Page 63 of Soulmarked

His hands on my shoulders as he demonstrated a counter-strike felt different now. My fingers lingering on his wrist as I corrected his block meant more than just technical instruction. We were dancing around something deeper than combat training, and we both knew it.

Sean cleared his throat, reaching for his water bottle with calculated casualness. “Speaking of secrets... what's happening with O'Brien's journal?”

“What about it?” I kept my voice neutral, though my guard immediately went up.

“Just wondering where something that valuable ended up.” He toweled off his face, but I caught the sharp assessment in his eyes. “Given what happened to its owner.”

“It's being analyzed.”

“By?”

“Someone I trust at CITD.” I met his gaze steadily. “She knows what she's doing.”

Sean's expression shifted from casual to intent in an instant. “You gave classified supernatural evidence to a federal analyst?”

“To the best data forensics expert I know,” I corrected, bristling slightly at his tone. “Alana's been working these cases with me for years. She knows how to be discrete.”

“Discrete isn't the same as safe.” He stepped closer, all pretense of casualness gone. “That journal got O'Brien killed. Whatever's in it...”

A crash from upstairs cut him off. We both moved instantly, combat training taking over. Sean reached for a blade that wasn't there, cursed, then grabbed one from a nearby rack. I drew my backup piece from my ankle holster, earning a raised eyebrow.

“You brought a gun to workout?”

“You didn't?” I asked, already moving toward the stairs with practiced caution.

His grin was quick and fierce. “Fair point. Always be prepared, right, Agent?”

We moved up the stairs in perfect sync, all our earlier sparring paying off in coordinated movement. But what we found in Sean's office wasn't an intruder.

Skye sat cross-legged in the middle of what looked like a paper explosion, surrounded by multiple laptops and tablets. They didn't even look up as we entered, just waved a hand vaguely in our direction.

“Put the weapons away, boys. Unless you're planning to shoot these encryption algorithms into submission, which, honestly? Might be more effective than what I'm trying.”

Sean lowered his blade with a sigh that suggested this wasn't the first time he'd found Skye breaking into his space. “There's this thing called calling ahead.”

“Phones are traceable.” They finally looked up, eyes sharp behind thick-rimmed glasses. A knowing smirk spread across their face as they took in our sweaty, disheveled state. “Though clearly I interrupted something more interesting than research.”

“We were training,” I said, maybe too quickly.

“Is that what the kids are calling it these days?” Skye smirked, before their expression turned serious. They gesturedtoward one of the screens. “Found something interesting in those files you sent over. Or rather, found something suspiciously wrong with them.”

Sean's head snapped toward me. “What files?”

“The encrypted data from O'Brien's computer,” I explained, feeling a flash of defensiveness at his tone. “I made a copy before CITD took the hardware into evidence. Figured Skye might catch something our techs would miss.”

“You gave classified evidence to...” Sean started, then caught himself with a glance at Skye.

“To someone who actually knows what they're doing,” Skye finished, not bothering to hide their amusement. “Unlike your government cyber team who think a strong password means adding an exclamation point.”

I saw Sean's confusion and added, “The journal was handwritten, but there were digital files too, research notes, emails, experimental data. All locked behind encryption our team couldn't break. Though something seems to be wrong with them.”

Sean moved to look over Skye's shoulder while I hung back, feeling like an outsider in their established dynamic.

“Define 'wrong,'” he prompted.

Skye's fingers danced across the keyboard, pulling up streams of code that made my eyes cross. “The encryption's too sophisticated. Government-level, maybe better. Makes no sense for a professor's personal files.”

“Unless he had help,” I suggested, already analyzing patterns in the data. “Maybe someone more powerful knew what he was working on.”

---