Page 65 of The Bodyguard

Mitch stood at the far end of the loft, hunched over the secure Cerberus laptop. Andi was across the room, talking quietly with Maya. Coop was off site, tailing Lennox’s last known movement. The air buzzed with suppressed energy. Nobody was breathing normally. Not anymore.

Mitch’s fingers moved quickly over the keyboard, decrypting the last of the files recovered from Lennox’s sync. His comm was live in his ear, a low murmur of Cerberus data feed humming like white noise.

“Langdon, you will not like this,” came the voice of Reyes, Cerberus’s lead analyst, clipped and dry from the Chicago node.

“Give it to me,” Mitch said, eyes locked on the screen.

“We traced Lennox’s outbound communications. Encrypted strings piggybacking on city network relays—he’s been hiding behind municipal server architecture for weeks. And he’s not sending this data to a private buyer.”

“Then who?”

“A mid-level city official. Name’s Halstrom. Works in urban planning.”

Mitch’s jaw clenched. The name was familiar. He tapped a few keys, pulled up a background dossier, and there it was.

Eli Halstrom. Deputy coordinator for citywide development initiatives. Longtime political fixer with no public dirt, but Cerberus had flagged his financials twice for offshore holdings. He was clean on the surface—just like Lennox. But underneath, his affiliations lit up red.

“Wexler’s PAC,” Mitch muttered. “He’s on the damn payroll.”

“Confirmed,” Reyes said. “PAC contributions from Paragon Equity routed through a shell nonprofit Halstrom chairs. Lennox sent him four data packets. All tied to Councilwoman Donato’s private schedule, internal comms routing, and last week’s speech drafts. Two of the leaks align with external media tips.”

Mitch stared at the feed. Rage wasn’t the word for what moved through him. This wasn’t just sabotage. This was an operational compromise. They’d come within a trigger pull of losing her last night. And now he knew—really knew—that the threat wasn’t abstract. It was local. Organized. Funded.

And still inside the damn campaign.

Behind him, he felt Andi shift. She hadn’t come near him since he started working through the Cerberus reports, but he knew she was watching. She always did when he went quiet like this—when his shoulders locked and his voice dropped.

He didn’t turn around. Not yet.

“Reyes,” he said into the comm, “cross-check Halstrom’s activity with any open city development deals tied to Donato’s district. I want to know what he’s trying to bury—or what he’s trying to rig.”

“Already compiling. You’re going to want to see it in person.”

“Send the file. Full encryption. I’ll open it on-site.”

He closed the feed, secured his laptop, then turned.

Andi was watching him from the couch, her legs curled beneath her, that damn oversized sweater swallowing her frame like armor. She looked exhausted. But not fragile. Never that. There was steel under her skin.

“What happened?” she asked, voice low.

Mitch moved toward her slowly, every step measured. Controlled. He didn’t sit. Just handed her the tablet he’d secured from the desk and waited as she scanned the summary.

Her fingers tightened on the edges of the device. “Halstrom. City development. PAC money. Paragon’s got its teeth in everything from zoning committees to speech drafts. This isn’t just a leak. It’s a coordinated burn.”

She looked up, eyes sharp. “They want to gut me from the inside.”

“They want to make sure you never reach the podium. And if you do, it’s on their leash.”

She set the tablet down and rose, tension rolling through her body like a tide she couldn’t suppress. “We go public.”

“No.”

That stopped her cold.

“You want to protect the campaign’s integrity, I get it,” Mitch said. “But if you go public with this now, they’ll deny. Bury. Wexler will spin it as political slander, and Halstrom’s too far down the food chain for the press to take seriously without hard video or money trails. All you’ll do is tip your hand.”

Andi didn’t like it. He saw it in her jaw, the way she held her breath just a second too long.

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