Page 82 of The Twilight Theft

There was a small black dot at the center of the O. The magnetic decoration came off easily, and I turned it over in my hand. “It’s your tracker. We’ve been chasing this cat?”

Scarlett peeled away, bowing her head and carrying on a muted conversation with her team over their earpieces. Malcolm joined her.

Jayce absently stroked the cat. “They’re not having any luck finding Noah.”

“Is Brie sure it was him?” I stuffed the tracker into my pocket. Apparently, we hadn’t hired the best heist crew. “What if someone else saw you put the tracker on the dragonfly’s head?”

“Not likely.” She blew a raspberry. “And your face is bleeding.”

With the pounding at the back of my skull, I’d barely registered the throbbing across my temple. I tapped a finger at the spot where the cat had clawed me, coming away with blood. It was already sticky. “Fucking cat.”

“No less than you deserve for that bullshit move.”

“Maybe you didn’t attach it securely. Maybe it fell on the floor and—”

“Are you honestly suggesting this cat was wandering around upstairs and no one noticed?” She placed the cat on the counter, its purring growing louder as she stroked its head.

“Why not? You’re suggesting a ghost snuck past us, took the tracker off—a tracker, you claim no one saw you put in place—and attached it to the cat’s collar?”

“Chaos!” She flung an arm in the air, not disguising her irritation. “It’s all part of his plan. Get us running around this building while he makes off with the chip.”

“If it was really part of his plan…” Something wasn’t adding up. It was all too convenient. There was another level to this job. “This isn’t a random cat. He brought the cat, knowing the tracker would be on the dragonfly’s head. He planned it so he could put the tracker on the cat.”

Jayce’s hand froze on the cat’s back. “If Noah did all that, he had to be privy to our plans. Who had access? Who knew about the tracker?”

“Your team. My team.” Who else was there when Jayce ran through her plans yesterday afternoon? Everyone had been moving around the space. “Liana? Her staff? The carpenters?”

“Liana said no to the tracker.” Jayce grew serious, her irritation with me replaced by an intense focus. “Our teams were there—except for Zaria—and Liana. That was it. Even if someone had been listening in, they would have heard Liana decline.”

I picked my phone up off the floor. “Whether or not Brie genuinely saw Noah, he’s not behind this.”

“If Noah’s here, heisbehind it.”

I pointed at the cat with my phone, which was greeted by a hiss. Stupid cat. “He’s part of an inside job.”

“Are you accusing my team of something?.” Not only was she in touch with all of her teammates—meaning they couldn’t have snuck around and stolen anything without her knowing—but she trusted them implicitly.

Must’ve been nice.

“I’m not.” I huffed out a breath. If it was an inside job, her team wasn’t behind it—it was either someone from mine or the security team. Rav and Malcolm had done background checks, but they could have missed something. “Is Brie having any luck with the cameras? Or our comms?”

“Will’s working on the comms. He thinks he’s almost got it. Rav and Brie are hacking directly into the cameras, rather than piggybacking off Craig’s signal.”

“Where’s Zaria?”

Jayce conveyed the question to her team, and Scarlett looked over from across the room. “With Emmett. They went back to the patio to monitor comings and goings.”

“Still no sign of Wyatt?”

Her mouth opened and hung there. Good. It wasn’t just me. She was coming to the same conclusion. “He’s not in trouble, is he?”

“He knew about the tracker, knew all of our planned movements, knew every one of the staff on the security team.”

Jayce began walking backward toward the stairwell. “We need to ask the security team if he left.”

I kept up with her, increasing my speed the farther we got. “His little ploy? Calling me just before he was attacked? It was nothing more than that—a ploy. The guard working the stairs went to look for him and that camera’s down. He had full access to the emergency stairwell.”

Jayce spun toward the door, picking up to a jog. “If he left through the emergency exit, it would’ve triggered an alarm.”

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