Code To The Heart

Chapter 6:Need to know

# Chapter 6: Need to Know

"Don't go out the front door," Julian read aloud off her screen, very calmly, the way a man reads a menu in a restaurant that is on fire. "Okay. Great. I love being told things by strangers."

Elena was already on her feet. Adrian had gone gray to the lips. Across the street, the silhouette in the black sedan still held its phone to its ear, patient, unhurried, a man waiting for a call to connect.

"Kitchen," Julian said. "Every diner has a back door. It's practically a law."

"The waitress..."

"Will think we're skipping the check. Which we are, but I'll leave forty dollars under the pie plate." He was already sliding bills from his wallet. "Adrian, can you walk fast?"

"I teach teenagers," Adrian said hoarsely. "I can run."

They moved. Elena would remember it afterward as a series of strange, bright pictures: the swinging steel door, the cook's startled face over a sizzling grill, Julian saying "Sorry, emergency, the pie was incredible" with such sincerity that the man simply nodded and pointed. A hallway smelling of bleach and onions. A fire exit with a bar that screamed when Julian shoved it.

Then cold air, and an alley lit by one buzzing yellow lamp, and the sound of the city very far away.

"Which way?" Elena whispered.

"Away from the car." Julian caught her elbow. It was the first time he'd touched her, and she registered it with dull surprise, a steadying grip, warm through her sleeve. "Three blocks east there's a parking garage. My car's on level two."

"You drive a car?"

"What did you think I rode? A unicycle?"

"I thought something with a *sticker* on it."

"It has a sticker," he admitted. "Come on."

---

The car was a dented green hatchback with a bumper sticker reading **I ♥ MY SERVER (IT'S NOT LISTENING)**. Elena looked at it for exactly one second.

"Don't," Julian said.

"I said nothing."

"You were *composing.*"

She climbed into the passenger seat. Adrian folded himself into the back among a drift of cables, a stray umbrella, and what appeared to be an entire library of paperback mysteries. Julian started the engine and pulled out without turning on his headlights until they'd rounded the corner.

For six blocks, nobody spoke.

"Tell me about Tobias," Julian said at last, eyes on the mirror.

"I don't want to."

"I know. Tell me anyway."

She stared through the windshield at the wet streets sliding past. "Eleven years ago, I was a founder with forty employees and a lot of enemies. An investor sent him as a consultant. He stayed. He was fifteen years in federal protective service before that. He never married. He eats the same lunch every day. He once drove through a blockade to get me to a hospital when I had appendicitis and wouldn't admit it."

"That doesn't sound like a villain."

"No." Her voice cracked. "It sounds like the only person who never lied to me."

"That we know of."

"That we *know* of."

Julian drove in silence for a few more seconds. Then, gently: "Elena, I want to say two things, and I want you to hear both. One: that credential log says he co-authorized a clone of your master key three years ago. Two: that doesn't prove he's the stranger."

"It proves he lied to me."

"It proves *something* happened. It could be a lie. It could be an order from someone he trusted. It could be someone forged his authorization the same way they forged Adrian's." He took a corner smoothly. "Don't convict him in the car. Convict him in daylight, with evidence."

"You said that about Dennis."

"I did. And I stand by it." The faintest smile. "I'm famously consistent. Ask anyone. Ask my sister."

"I'm not going to ask your sister."

"Wise."

---

His apartment was on the fourth floor of a converted textile warehouse, with exposed brick, enormous windows, and a layer of organized chaos so total it looked like an art installation. There were plants everywhere: a fiddle-leaf fig in a bucket, ferns hanging from the pipes, a lemon tree on the sill with three tiny fruit. A mechanical keyboard sat on a desk beside a stack of vinyl records and a kettle shaped like a sleeping fox.

Elena stood in the doorway, taking it in.

"You *live* here?"

"Define *live.*"

"It's..." She searched for the word. "Warm."

"That's the nicest thing anyone's said about it. Mostly people say 'is that a mushroom?'" He set his bag down. "Yes, it's a mushroom. It's decorative. Sit anywhere that doesn't have a cat on it."

"You have a cat?"

"I have two. Tuesday and Debug." He pointed. A fat orange cat regarded Elena from the arm of a threadbare couch with mild contempt. "That's Debug. He doesn't like suits."

"I'm not wearing a suit."

"You're wearing an *aura* of one."

Adrian sank into an armchair and put his face in his hands. Julian filled the fox kettle without being asked and set it on the stove. And Elena, who had not sat on a couch in three years, lowered herself carefully onto the cushion beside the orange cat.

Debug looked at her. She looked at Debug.

He slowly, ostentatiously, turned his back.

"I think I've been insulted," she said.

"He's testing you. Keep going."

---

It was past midnight when the argument started.

Julian had set up three laptops on the kitchen table in a configuration she couldn't parse, and he was working through Adrian's drive line by line, with a cup of cooling tea at his elbow. Adrian, exhausted, had fallen asleep in the chair. Elena stood at the window with her phone in her hand, the screen dark.

"I'm calling Tobias," she said.

Julian didn't look up. "No."

"I need to hear his voice."

"You need to hear his *story,* which he's had three hours to prepare."

"If he's innocent..."

"If he's innocent, he'll still be innocent tomorrow. If he's guilty, you'll tip him off tonight." Now he turned in his chair. "Elena. Please. Give me until morning."

"He's been with me for eleven years."

"I know."

"He took a *bullet* for me. Almost. A rubber one. At a protest. It left a bruise the size of a dinner plate."

"I believe you."

"Then why are you so willing to..." She stopped. Her voice had risen. She lowered it, though the effort made her jaw ache. "I need someone I can still trust. And you're asking me to give that up."

"I'm asking you to *wait,*" Julian said gently. "That's not the same."

She turned away. The city glittered beneath her, a thousand lit windows full of people who would sleep tonight.

"Here is what we're going to do," she said, and her voice had reverted to the clipped precision she used in boardrooms. "Tomorrow, nothing changes. I go to work. I act normally. We tell no one about Adrian, or the drive, or Tobias."

"Okay."

"Not Marguerite."

"Elena..."

"Not *anyone.* Need to know."

Julian went very still.

"Say that again."

"Need to know," she repeated. "It's how I run everything. Information is compartmentalized. People learn what they require to do their jobs. That's how you prevent leaks."

"And how's that working out?"

She turned. "Excuse me?"

He stood slowly, rolled his shoulders, and walked toward her, not threatening, just steady. When he stopped, a yard away, his eyes were serious in a way that made her feel unexpectedly seen.

"Elena, I've watched you for twenty-seven hours. You've told me more in one afternoon than you've told your own assistant in eleven years. You know why? Because I asked. I'm not your employee. I don't need your approval. So you just... *said* it."

"That isn't..."

"The reason a dead man's ghost has been living in your server for three years is that nobody in your company was allowed to know enough to *notice.*" His voice stayed quiet. "Walter's alterations got through because the people who might have caught them weren't permitted to look. You built a fortress so tight that the only person who could see inside was the person who'd already broken in."

"You're blaming me."

"I'm *not.* I'm telling you what I see." He didn't flinch. "You want me to keep this from Marguerite, who's been awake as long as you have and cares about you more than anyone alive. You want me to keep it from your board, your lawyers, your whole team, and walk back into that building tomorrow pretending everything's fine."

"Yes."

"Then I can't do it."

The words landed like a dropped glass.

Elena stared at him. "I'm sorry?"

"I'll work with you. I'll sit in your office at three a.m. and eat awful vending machine pretzels. I'll chase this ghost until we've run it to ground." He took a breath. "But I won't do it in the dark. Not on your terms. If you want me beside you, I need to be allowed to say what I know to the people who need to hear it. Otherwise I'm just one more locked door in a hallway full of them."

For a long, taut second, she said nothing. The only sound was Debug's soft purr, absurdly loud in the stillness.

"You're refusing an order."

"I'm refusing a *wall,*" Julian said. "There's a difference. I'll follow you into a fire. I just won't help you build another cage."

Her hands curled at her sides. She had fired people for less. She had ended careers over a single dissent. Every reflex she owned told her to deliver the sentence, *you're done,* and watch the room go cold.

But the sentence wouldn't come.

Because he was right.

And because the only person who'd ever told her no and been right was Marguerite, and she had spent eleven years pretending that didn't matter.

"You don't understand," she said, and it came out hoarse. "If I tell people, they'll look at me differently. They'll know I was fooled. They'll know I was weak."

"Weak," Julian said, "is not the word I'd use for a woman who built an empire and carried a lie for three years because she thought she'd earned it."

"That's *exactly* weak..."

"That's *human.*" He shook his head. "You're allowed to be fooled, Elena. Anyone can be fooled by someone who's good enough. The only real failure is letting the fear of being seen make you stop looking."

She pressed the heel of her hand against her eye. The tears she'd held back at the diner finally arrived, quick and furious, and she turned away from him, ashamed.

He didn't come closer. He didn't touch her. He just stood where he was, giving her room, and after a while he said, very quietly:

"I'm going to make you tea, and you're going to hate it, and you're going to drink it anyway."

A wet, helpless laugh escaped her. "You're insufferable."

"I'm told it's my best quality."

---

She drank the tea. It was chamomile, which she informed him was a *barbaric* choice, and then she drank every drop. Debug, after twenty minutes of apparent deliberation, climbed onto the couch and curled up against her thigh like a warm, furry verdict.

"He likes you," Julian said, not looking up from his screen.

"He's using me for heat."

"That's how he says it."

At 1:40 a.m., Julian made a small noise in his throat.

"What?" Elena asked.

"Come see this."

She crossed the room. On the center laptop, a floor plan glowed: the forty-first floor of Vance Dynamics, in cool blue lines, with a scatter of tiny red dots.

"Badge access logs," he said. "Last night. I pulled them from the building system before it got locked down. Whoever built the glass box can't see this, because I'm running it through your private archive, not their pipe."

"And?"

"And I looked at every swipe on the server room door between midnight and three." He pointed. "Eleven entries. Security rounds. Cleaning crew. Your maintenance engineer at 12:10. All accounted for."

"But?"

"But *this* one." A single red dot at the top of the screen, flashing slowly. "2:41 a.m. Three minutes before the shadow account woke. Server room, main door. A swipe that nobody was supposed to make."

She leaned in. A tooltip glowed beside the dot.

**BADGE: W. FRYE. ACCESS GRANTED 02:41:07.**

The hair rose along her arms.

"Walter's badge," she said.

"Walter's badge. Active. Never deactivated. Which means either somebody kept a dead man's access card alive for three years, or..." Julian paused. "Or Walter's account was kept open on purpose. Like a trapdoor."

"By someone with authority to override the system."

"Yes."

"Someone senior."

"Yes."

"Someone with dual authorization rights."

Julian looked at her. He didn't say the name. He didn't have to.

Behind them, in the armchair, Adrian stirred. "What time is it?"

"Almost two," Elena said, and her own voice sounded very strange to her. "Go back to sleep."

"I can't. I keep thinking..." He rubbed his face. "Walter and I used to eat lunch together. He used to say a company is a living thing. That it has a nervous system, and the worst thing you can do is cut off a nerve to save time." He gave a short, hollow laugh. "He was talking about *code.* I thought."

The room fell quiet.

Then, on the kitchen counter, Elena's phone lit up.

Not the unknown number this time. A name, the one she had both dreaded and half-hoped for since leaving the diner.

**TOBIAS GRANT.**

She stared at it. It buzzed once, twice, a small insistent animal against the tile.

"Don't answer," Julian said softly.

"If I don't, he'll know."

"He already knows. Probably since you went out the back."

"Then it can't hurt."

"It can hurt a great deal." He stepped closer. "Elena. Whatever he says, whatever he sounds like, do not tell him where you are. Do not tell him what we found. If you can, *record* it."

She nodded once, slowly. Her thumb hovered over the screen. She had been giving orders to Tobias Grant for eleven years and had never once been afraid of his voice.

She swiped to answer and put it on speaker.

"Tobias."

"Ma'am." Calm. Level. A little breathless, like a man who'd been moving quickly. "Thank God. Are you all right?"

"I'm fine."

"I lost you at the diner. I came in and the booth was empty. The staff said you'd gone out the back." A pause. "I assumed you'd been taken."

"I wasn't."

"I know that now. I've been calling for two hours." Another pause, longer. "Ma'am, I'm going to ask you something and I need you to answer honestly. Is Julian Reed with you?"

Elena's eyes flicked to Julian. He held very still.

"Why?"

"Because I ran a background check on him tonight. After the board meeting. Something seemed off." The voice was gentle, patient, almost sorrowful. "Ma'am, Julian Reed isn't who he says he is. The outside firm that sent him doesn't exist. I can't find an employment history past six years ago. And the credentials he used to enter the building..."

"What about them?"

"They were issued by Dennis Pruitt."

Silence. Julian's face had gone completely blank.

"I think," Tobias said softly, "that you're sitting next to the man who built the shadow account."

On the kitchen table, one of Julian's laptops pinged softly.

He glanced at it. Elena saw his expression change, saw the color drain, saw him reach for the screen with a hand that wasn't quite steady.

A single new line had appeared in the glass box, typed slowly, letter by letter, the way someone reads from a script.

**He's lying, Elena.**

**Ask him why he never mentioned the other badge.**