Page 21 of Slap Shot
She needed coffee. Carefully extracting herself from Oliver's embrace, she stumbled to the kitchen, noting her laptop still open on the counter where she'd left it the night before, still logged into her secure systems.
While the coffee brewed, she decided to check her overnight security logs—a habit ingrained from years of monitoring network activity. What she found nearly took her knees out from under her and she had to sit down before she fell down.
Someone had accessed her secure file server at three this morning. She'd been fast asleep at that time, thoroughly exhausted. But the access logs were unmistakable. There were commands executed from her own system, using her credentials.
Heather's hands started shaking as she pulled up her research folders. Empty. Months of work documenting Oliver's past as GhostWire47—FBI files, court records, immunity agreements, technical analysis—all deleted while she slept in the next room.
Whoever had done this knew exactly what files to target, which meant they had intimate knowledge of her investigation into Oliver's criminal history. They'd left everything else untouched. Only the evidence of Oliver's hacking past was gone.
And there was only one person who would benefit from destroying that evidence. One person who knew how to get in and out with the data.
The man currently sleeping in her bed.
The bedroom door opened, and Oliver appeared in the hallway, wearing only boxer briefs and a sleepy smile that made her heart clench. His hair was mussed from sleep, and there were scratch marks on his shoulders from her nails.
"Morning, beautiful," he said, moving toward her. "You're up early. Everything okay?"
The timing was impossible to ignore. "Someone deleted my files," she said, watching his face for any reaction. "All of my research on GhostWire47. Gone."
Oliver's expression shifted from sleepy affection to sharp attention. "What do you mean deleted?"
"I mean someone accessed my secure server this morning while I was sleeping and removed all trace of your hacker past.”
"That's impossible. Your systems are—" Oliver stopped mid-sentence, his gaze moving from her face to the laptop, then back again. She saw the exact moment when he realized what she was implying.
"My laptop was open all night," she continued, her voice steadier than she felt. "Logged into everything. Anyone in this townhouse could have accessed it."
"Heather, I would never—"
"Wouldn't you?" She stood, crossing her arms. "Your entire life with this team, your career, your freedom, it all depends on keeping your past buried. If those files fell into the wrong hands..."
"You already know everything in those files," Oliver said, frustration creeping into his voice. "You approached me because you'd identified me as GhostWire47. Deleting them now doesn't change what you know."
"But it changes what I can prove."
“Why would you need to prove anything?”
“I don’t. I wasn’t planning on weaponizing this information.”
“I know that. You could have blackmailed me into helping you, but you didn’t.”
"You couldn’t take that risk. Without that documentation, without evidence, it would be my word against yours. And who's going to believe the security consultant over the star player?"
Oliver stared at her, something dying in his eyes. "Is that really what you think of me?"
"I think someone who's spent years hiding from their past might panic when that past threatens everything they've built." She gestured at the empty folders. "The timing is damning. We spend the night together. I'm vulnerable and trusting, and suddenly all the evidence of your criminal history vanishes."
"So what—you think I seduced you to get access to your computer?" His voice was quiet, but she could hear the hurt underneath. "That everything between us was just manipulation?"
The question hit her harder than she'd expected. "I don't know what to think anymore."
Oliver was quiet for a long moment, studying her face. When he finally spoke, his voice was carefully controlled. "You want to know the truth? The real reason I wouldn't delete those files?"
She nodded.
"Because I'm tired of running from what I used to be." He ran a hand through his hair. "For years, I've been terrified that someone would find out about GhostWire47. That I'd loseeverything I've worked for.” He closed his eyes and shook his head.
“Wouldn’t that mean you’d do anything to protect that knowledge,” she asked. Heather wanted desperately to be wrong. But she was too cynical to believe in miracles.
