Page 40 of The Tracker

She opened her mouth, then shut it. Damn him.

“Fine,” she said. “But I’m not staying here like some coddled heiress.” Even as she said it, the words felt like a splinter under her skin.

Trusting Dawson to lead was harder than she wanted to admit. She’d grown up in a world where image was everything and vulnerability was a weapon best kept sheathed. Letting Dawson take the reins chafed at something deep in her, something fierce and independent. But she wasn’t stupid either. She’d seen what happened when pride overruled survival. And if she was going to make it through this, she probably ought to trust the guy who'd proven himself capable. She had to trust someone besides herself.

“You’re not,” he said. “You’re going to help. But from here. You’ve got access to the board’s travel logs, right?”

She nodded.

“Start there. Find out who was off-site the day Peter died. Who booked meetings. Who was ‘working remotely’ but pinged the internal servers. Someone’s lying. We just need to catch them in it.”

A wicked grin spread across her face. “You want me to run a digital trap.”

“Exactly. I’ve got Jesse running traces on Ana’s accounts, but you know these people better. Their tells. Their patterns.”

She drained the last of her coffee. “I can do that.”

Within minutes, she settled into Dawson’s makeshift workspace, slipping through an untraceable back door into the system. The IT team at Silver Spur had quietly built it for her. She navigated into Shaw Petrochemical’s restricted-access travel server with practiced ease.

But the back door could only get her so far. She’d learned early-on connections and a little well-placed charm went a long way. She had a handful of favors to call in, and one in particular—Davy Blake, a junior analyst with a not-so-secret crush—stillowed her big after she’d covered for his disastrous background check two years back.

She pinged him.

EVANGELINE: Need discreet access to travel metadata. Full board-level calendar syncs. Internal server pings too. Don’t ask.

The typing bubble hovered. Then:

DAVY: You’re going to get me fired.

EVANGELINE: Only if you do it wrong.

There was a beat of silence, then another message.

DAVY: Ten minutes. Don’t say I never did anything for you.

True to his word, the folders populated in front of her—rows of time-stamped entries, overlapping locations, boarding passes, and itinerary changes. She filtered them down to a single hour block—the window of Peter’s death.

One flag stood out. Langley’s Dallas trip. He was supposed to be out of town. But his badge had pinged a side entrance at the company less than forty minutes before the body was found.

She whistled low. “Gotcha, you slimy bastard.”

Langley. Her father had vouched for the man for over a decade—said he was one of the few execs who still believed in loyalty over leverage. She’d once defended him in a closed-door board meeting, argued against trimming his department’s budget because he’d backed her initiative on sustainable operations. If he’d lied—if he’d really been there the day Peter died—it wasn’t just business. It was personal. It meant someone her family trusted had twisted the knife from the inside.

Dawson kissed her then, hard and fast, like muscle memory—like instinct. It pulled her back to the first time he’d shielded her, even before anything between them had truly ignited. It was a small moment, almost easy to overlook, but when he’d accompanied her to that first meeting after the gala, she’d felt his strong, safe presence beside her. He’d become a silent barrier between her and the unknown.

That moment had stuck with her—not because of fear, but because of the way he stood between her and any threat, the unspoken vow in his touch. That was when she’d started to trust him. When she realized there was more to him than was readily apparent.

“Don’t open the door for anyone but me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Yes, Sir.”

His hand landed on her ass with a sharp crack. “Don’t start something you can’t finish.”

She grinned. “Try me.”

It took her three hours, two spreadsheets, and one truly rage-inducing phone call with Shaw Petrochemical’s compliance officer, but Evangeline had something.

Langley had flown to Dallas the day before Peter’s murder—officially to meet with potential investors. But his hotel never confirmed the check-in. And his travel itinerary was flagged for last-minute changes—twice.

---