe placed within the week.”

By the end of the search, we’d uncovered six separate surveillance devices, three cameras, three audio bugs.

I poured two fingers of whiskey, slid a glass across the table to him. He ignored it, already coding, running signal intercepts and backtraces through his system.

Thirty minutes later, he leaned back, face pale under the blue light of his screen.

“What?” I asked.

“They’re not all from the same source.”

I froze. “Say that again.”

Nico tapped the screen, pulling up two sets of data strings. “Different encryptions. Different pings. One’s bouncing through offshore proxies, old-school cloak and dagger shit, professional. Could be internal. But the other?” He clicked over. “Different signature. Amateur, but smart. Like someone piggybacking your security blind spots.”

“Meaning?”

“Someone with access... and someone watching them watch you.”

I ran a hand down my face. “So one’s the rat.”

He nodded. “And the other?”

I stared at the screen. The second trace was odd, deliberate but messy. Like someone leaving a trail they wanted me to follow. My stomach turned. It felt like her.

“The ghost,” I muttered.

Nico frowned. “That stalker?”

“She’s not a stalker,” I said flatly. “She’s a shadow with a knife.”

He raised his hands in surrender. “Alright. But whoever she is, she’s good. Real good. She got in without triggering a single alert.”

“And the rat?”

“That one’s sloppier. More familiar with our system. Could be crew. Someone close.”

The room fell quiet except for the low hum of his laptop. Two sets of eyes watching me. One warning. One betraying. I looked around the space that used to be safe and felt the walls closing in.

“We find them both,” I said. “Every last wire, every last lie. Tear it all down if we have to.”

Nico nodded. “Want to start with the rat or the ghost?”

I didn’t hesitate.

“The rat bleeds first.”

One hour later.

Nico’s office looked like a war room. Screens lit up every wall, code flickering, network maps glowing, camera feeds playing on loop. We’d already pulled every access log from the past six months and started cross-checking movement patterns against keycard swipes and system pings.

“Cross-reference anyone with full access to the third floor,” I said, pacing. “I want timestamps, badge logs, even when they went to take a damn piss.”

Nico nodded, already typing. He didn’t need reminding how close this was getting. My rat had been feeding someone, maybe more than one someone for weeks. Months, maybe. I didn’t like the feeling that the enemy had been breathing down my neck, watching my every move, listening in on every whispered command. We ruled out a few of the guards fast. Not tech-savvy enough, not cleared for the right areas. Then came the deeper cuts, lieutenants, accountants, suppliers. I trusted no one. Everyone was a suspect until proven clean.

“Got something,” Nico said, spinning his screen. “This guy, Dean, low-level, mostly runs shipments, but he’s got admin-level access to your main security system.”

“Why the hell would Dean need admin clearance?”

“He doesn’t. Not unless someone gave it to him.”

I stared at the name, then the digital trace behind it. He’d logged into my system at odd hours, 2:47 AM, 3:12, 4:01, all times when no one should be touching anything. The logs were wiped afterward, but not well. Nico dug them back up.

“Flag him. Quietly,” I muttered. “We’ll talk to him when I’m feeling less patient.”

We kept digging. I kept digging. I didn’t stop. Not even as the sun began to stain the sky outside pale grey and pink. My shirt stuck to my back, my jaw tight from hours of clenched silence. Then it came. My phone buzzed once. I didn’t look right away. Some part of me already knew. My chest tightened before I even reached for it.

Unknown Number:

Put my cameras back, darling.

xx

I stared at the screen. Nico leaned over, reading it with me. “No signature?”

“No. She never signs her name,” I murmured.

He raised an eyebrow. “She’s ballsy. Knows we found her out. Wants you to know she’s still watching.”

“She wants me to chase her.”

“She’s mocking you.”

“She’s testing me.”

My fingers hovered over the screen. Fuck it. "Or what?" I responded.

“Track it?” I asked.

“Working on it. But if she’s half as smart as I think she is, it’ll lead us nowhere. Or right into a trap.”

“Good,” I said. “I’m getting tired of standing still.”

I walked toward the window, the city just starting to stir below. Somewhere out there, the rat was sweating, and the ghost was smiling. My phone pinged again. Interesting...

Unknown Number:

"Don't test me, darling. Put. Them. Back. xx"

Nico raised his eyebrow at me. "You going to stand for that?"

I responded with just one word. "No." Because this girl, whoever she was, needed to know her place.