The silence in Clyde's apartment was different now. It wasn't the tense, waiting quiet of a safe house or the post-mission exhaustion we'd left in Vermont. This was a new silence, brimming with the hum of a future we were building ourselves. The offer on the Craftsman house had been accepted. The paperwork was a mountain on his kitchen table, and my townhouse was a crime scene-turned-construction zone. So, for now, we were here, in his Spartan one-bedroom, and it felt more like home than any place I'd ever lived.
I was attempting to make coffee on his industrial-looking machine, a contraption with more levers and gauges than a airplane cockpit. I'd seen him use it a hundred times, but my attempt was producing a sound like a dying lawnmower and a pathetic trickle of black sludge.
"Having trouble there, Nash?"
I jumped. Clyde was leaning against the doorway, arms crossed, wearing nothing but a pair of sweatpants and a look of profound amusement. He'd been doing push-ups in the other room, and a fine sheen of sweat made his chest and shoulders glow in the morning light. It was deeply distracting.
"This thing is a menace," I grumbled, poking at a lever. "It requires a engineering degree and a blood sacrifice just for a cup of coffee."
He chuckled, a low, warm sound that vibrated through me. He moved behind me, his front pressing against my back, his arms reaching around to take over the controls. "It's about finesse," he murmured, his breath warm against my ear. His hands covered mine, guiding them. "Not brute force. You have to respect the machine."
His touch, his scent, the sheer solidity of him surrounding me—it short-circuited my brain far more effectively than the espresso machine ever could. "I'm… I'm trying to respect it," I managed, my voice a little breathy.
"I know you are," he said, his voice laced with humor. With a few deft flicks of his wrists, the machine stopped its complaining and began to produce a steady, perfect stream of rich, dark coffee. "See? Partnership."
He poured two mugs, handed me one, and took a sip of his own. "Mmm. Optimal brewing temperature achieved."
I rolled my eyes but took a sip. It was, of course, sublime. "Show-off."
"It's not showing off if you're just that good," he said deadpan, before shooting me a wink.
This was our new normal. Teasing. Domesticity. A life where the biggest crisis was a misbehaving appliance. It was everything.
Later that day, we ventured out to a home goods store. It was a reconnaissance mission, Clyde had declared, to assess the enemy's layout and inventory for our future campaigns. He navigated the aisles with the same focus he'd used to clear my townhouse, but now his mission was evaluating thread counts and the heft of stainless steel frying pans.
He held up two identical-looking white towels. "This one has a ten percent higher cotton blend," he announced, feeling the fabric between his thumb and forefinger. "Superior absorbency and durability."
I blinked. "Are you… are you stress-testing towels?"
"It's called being a informed consumer, Troy." He put the superior towel in our cart. "We're not savages."
In the cookware aisle, he became a artist. He hefted a cast-iron skillet, balanced it in his palm, and gave a approving nod. "Good weight. Proper seasoning potential." He then picked up a flimsy non-stick pan, frowned at it like it had personally offended him, and put it back on the shelf with a look of disdain. "Tactically unsound. Wouldn't survive a single sear."
I was leaning against the cart, trying and failing to suppress my laughter. "Please tell me you're going to do a full threat assessment on the blender."
He shot me a look. "Don't think I won't."
We ended up at the register with a cart full of "tactically sound" housewares and one very confused cashier whom Clyde had engaged in a detailed discussion about the thermal conductivity of various baking sheets.
As we loaded the bags into his SUV, I shook my head. "I can't believe I'm dating a man who can seduce a enemy agent and also has strong opinions on pastry brush bristle density."
He slammed the trunk closed and pulled me into his arms right there in the parking lot. "You love it," he said, his eyes sparkling.
"I really do," I admitted, kissing him. He tasted of coffee and future.
That night, we attempted to use our new, battle-ready cookware. Clyde was teaching me how to properly sear a steak, which involved a terrifying amount of hot oil and a lot of stern instructions about "leaving it alone to form a crust."
I was on salad duty, which was decidedly less life-threatening. I was humming, chopping tomatoes, when I felt his eyes on me. I looked up.
He was just leaning against the counter, watching me, a soft, unguarded expression on his face. The sizzle of the steak was the only sound.
"What?" I asked, smiling.
"Nothing," he said, pushing off the counter and coming over to me. He took the knife from my hand and set it aside, then framed my face with his hands. His thumbs stroked my cheeks. "I'm just… happy."
The simplicity of the word, coming from him, held so much weight. It wasn't about the mission being over or the house. It was about this. Us. The quiet moments in a kitchen.
"Me too," I whispered.
He kissed me then, a slow, deep, tender kiss that felt like a vow. It tasted of promise and expensive olive oil and home.
The smoke alarm went off with an ear-splitting shriek.
We broke apart, coughing and laughing. The steak was sending up a truly impressive column of black smoke.
Clyde swore, grabbing the skillet and waving a towel at the alarm. "Distractions compromise operational success!" he yelled over the noise.
I was laughing so hard I had to hold onto the counter for support. "I thought you said it was about partnership!"
He finally got the alarm to stop, and the sudden silence was broken only by our laughter. He looked at the charred, ruined steak in the pan, then at me, tears of mirth streaming down my face.
He shrugged, a wide, helpless grin spreading across his soot-smudged face. "Okay," he admitted, pulling me back into his arms. "So we're still working out the kinks."
I rested my head on his chest, listening to his heart beat strong and steady under my ear. The kitchen was a mess. Dinner was ruined. And it was absolutely perfect. We had a future to build, full of tactically sound towels and slightly-burnt meals. And I couldn't wait for all of it.
The burnt-steak incident had ended with us ordering Thai food and eating it straight from the container on the floor, laughing like idiots. The new, "tactically sound" skillet sat in the sink like a badge of honor, a testament to our domestic learning curve. Later, we'd fallen into bed, a tangle of limbs and comfortable exhaustion, and I'd drifted off to the sound of Clyde's steady heartbeat under my ear.
I was pulled from a deep, dreamless sleep by the low, insistent buzz of Clyde's secure phone on the nightstand. Not the shrill, urgent trill of a crisis, but the persistent hum of official business that refused to be ignored.
Clyde was awake in an instant, his body going from relaxed to alert without a single wasted movement. He snatched the phone, his voice a low, sleep-roughened rumble. "Adams."
I rolled over, squinting at the clock. 4:17 a.m. Who calls at 4:17 a.m. unless it's bad news? The cozy domestic bubble we'd been living in felt suddenly very fragile.
I watched his face in the dim light filtering through the blinds. His expression was neutral, professional, but I saw the minute tightening around his eyes, the slight compression of his lips as he listened.
"Understood, sir," he said after a long moment. "Yes, we're secure. I'll brief him now." He ended the call and dropped the phone onto the mattress as if it had grown suddenly heavy.
He didn't speak immediately. He just lay there on his back, staring at the ceiling. The silence stretched, thick and ominous.
My heart started to do a nervous tap-dance against my ribs. "Clyde? What is it?"
He let out a long, slow breath. "That was my CO." He turned his head on the pillow to look at me. In the grey pre-dawn light, his face was all sharp angles and shadow. "The man we brought in. 'John Smith'."
My blood ran cold. "What about him?"
"He's talking. A lot." Clyde's voice was flat, devoid of the triumph that should have accompanied those words. "He was a front. A cut-out. A very well-paid, very comfortable fall guy."
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. "What are you saying?"
"The Dragon," Clyde said, his voice low and grim. "The real mastermind. He's still out there. 'John Smith' was just the accountant. A glorified bookkeeper with a penthouse. The brain… the one who gave the orders, the one who built the whole damn thing… we never touched him."
The room felt like it was tilting. All of it. The break-in, the terror, the firefight, Clyde's heroics, the triumphant selfie—it had all been for a middle manager. We'd spent all that energy, taken all those risks, and we'd only clipped a fingernail of the beast.
I sat up, pulling the sheets around me, a sudden chill that had nothing to do with the temperature seeping into my bones. "So it's not over."
Clyde sat up too, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. He ran a hand over his face. "No," he said, his voice rough. "It's not over. It just got a whole lot bigger."
He stood and pulled on his sweatpants. "Come on. We need coffee. The strong kind."
I followed him out to the living room, my mind reeling. He moved through the dim apartment with a restless energy, making coffee with a grim focus that was a world away from the playful lesson of yesterday morning. The machine's growl seemed angrier this time.
He handed me a mug and I took it, the ceramic warm against my suddenly cold hands. We sat on opposite ends of his sofa, the space between us feeling vast despite the small room.
"What does this mean?" I asked, my voice small.
"It means the investigation starts over," he said, staring into his black coffee. "But with a new target. A smarter, more careful, and now forewarned target." He looked at me, and the fear I saw in his eyes was worse than any threat. It was a cold, calculating fear for me. "He knows we're coming now, Troy. He knows your name. He knows what you can do."
The truth of it landed like a physical blow. The peace, the safety, the house with the porch… it had all been a beautiful, fleeting dream. The nightmare was back, and it was bigger and darker than before.
I set my coffee down, untouched. The warmth of the mug felt like a lie. "So what do we do?"
Clyde was silent for a long moment. Then he set his own mug down with a decisive click. He moved across the couch, closing the distance between us. He didn't touch me at first, just looked at me, his gaze intense and unwavering.
"We do what we do," he said, his voice low and fierce. "We adapt. We get smarter. We dig deeper." He finally reached out, his hand cupping my jaw, his thumb stroking my cheek. "But listen to me. This changes nothing between us. Nothing. You are still the most important thing. Your safety is still my primary objective. That house, that future—it's just on hold. It's not cancelled."
Tears I hadn't known I was holding back pricked at my eyes. "It feels cancelled."
"It's not," he insisted, his voice softening. He pulled me into his arms, holding me tightly against his chest. I could feel the strong, steady beat of his heart. "This is a setback. A big one. But it's not a defeat. We have a name now. A real one. We have a thread. And we have each other."
He leaned back and looked down at me, a slow, determined smile touching his lips. It wasn't a happy smile. It was the smile of a warrior who'd just seen the size of the army arrayed against him and was, against all odds, looking forward to the fight.
"You found a ghost in the machine once, Troy Nash," he murmured. "You can do it again. And this time…" His smile turned razor-sharp. "This time, I know exactly where to aim."
The fear was still there, a cold knot in my gut. But looking at him, at the absolute, unshakable certainty in his eyes, I felt it begin to loosen, replaced by a spark of the same fierce determination.
The dragon wasn't slayed. It had just gotten a new, more dangerous head. But we were still the ones holding the sword.
I took a deep, shaky breath and managed a small smile of my own. "Okay," I said, my voice stronger. "Then let's go find it."
The cozy, sun-drenched future we'd painted for ourselves in Vermont had been rolled up and stored away, replaced by the stark, fluorescent reality of Clyde's apartment-turned-command-center. The charming Craftsman house with its porch and oak tree felt like a dream from another lifetime. The only thing that mattered now was the ghost in the machine. The real one.
The morning after the call, the air in the apartment changed. The easy domesticity was gone, replaced by a focused, humming intensity. Clyde's team—Jin, Espinoza, Cooper—arrived before the sun was fully up, their faces grim and set. The new, "tactically sound" cookware was pushed to the side of the counter to make room for Cooper's laptops and a small arsenal of communication devices that looked like they belonged in a sci-fi movie.
I was back at my familiar post, my own laptops set up on the dining table, the screens alive with the cursed numbers of the Meridian Fund. But it was different now. The triumphant feeling of the hunt was gone, replaced by a cold, grim determination. We'd been fooled. Played. And I hated being played.
Clyde was a whirlwind of controlled motion. He was on the phone, off the phone, leaning over Jin's shoulder to look at a satellite image, then over mine to check a data stream. He moved with a new kind of purpose, a razor-sharp focus that was intimidating and, if I was being honest, a little bit thrilling.
"The 'John Smith' penthouse was a honey pot," Jin was saying, pointing to a blueprint on his screen. "Clean. Too clean. The real work was done elsewhere. We're tracing the internet infrastructure, but it's a rabbit warren."
"Follow the power," Clyde said, his voice clipped. "Not the data. A setup that sophisticated needs juice. A lot of it. Look for anomalies in grid usage around that time. Empty buildings drawing enough power for a server farm."
"On it," Jin said, his fingers flying across his keyboard.
Clyde turned to me. "Nash. The money flow from Dragon Slayer. 'Smith' was a diversion. The real exit strategy would be cleaner. More elegant. Look for the quiet money. The boring money."
I nodded, my eyes already scanning the columns. He was right. We'd been looking for the splashy, illegal transfers. The real mastermind would have a quieter, more legitimate-looking escape route. A scholarship fund. A charitable trust. Something dull enough to be invisible.
I fell into the zone. The world narrowed to the glow of the screen, the flow of digits, the patterns only I could see. Hours bled together. I was aware of movement around me—the low murmur of voices, the smell of coffee being brewed, the door opening and closing as someone went out for food. But it was all background noise.
My back ached. My eyes felt dry and gritty. I had a vague memory of Clyde setting a plate next to me at some point. I had no idea what was on it or if I'd eaten it.
The breakthrough came not with a bang, but with a whisper. A series of tiny, recurring transfers from the deepest layer of the Dragon Slayer account. Not to an offshore bank or a shell company. To a university. A prestigious, private university. The memos were all the same: 'Dept. of Statistical Analysis - Data Procurement Grant.'
The amounts were small. Insignificant, really, compared to the billions we'd been tracing. But the timing was perfect. And the recipient…
"Clyde," I said, my voice raspy from disuse.
He was at my side in an instant. "What do you have?"
I pointed at the screen. "The quiet money. It's not hiding in a shell company. It's hiding in plain sight. In an academic grant. For the Department of Statistical Analysis." I pulled up the university's public directory and found the department head. A Dr. Aris Thorne. A man with a mild, scholarly face and a list of publications longer than my arm.
Clyde's eyes narrowed. "A academic? That's his cover?"
"It's not a cover," I said, a cold certainty settling in my gut. "It's his lab. He's not just a financier. He's the architect. He's using the university's resources, their supercomputers, their academic legitimacy, to run his algorithms. To perfect his models. The grants aren't for hiding money; they're for funding his research."
The sheer, audacious brilliance of it was breathtaking. He'd built his criminal empire inside a fortress of academia.
The room was silent. Everyone was staring at my screen.
"Jin," Clyde said, his voice deadly quiet. "I want everything on Dr. Aris Thorne. Every paper, every grant, every grocery list. I want to know what he eats for breakfast."
"On it," Jin said, a new respect in his voice as he looked at me.
Clyde placed a hand on my shoulder, his grip firm and grounding. "You are a goddamn miracle, Nash."
Just then, my stomach let out a loud, prolonged growl that sounded like a dying animal in the quiet room. I flushed. I couldn't remember the last time I'd eaten.
Clyde's stern expression softened. "Right. That's enough for now." He turned to the kitchen. "Espinoza, what's the ETA on that food run?"
"Ten minutes, Chief!" Espinoza called from the door, pulling on his jacket.
"Forget it," Clyde said. He walked to the fridge and pulled out a bewildering array of fruits, vegetables, and a tub of protein powder. He grabbed the blender we'd yet to threat-assess.
"What are you doing?" I asked.
"Operational necessity," he stated, dumping kale, banana, berries, and a scoop of vanilla powder into the blender. "The asset requires fuel." He added almond milk and hit the button.
The blender screamed to life, a shockingly violent sound that seemed to offend every one of Clyde's sensibilities. He watched it with a critical frown, as if judging its tactical viability. After a minute, he stopped it and poured the thick, vibrantly green concoction into a glass.
He handed it to me. "Drink."
I looked at the glass. It was… very green. "What is it?"
"A nutrient-dense smoothie designed for sustained cognitive function and peak physical performance," he recited, as if reading from a manual. "Now drink it. That's an order."
I took a hesitant sip. It was surprisingly good. Sweet, cold, and refreshing. I took another, larger gulp.
A slow smile spread across Clyde's face. "See? Fuel." He took the glass from me and stole a sip himself. "Needs more kale," he mused, before handing it back.
I finished the smoothie under his watchful eye, the sugar and caffeine hitting my system like a welcome shock. The grim tension of the day was still there, the shadow of Dr. Aris Thorne still loomed large. But in that moment, with the taste of kale and banana on my tongue and Clyde's proud, focused gaze on me, I felt a surge of renewed energy.
The dragon had a name. And we had a blender. The fight was back on.
The kale-and-banana-fueled high was a potent one. For the next several hours, the apartment was a vortex of focused energy. Jin had dug up everything there was to know about Dr. Aris Thorne: his thesis on predictive economic modeling, his quiet, reclusive nature, his penchant for ordering the same turkey sandwich from the same campus deli every Tuesday. Cooper was mapping the digital infrastructure of the university, looking for backdoors and blind spots. Espinoza was… well, Espinoza was doing something terrifyingly efficient with a set of lockpicks and a schematic of the university's admin building, muttering about "obsolete tumbler systems."
And I was back in the numbers. Now that I knew what to look for—the quiet, boring, academic-looking transfers—the patterns emerged with stunning clarity. Dr. Thorne wasn't just a beneficiary of the Meridian Fund; he was its architect, its beating heart. The "Data Procurement Grants" were a masterpiece of misdirection, funding the very research that made the whole criminal enterprise possible.
Clyde was the conductor of our chaotic orchestra, moving between us, absorbing information, making connections, his mind working at a speed I could barely comprehend. He'd lean over my shoulder, his scent of soap and faint sweat cutting through the sterile air of the room. "Show me the link between the grant from Q2 of last year and the spike in weapons procurement in Eastern Europe."
I'd pull up the data, my fingers flying. "There. A twelve-day lag. He was refining the algorithm. The transfer was authorization to execute based on the new model's prediction."
A grunt of satisfaction. "Good. Jin! Cross-reference that timeline with travel records for known arms dealers. Let's see who got a sudden urge to take a vacation twelve days later."
It was exhilarating and exhausting. The sun outside the windows climbed, peaked, and began its descent, and we barely noticed. The only breaks were for Clyde's "tactical refueling" operations. He'd disappear into the kitchen and return with plates of food that were as efficient and perfectly constructed as he was: turkey sandwiches cut into precise triangles, apple slices arranged like fallen dominoes, glasses of water with exactly two ice cubes each.
During one of these breaks, I leaned back in my chair, my spine cracking in protest. "You know, for a man who can disrupt global criminal networks, you have a very specific opinion on how a sandwich should be cut."
He didn't look up from the map he was studying. "Precision matters, Nash. A poorly cut sandwich leads to structural failure. Mayo on the lap. It's a slippery slope to anarchy."
I snorted. "God forbid anarchy."
"Exactly." He finally looked up, a ghost of a smile on his face. "See? You're learning."
As evening began to paint the sky in shades of violet, the energy in the room shifted again. The pieces were all laid out. We had the map. We had the target. Now, we needed the plan.
Clyde called a halt. "Alright. Circle up."
We gathered around the dining table, now covered in printouts, maps, and empty coffee mugs. It felt like a scene from a movie, except instead of grizzled soldiers, our war council consisted of a forensic accountant, three deadly commandos, and a half-eaten plate of perfectly symmetrical sandwich triangles.
"Thorne is careful. He's a ghost," Jin started, tapping a photo of the mild-mannered professor. "He lives on campus. His lab is his fortress. He has no routine outside of work. No family. No vices. His only weakness appears to be… turkey on rye."
"So we hit the lab," Espinoza said, cracking his knuckles. "Fast and quiet. In and out before campus security finishes their donuts."
Clyde shook his head. "No. He'll have failsafes. Digital dead man's switches. We take him in the lab, he triggers something, and the whole network goes poof. We lose everything." His gaze landed on me. "We need the key. The master decryption key. He'll have it on him. Something personal. Something he'd never leave behind."
All eyes turned to me. I blinked. "Why is everyone looking at me?"
"Because," Clyde said, a slow, dangerous smile spreading across his face. "He's an academic. A man of data and patterns. And we have the one thing he won't be able to resist."
I had a sinking feeling. "What's that?"
"You," he said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "The one who out-patterned him. The one who found his ghost in the machine. His work is his life. You're not a threat to him; you're a peer. A rival. An intellectual challenge."
My stomach did a nervous flip. "You want to use me as bait?"
"Not bait," Clyde corrected, his voice firm. "The lead investigator. We set up a meeting. You, the brilliant forensic accountant from the Treasury Department, want to consult with the esteemed Dr. Thorne on a complex matter of statistical analysis. You flatter him. You engage his ego. My team and I will be there, of course. But he'll be looking at you. He'll want to talk shop. He'll want to show off. And that's when he'll get sloppy."
It was insane. It was terrifying. It was brilliant.
I looked around the table. Jin gave me a solemn nod. Espinoza shot me a thumbs-up. Cooper adjusted his glasses and said, "I can fabricate a convincing Treasury ID badge in about twenty minutes."
They were all in. They believed in this plan. They believed in me.
I took a deep breath and looked at Clyde. His eyes were steady on mine, filled with a trust that was more terrifying than any threat. He believed I could do this. He believed I could look the dragon in the eye and not get burned.
"Okay," I said, my voice surprisingly steady. "Let's go consult with the professor."
Clyde's smile was a thing of pure, predatory beauty. "Good." He clapped me on the shoulder. "Now, who's hungry? We need to carb-load for the big game. I'm thinking pasta. Excellent sustained energy release."
As he marched toward the kitchen, already debating the merits of angel hair versus linguine with Cooper, I sat back down, my heart hammering. I was going to have a playdate with a criminal mastermind. And my boyfriend was going to cook him pasta first.
The pasta, as expected, was a masterpiece. Clyde had opted for linguine—"superior sauce adhesion properties"—with a rich, meaty Bolognese that could have ended wars. We ate around the war table, the mood a strange mix of last supper and pre-game locker room rally. Espinoza told a horrifying story about a mission gone wrong in a monsoon that somehow involved a goat and a case of stolen beer. Jin countered with a surprisingly funny anecdote about a diplomatic incident caused by a mistranslated toast. Cooper mostly just nodded and ate with a terrifying efficiency.
And through it all, Clyde's knee remained pressed firmly against mine under the table, a silent, steady anchor.
After we'd cleaned up—a swift, military operation led by Clyde—the team dispersed to begin their preparations. The apartment was suddenly quiet. The remains of our meal were gone, the table wiped clean. It was just us.
The reality of the plan began to sink in, a cold, lead weight in my stomach. I was going to walk into a room with a man who had built an empire on greed and violence, a man so brilliant he'd hidden in plain sight for years. And I was supposed to… chat with him about statistics.
"Hey." Clyde's voice was soft. He came up behind me where I stood staring out at the city lights, his hands settling on my shoulders. "You're thinking too loud."
"I'm about to have a playdate with a supervillain, Clyde," I said, my voice tight. "A little anxiety is warranted."
He turned me around to face him. His expression was serious, but his eyes were warm. "Listen to me. You're not going in alone. You're the tip of the spear. We're the shaft. And we are very, very good at what we do." He brushed a thumb over my cheek. "And you? You're the smartest person I've ever met. You took his perfect, invisible system and you found the crack. You unnerved him. That's why this will work. Because his curiosity will outweigh his caution. He has to know how you did it."
His faith was a tangible thing, a shield against the fear. I leaned into his touch. "What if I say the wrong thing? What if my small talk about standard deviations isn't compelling enough?"
A slow grin spread across his face. "Then improvise. Tell him you liked his paper on multivariate regression analysis. Men love that."
I burst out laughing, the tension breaking like a fever. "You're ridiculous."
"I'm right," he said, pulling me into a hug. I buried my face in his chest, breathing in his familiar, calming scent. He held me for a long moment, just letting me steady myself. "You've got this, Troy. And I've got you. Always."
The next morning, the team reassembled. The mood was all business. Cooper handed me a Treasury ID badge that looked so authentic I was half-tempted to try and use it to get a discount at the coffee shop. Jin walked me through the wire I'd be wearing, a device so small and sophisticated it felt like a speck of lint. Espinoza, meanwhile, was trying to talk Clyde into letting him use "just a little" explosive charge on the lab's door for a quicker entry.
"The objective is quiet infiltration, Espinoza," Clyde said, his tone exasperated. "Not announcing our presence with a percussive introduction."
"But Chief," Espinoza whined, "a little C-4 is like a firm handshake. It shows you mean business."
Clyde just pinched the bridge of his nose.
An hour later, we were in the rented SUV, circling the pristine, ivy-covered campus. Students lounged on the grass, oblivious to the tactical operation unfolding in their midst. It was surreal.
"Remember," Clyde said, his eyes on the rearview mirror, meeting mine. "You're the expert. You belong there. You're just consulting. We'll be in your ear the whole time." He tapped the nearly invisible comm unit in his own ear. "Just breathe."
Jin and Espinoza had already melted into the campus, posing as maintenance workers and students. Cooper was in a van nearby, running tech. It was just me and Clyde now, parked a block from the stately brick building that housed the Department of Statistical Analysis.
"Okay," I said, taking a deep, shuddering breath. "I'm going."
Clyde reached over and squeezed my hand. "Go get 'em, tiger."
I got out of the car and walked toward the building, my heart trying to beat its way out of my chest. The wire felt huge against my skin, though I knew it was invisible. Every student I passed felt like a potential enemy combatant.
I found the right office on the third floor. The door was open. Dr. Aris Thorne sat behind a large, orderly desk, surrounded by books and stacks of paper. He looked exactly like his photo: mid-fifties, thinning hair, wire-rimmed glasses. He looked up as I appeared in his doorway, his expression one of mild, academic curiosity.
"Dr. Thorne? I'm Troy Nash, from the Treasury Department." My voice only squeaked a little.
His eyes lit up with genuine, professional interest. Not the look of a criminal mastermind. The look of a nerd who'd just found another nerd. "Mr. Nash! Come in, come in! I must say, I was intrigued by your email. A matter of 'algorithmic anomaly detection in multi-stream financial data'? Fascinating."
I stepped into the office, my mouth dry. Okay, Nash. You're on. Talk nerd.
"Yes, sir," I said, slipping into the familiar language of my profession. "We've encountered a pattern of obfuscation in certain high-volume transactions that seems to utilize a recursive smoothing function. Almost like a GARCH model, but applied to capital flow instead of volatility."
Thorne's eyes widened behind his glasses. He was hooked. "A GARCH application for fund masking? That's… brilliantly perverse. Please, sit. Explain."
I sat, and for the next twenty minutes, we fell into a deep, technical discussion. I laid out a real, but heavily sanitized, version of the Meridian Fund's activities, framing it as a theoretical problem. He was brilliant, his mind leaping ahead of mine, offering insights and suggestions that were both helpful and terrifyingly amoral.
My heart was still pounding, but now it was from the intellectual thrill of the chase. I could see why he'd done it. The sheer, beautiful, mathematical elegance of it all. The power.
"…and that's where the residual becomes problematic," I was saying, pointing to a equation I'd scribbled on his chalkboard. "The smoothing creates an almost perfect camouflage, but it leaves this… digital whisper."
Thorne was nodding, a look of rapt admiration on his face. "It's a masterpiece of design. The whisper is the cost of perfection. A necessary flaw." He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a confidential tone. "You know, I've often theorized about such a system. To see it implemented… it's beautiful."
It was the closest he'd come to an admission. The air in the room changed. The academic pretense thinned. We were no longer theorizing. We were admiring his work.
And that's when he got sloppy.
Reaching into his breast pocket, he pulled out a simple, silver USB drive attached to a keychain. It was unremarkable. Utterly normal. "My own models use a similar principle, but I've been working on a way to eliminate the residual entirely. The key is in the initial seeding algorithm…" He plugged the drive into his computer.
In my ear, Clyde's voice was a calm, quiet whisper. "That's it. That's the key. The personal item. He's arrogant enough to keep it on him. Good work, Troy. Keep him talking. We're moving."
I kept my eyes locked on Thorne, my expression one of fascinated interest, even as my insides were turning to liquid. "Fascinating," I managed to say. "The seeding algorithm. Wouldn't that require a fundamentally different approach to…"
The door to the office burst open with a quiet thump, not a bang. Clyde stood there, not in tactical gear, but in a suit that looked like it cost more than my car, flanked by Jin and Espinoza, who looked equally corporate and intimidating.
"Dr. Thorne," Clyde said, his voice flat and cold, all business. "My name is Agent Adams. I'm afraid your consultation is over. You need to come with us."
Thorne's face went from fascinated to utterly bewildered. "What is the meaning of this? I'm in the middle of a—"
"We know about the Dragon, Doctor," Clyde said, his gaze icy. "We know about the whispers."
The change in Thorne was instantaneous. The kindly professor vanished, replaced by a man of cold, calculating fury. His eyes darted to the USB drive still plugged into his computer.
Espinoza was already there, carefully unplugging it and bagging it. "We'll take care of that for you, sir."
Thorne looked from Clyde's implacable face to mine. The betrayal in his eyes was not that of a caught criminal, but of a fellow scholar who had been duped. "You," he whispered, his voice venomous. "You're very good."
"I know," I said, my voice surprisingly steady. "So is he."
As Jin read him his rights and led him out, Clyde stayed behind for a second. He walked over to me, his corporate disguise doing nothing to hide the lethal grace beneath. He didn't say anything. He just cupped the back of my neck, his thumb stroking the nape of my neck, and pressed a firm, quick kiss to my forehead.
"Told you you could do it," he murmured, his voice full of a fierce pride that warmed me from the inside out. Then he was gone, following his team, the dragon finally in chains.
I stood alone in the quiet office, the chalkboard covered in our equations, the air still humming with the ghost of our intellectual duel. My hands were shaking. I took a deep breath, then another.
And then I smiled. We'd done it. For real this time.
Now, I really needed a vacation.