Page 6 of Code Name: Admiral

The next message I sent was one I knew I shouldn’t. It was to Tank and Blackjack, requesting they initiate immediate and round-the-clock surveillance on Alice Gordon. My gut told me she was going to be trouble, but something else—something I wasn’t ready to examine too closely—told me she might also be exactly what this investigation needed.

I took another sip of my now-cold coffee and settled in for what promised to be a very long night. Between my cousin’s involvement in a murder and my growing interest in the victim’s sister, I had a feeling things were about to get a lot more complicated.

3

ALICE

“Hey, Sage,” said Lark, my usual barista, when I walked into Method Tea and Coffee for my morning cup of Matcha. The familiar scent of freshly ground coffee beans and steamed milk wrapped around me like a comfort blanket, a stark contrast to the anxiety churning in my gut.

I had no idea if Lark was her birth name or one she chose that felt like it fit better. For me, Sage wasn’t either—just the thing that popped into my head when she’d asked my name the first time she took my order and the lingering scent of smudging still clung to my clothes from my morning ritual. Sometimes, the best covers were the ones born from simple circumstances.

“Are you hanging out today?” she asked as I shrugged off my coat and slung it over one of the chairs before adjusting the angle of the table nearest to the front window, positioning myself where I could see both the entrance and the street. The morning crowd bustled past outside, each face a potential threat, each passing car a possible surveillance point.

Some days, I “hung out,” as she’d put it, when the noise in my head became too much and I needed to lose myself in the city’s rhythm. New York had a way of drowning out your thoughts ifyou let it—eight million stories playing out simultaneously, each one fighting for attention. But today wasn’t about finding peace in chaos.

At three this morning, I’d caught someone trying to get inside my head—or more specifically, inside my computers. Screen snooping—or signal bleeding, as some called it—was a sophisticated way of remotely capturing electromagnetic emissions from monitors. These bastards were trying to read my screens without ever setting foot in my apartment.

I first noticed it during a complex coding sequence—a millisecond delay between my keystrokes and their appearance on screen, like an echo in digital space. The diagnostic I ran showed no hardware issues, which only confirmed my suspicions: someone was intercepting my keystrokes, creating tiny electromagnetic echoes as their equipment picked up and processed the emissions before they reached my screen.

I had a dozen ways to block them, but using any of them would be like sending up a flare announcing I was onto them. Instead, I needed to think like a chess player—three moves ahead. The coffee-shop strategy was elegant in its simplicity: use the electromagnetic chaos of an active business to hide in plain sight. Other laptops, phones, charging cables, the industrial espresso machines, even the ancient coffee grinders—all created a symphony of interference that would make isolating a single device’s emissions nearly impossible.

The solution was quite brilliant, actually. It just wouldn’t work long term, especially given my preference to code in the middle of the night, when most businesses were closed.

“Here you go, honey,” said Lark, bringing my tea to the table. “Let me know what else I can get you.”

Since I rarely heard her say much more than good morning, her longer string of words today revealed an accent I couldn’t quite place. Figuring out where someone was from, based on notjust pronunciations but dialects, was a quirk of mine. A rabbit hole I couldn’t afford to let myself fall down this morning.

“Hey, Lark. Where are you from?” I asked as she was walking away.

“A place I’m sure you’ve never heard of,” she responded, a hint of amusement in her voice.

“Try me.”

“You’ve heard of Lake Placid, right?”

“Of course.”

“I grew up about two hours south of there, in a place called Gloversville. What about you?”

“I’ve never lived outside of Manhattan.” I kept the rest to myself as I pulled up the town’s demographics on my laptop. With a current population under ten thousand, it boasted it was once the home of over two hundred glove-making manufacturers—the kind of place where everyone knew everyone else’s business. The exact opposite of where I’d ever want to be.

I rested against the chair and picked up my cup of tea, letting the steam warm my face. Matcha, like living in the city, wasn’t for everyone, but I loved its bright green color, its smell of freshly cut grass, and the unexpected, slightly bitter, and earthy flavor profile. Sarah, the one and only time I got her to try it, nearly hurled, saying it was like drinking a hot mushroom milkshake.

When I caught myself giggling at the memory, my eyes filled with tears.

I set down the tea and opened my laptop. My sister was dead, and I didn’t have time for shit like asking the barista where she came from. I knew in my gut that Bobby Kane was responsible for my sister’s death, and I’d make thesonuvabitchpay if it was the last thing I ever did.

I spentthe rest of the morning hacking into my sister’s call log. “What the hell is this?” I mumbled to myself when I picked up on a pattern of calls to an unknown number. They appeared sporadic at first, but for someone who was used to spotting consistencies, I sure as hell did. After a couple of hours spent getting absolutely nowhere, I knew who to reach out to.

“Hey, Alice. How’re you doing?” Tex’s voice came through almost before the first ring ended.

“Good. Listen, I need your help.”

“Back up for a minute and answer me. How are you doing?” I hated the way he enunciated every word, letting me know loud and clear he wouldn’t tolerate whatever attempt I made to avoid answering him.

“Shitty. Okay?”

“I hear you. Now, tell me how I can help.”

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