Page 26 of Clay

“Fuckers cracked my vault,” Dev opened, pure anger in his voice.

“You’re on speaker,” Clay warned.

“Yeah, whatever. Ivy needs to hear this as well. I was hacked.”

Oh shit. Clay remembered Dev saying something about HQ being trashed, but they’d been in the middle of a car chase at the time.

“How is that even possible?” Clay asked. Dev was shockingly good at security, had picked up a lot from his time in the CIA and had contracted out anything he didn’t know to different vendors so no one person—besides him—knew how everything worked.

“Doesn’t matter right now. There’s a safe in the office down the hall.” He rattled off a string of numbers. “Got that?”

“I do,” Ivy said, her lips twisting into the semblance of a smile. “I have an affinity for numbers. It’s an art thing.”

“There’s a stack of burners in there preprogramed with contact numbers. I’m destroying this one as soon as we hang up, which we’re doing right now, so they can’t trace your location. Power down your phone, put it in a plastic baggie and bury it in the freezer. It’s likely been corrupted by spyware if they were able to get into my systems and that's a good enough solution until I've had a chance to look at it. They might be able to track it to the building, but no further than that if it’s buffered that much.” Dev hung up.

Ivy was already heading to the office. “I’ll be right back,” she said, her voice steady.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected her to do or say after this little bombshell, but her easy acceptance wasn’t it. He followedDev's instructions while she was gone, wrapping the phone in tinfoil as well for good measure before burying it in the icemaker.

Ivy walked back in and dropped a smartphone on the table. “There’s another eleven of them in there,” she said. Her voice was calm, but her eyes were troubled. “I’m really out of my depth here, Clay.”

“You don’t seem like it,” he replied. “You’re taking all of this remarkably well.”

She snorted, and just like that she was back to the Ivy he’d been getting to know. Been getting to like more than he should. Because he could deal with base attraction, could understand it. But within three days he’d formed a bond with Ivy he’d never shared with another woman, and it bothered him on a scale that bordered on uncomfortable.

So he said nothing and turned on the phone, saw it had enough charge to make a call, then plugged it in, punched the preprogrammed number and put it on speaker.

“Are we compromised here?” he asked before Dev said anything.

“No,” Dev replied, and in the background Clay heard Cali say, “What the hell, Devin?”

He imagined her storming into HQ like she was taking the beach at Normandy.

“You’re staying in a condo I bought as an investment property back in the day,” he said. “When we started SMS I outfitted it as a safe house. Seemed like a good idea at the time.”

Clay blew out a breath. “Okay, what do you need from us? And does this hack have anything to do with Katie and Ivy and our altercations this afternoon?”

“Not us getting hacked,” Dev answered, “which is why I’m not concerned about Ivy’s phone. This is about SMS, not her, and her phone’s never been in this building or connected toour network in any way. All of our personal and work phones, though, were probably compromised.”

Ivy let out a huge whoosh of air in response. It almost made Clay smile. Almost.

“As for everything else that happened? That’s why I was trying to get in touch earlier, when you were attacked. We know who put the warrant into the system. Greg Hamilton.”

Ivy let out a sound that might have been a gasp, might have been a growl. “Katie’s ex?”

“The one and only,” Dev replied. “We got that information from LVMPD. Warren just touched down and will head over to the sheriff’s office tomorrow to get the lay of the land. I want to keep us off-grid as much as possible until I figure out who made it into my system. Everyone will be bunking down here for the night and running shifts on guard, including Cali and Jordan. I need you two to do the same until Warren checks in tomorrow. You should be secure there while I figure out how compromised we are. Jordan had already grabbed your things, but I want everyone under one roof, so they should be arriving via a trusted courier at the front desk in about half an hour.”

“That makes sense. Accountability check at 0700?”

“Affirm,” Dev said. "Your new phone has the same features as the old one. Install our tracker on Ivy's phone tonight. We need to know where both of you are at all times."

He disconnected and Clay felt Ivy staring at him, and it wasn’t in shock or fright.

He looked at her and saw she was smiling, that expression that seemed to light up the whole room. And right now it was sunshine personified with just a hint of naughty.

“Guess this means we don’t have to be super vigilant tonight, right?”

Heat shot through every pore of his body as he got her gist. Then she was shaking her head, laughing at his expression. Not deriding him but asking him to join in on a very private joke.

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