Page 33 of Mine to Fear
But Sarah’s phone went straight to voicemail. Her apartment building’s doorman said she left two days ago with a suitcase, claiming she was visiting family. No one had seen her since. Unless she hadn’t left willingly.
“Jesus Christ,” I muttered, running a hand through my hair. “How long has this been going on?”
“Based on the access logs? At least two weeks. Maybe longer.”
Two weeks. Right around the time Marcus Webb first approached me about the Blackstone merger. Right around thetime I started letting my guard down, focusing more on Willa’s recovery and my own confused feelings than on the business that was supposed to be my entire life.
The second shoe dropped an hour later, when James Blackstone himself called.
“Kieran,” his voice carried the kind of controlled anger that made my spine straighten automatically. “I think we need to have a conversation.”
“About the merger timeline?”
“About whether there’s going to be a merger at all.”
I closed my office door and sank into my chair, already knowing this conversation was going to destroy everything I worked toward. I stared at the far wall, as if bracing myself for impact.
“I’m listening.”
“Three of my clients received calls this morning. Anonymous tips about security breaches at Cross Security. Detailed information about your vulnerabilities, your client list, even internal communications between my team and yours.”
The room started spinning slightly. “James, I can explain?—”
“Can you? Because right now it looks like your firm is either incompetent or compromised. Either way, I can’t risk my reputation by associating with you.”
“We’re handling the situation. We’ll have answers by the end of the day.”
“It’s too late for that. My board is already spooked. Marcus Webb is asking questions I can’t answer. The merger is off, Kieran. Permanently.”
The line went dead, and I sat there staring at my phone, trying to process what had just happened. Three years of building toward this moment—three years of positioning Cross Security for the kind of growth that could change everything—destroyed in a single morning.
But that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst came during the emergency staff meeting I called an hour later, when David presented the results of his preliminary investigation.
“The breach was surgical,” he said, his face pale as he addressed the dozen remaining employees gathered in our conference room. “Whoever did this knew our systems better than we do. They knew which clients would be most damaging to lose, which files would create the biggest security risks, and which information would be most valuable to our competitors.”
“So we’re talking about corporate espionage.” I kept my voice steady, though my pulse was anything but.
“We’re talking about someone who wanted to destroy Cross Security specifically. This wasn’t about stealing client lists or trade secrets. This was about making us look incompetent and untrustworthy. This was about making sure we lost the Blackstone deal.”
I felt the pieces clicking into place with horrible clarity—the timing, the precision, the way every move was designed to cause maximum damage to our reputation and our most important business opportunity.
“Someone knew about the merger,” I said quietly.
“More than that.” David pulled up another screen, this one showing a pattern of small system intrusions going back months. “Someone’s been planning this for a long time. Getting into position, gathering intelligence, waiting for the right moment to strike.”
“But who would?—”
I stopped mid-sentence as the answer hit me like a physical blow.
Someone with access to our systems. Someone who had known about the merger discussions from the beginning. Someone who had reason to want Cross Security to fail.
Someone who had known exactly how much the Blackstone deal meant to me.
“Sir?” David looked at me with concern. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
But I didn’t see a ghost. I saw something worse—the shape of a betrayal I should have seen coming, the outline of an enemy I was too blind to recognize.
