Page 15 of The Foreman
“I started looking for another job. Quietly. I figured the safest way out was to walk away. That’s when Chet cornered me in my apartment. He accused me of spying. Said someone had tipped him off. I tried to talk my way out of it, but he wasn’t listening.”
“And then?”
“He lunged. We fought. I got away. I swear he was still breathing when I left. I checked and he had a pulse. But a few hours later, the news reported him dead and listed me as a person of interest.”
“Convenient,” Jesse muttered.
“Too convenient,” Trace said. “She was set up.”
Macy blinked. He’d said it without hesitation. No room for doubt. Something in her chest shifted.
Reed nodded slowly. “We’ve been digging. Nexus does have federal contracts—more than you mentioned. Some of the systems they’re developing are flagged at the Tier One level. If any of that tech got compromised, we’re not looking at just corporate espionage.”
“We’re looking at treason,” Jesse added.
The room went still.
Macy’s stomach twisted. “What happens if they pin that on me?”
Trace didn’t let her look away. “They won’t.”
Reed sat forward. “We’re going to need access to your work files, anything you saved off-network, external logins, backup emails. Think hard. Anything you accessed remotely could be useful.”
“I have a folder on my cloud drive,” Macy said. “It’s encrypted. I kept copies of contracts and project notes—nothing classified, just stuff I thought might help if I ever got questioned. I didn’t want to be caught unprepared.”
One eyebrow arched as she shifted her weight against the chair like someone about to recite a grocery list instead of her own survival training.
“And before anyone asks why I am not panicking with a gun in the room,” she added, “my dad served with Texas DPS and taught me to shoot before I could drive. I keep my license to carry current, and I took a defensive pistol course last year at a Hill Country range. After a break-in at my old apartment, I started Krav Maga and stuck with it. Dana also dragged me to a local locksport meetup. That is where I learned how older keypads fail and how lazy firmware gets exploited. Nexus paid for a weekend forensics workshop, so I know my way around metadata and ghost signatures.”
“Good instinct,” Jesse said. “We’ll get our tech to pull it and start the comparison.”
Macy hesitated, then added quickly, “There was something else. When I poked around Nexus’ internal files, a name kept surfacing. Not Nexus, not another company, just a name… Kells. Buried deep in directories that shouldn’t have crossed my desk. At the time I thought it was noise, but now it feels bigger.”
Reed’s gaze sharpened. Jesse glanced at Trace, then back at her. “Kells,” Jesse repeated, tasting the word like it left grit on his tongue. “Not someone in the Nexus org chart. We’ll flag it and see where it leads.”
Macy hesitated. “This could make me look worse before it makes me look better.”
Trace’s voice was quiet. “Do it anyway.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
Reed and Jesse stood. “We’ll be back in touch,” Reed said. “Stay close to the house. Don’t use any unsecured lines.”
“We’ve got a secure comm unit set up,” Jesse added. “If you need us, Trace knows how to reach us.”
Trace walked them out, leaving Macy alone in the den. The door clicked shut behind them, the sound echoing too loudly in the stillness. Her heart beat like a drum against her ribs, every thud a reminder that she wasn’t just scared. She was in it now, no turning back. Her palms were damp where they pressed into her thighs, her breath tight in her chest.
Beneath the nerves and the adrenaline was something sharper, something alive. A surge of vindication that pulsed through her chest like the first breath after surfacing from deep water. She’d told the truth, and they’d believed her. And for the first time in weeks, she wasn’t running alone.
Relief quietly flooded her system. Someone believed her. They believed her. Trace believed her.
When Trace came back inside, she turned toward him, searching his expression. “You really believe me, don't you?”
He didn’t answer right away. Just crossed the room and stopped in front of her.
“I never doubted you.”
“You did three years ago.”
