Chapter 14 · The Ghost Account

"You're about to burn your own house down."

Mara didn't look up from the screen. Her fingers hovered over the keyboard, two keys away from deleting every clearance code she'd spent six years building. The safehouse smelled like burnt coffee and old plaster. Jace stood behind her, close enough that she could feel the heat coming off him, close enough that it made her neck prickle.

"That's the idea," she said.

"Then what? You think they'll just let you walk after you torch their audit trail?"

She tapped one key. A warning box flashed red. "They won't know it was me until it's done."

"Bullshit." He leaned over her shoulder, and his breath stirred the hair at her temple. "You're logged in right now. The second you delete that access, they'll see the timestamp. They'll see your name."

Mara's jaw tightened. He wasn't wrong. She could feel the weight of the decision sitting in her chest like a stone, but there wasn't another way. The books Ephraim had shown them last night traced back to three ghost accounts, all of them feeding numbers into the ledger Jace carried.