Crossed Lines

Chapter 2

Damon’s POV

The next morning.

The floor-to-ceiling windows of his office overlooked the heart of the city. From up here, the city looked orderly, almost obedient. That illusion kept him sane.

“Your eight o’clock is waiting,” said Ethan Voss, his chief of staff and the closest thing Damon had to a friend.

“Tell him to wait longer,” Damon replied without looking up from the file in front of him.

Ethan didn’t flinch. He was used to Damon’s disregard for schedules, everyone else bent to Damon’s time, not the other way around.

“It’s about the ShadowByte contract.”

Ethan has been tracking ShadowByte for the past 24 hours.

Damon’s eyes lifted. “Still no lead?”

“Nothing we can trace. Whoever they are, they’re clean. Cleaner than anyone I’ve seen.” Ethan slid a thin folder onto the desk. “No code signatures, no repeated routing paths. Every trace ends in a dead drop server.”

Damon flipped the folder open. A few printouts showed lines of code, beautiful in their precision, maddening in their anonymity.

“They covered their tracks this well?” Damon said, almost to himself. There was a thread of grudging respect in his voice, though he’d never admit it.

“They don’t want to be found,” Ethan said.

“They all think they don’t want to be found,” Damon replied, leaning back in his chair. “Until I decide they’re worth finding.”

Outside, the city kept moving, unaware that somewhere inside it, the person Damon was hunting might already be closer than either of them realized.

Elara’s POV

By mid-morning, the rain had settled into a soft, steady drizzle that blurred the edges of the street outside my window. Washington had a way of making the world feel smaller, quieter, and I liked it that way.

The soft glow from my laptop screen was the only light in the room besides the muted daylight slipping through the blinds. A dozen lines of code danced across the monitor, my fingers moving without hesitation. The client from Byte & Beam, a small e-commerce start-up, had been struggling with security vulnerabilities for weeks. By the time I was finished, their system would be airtight, their data cleaner than a politician’s campaign promise.

“Still saving the world one keystroke at a time?”

I glanced over my shoulder to see Hailey leaning against the doorway, holding two travel mugs. She was dressed in an oversized hoodie and leggings, hair pulled into a messy bun that somehow still looked good on her.

“Technically, this one’s just saving a struggling online pet store,” I said, hinting at it being our Company’s client.

“Same thing,” she replied, settling into the chair across from me. “You disappear into this room and come out hours later with that smug little ‘problem solved’ look. You know it’s creepy, right?”

“It’s called being good at my job,” I said, accepting the coffee she handed me. I took a sip and my lips curled into a smile,

She’d gotten my order right, of course.

My laptop chimes.

She eyed my screen. “Is that… another alias?”

Hailey was the only one who knew my other identity. I literally trust her with my life.

I smirked. “I have to keep the mystery alive somehow.”

The truth was, aliases were my shield. Each one a layer between me and the world that thought it knew Elara Duval. Clients knew ShadowByte, or maybe another name I used that month, but never me. That anonymity was freedom — and after years of being under the Duval's microscope, freedom was the only currency I valued more than money.

Hailey’s gaze softened, as if she could hear the thoughts I wasn’t saying. “You know, most people would kill to have your brain. And they’d be flashing it all over the place, building a brand, cashing in on interviews. But you…” She shook her head. “You’d rather stay a ghost.”

“That’s the point,” I said quietly.

We sipped our coffee in comfortable silence until she leaned back, studying me. “So… are you going to tell me what had you all stiff and twitchy yesterday morning?”

I hesitated. I hadn’t told her about the CrossTech request. Saying Damon’s name out loud would be like summoning a storm I wasn’t ready for.

“It was just a client I turned down,” I said finally. “Not a good fit.”

Her eyebrows rose. “You turned down money?”

“I turned down a headache,” I corrected, closing my laptop. “And I plan to keep it that way.”

The truth was, the moment I saw his company’s name on that request, my instincts had screamed no. Damon Cross had the kind of presence that could strip a person bare without touching them. A man who could turn your strengths into weaknesses before you even realized the game had started.

I’d escaped people like that once. I wasn’t about to step back into their world.

** ** ** **

By the time Hailey swung by with lunch, I’d already neutralized three separate tracing attempts all from the same IP cluster.

Persistent.

I sat cross-legged on my couch, laptop balanced on my knees, the rhythmic clack of keys filling the room. Code streamed across the screen like an unbroken river, each line severing another breadcrumb trail someone had tried to follow.

When the third attempt vanished into the digital void I’d built for it, I smirked. Not bad. Whoever was behind this had resources, maybe even their own private tech team. But they weren’t good enough.

Not yet.

“Please tell me that’s a new project and not another hacker war,” Hailey said, breezing in and dropping a paper bag on the coffee table.

I shut the lid halfway and raised an eyebrow. “Define hacker war.”

“The kind that has you up at 3 a.m. with a look on your face that says ‘I could end you with one keystroke.’”

“Then no,” I said, unwrapping the sandwich she’d brought. “It’s just… a client with an overly curious competitor.”

Hailey gave me a suspicious look but let it go. She’d learned a long time ago that if I didn’t want to explain something, no amount of prodding would get it out of me.

“Fine,” she said, settling beside me. “Eat before it gets cold. And you really need to get some sun. You’re starting to look like the ghost you pretend to be online.”

I smiled faintly, but my mind wasn’t on the sandwich. The IPs I’d traced were masked behind layers of corporate encryption, the kind private entities don’t usually bother with unless they have something to hide. Or protect.

It made me wonder if the client I’d turned down was behind it.

It made me certain I’d made the right choice in refusing them.

But as I took a bite, a small, stubborn part of me couldn’t help but admit… It was almost fun.