And rats are most dangerous when they are cornered.
I pulled out my phone and called Sarah.
“Did they sign?” she asked.
“They signed,” I said.
“Good. Do you feel better?”
“No,” I said, watching the street lights flicker on. “I feel like I just declared war.”
“You didn’t declare it, Mitchell,” Sarah said. “You just finally decided to fight back.”
I got into the cab.
“Take me to 112 Oak Street,” I told the driver. “And take the long way. I need to make sure I’m not being followed.”
It sounded paranoid, but after seeing the look in Carter’s eyes, I knew it was just risk management.
I thought the ink on the contract was a wall. I thought the signatures—jagged and reluctant as they were—constituted a treaty.
I was naive.
In my line of work, I should have known better. A signature is only as good as the character of the person holding the pen.
And my family’s character was made of wet cardboard.
It was 11:45 at night.
I was lying on a mattress on the floor of my new studio. I didn’t have a bed frame yet. I had spent the evening feeling a strange, hollow sort of victory. I had won the battle at the coffee shop, but the war was far from over.
My phone was charging on the floor next to my head. I had finally turned off Do Not Disturb, thinking the drama was done for the day.
Then the notification sound for my work email chimed.
It wasn’t the standard new email ping. It was the frantic, high-pitched triple tone that Northpine Risk Solutions reserved for priority-one security events.
I grabbed the phone. The screen was blinding in the dark room.
Security alert. Northpine Identity Shield. Unauthorized access attempt detected. User: K. Mitchell, ID 8894. Device: MacBook Pro 2018. Unrecognized IP location: residential IP, Ohio.
My blood ran cold.
I knew that device.
It was my old work laptop. A machine I had retired three years ago when the screen hinge broke. I had wiped it—or I thought I had—and shoved it into the back of the closet in the guest room, intending to recycle it eventually.
Carter.
He had gone into the closet. He had dug through the boxes I left behind. He had found the old machine, found a power cord, and managed to boot it up.
And now he was trying to log in.
I sat up, my heart hammering against my ribs like a trapped bird.
This wasn’t just him looking for a file. If that laptop still had cached credentials, or if he guessed my password—which was a variation of a phrase we used as kids—he could breach the Northpine server.
If he touched a single client file, I wouldn’t just be fired. I would be blacklisted from the industry. I could face federal charges for negligence.
He was playing with a loaded gun, and he had it pointed right at my career.
I didn’t call Deborah.
I didn’t call Carter.
I called the one number that could save me.
“Northpine Security Operations, this is Miller,” a voice answered on the first ring.
“This is Kayla Mitchell,” I said. “Senior risk analyst. ID 8894.”
I was speaking so fast I barely recognized my own voice.
“I have a priority-one breach attempt on a retired device. It is not me. I repeat, it is not me. Initiate a hard lock on my credentials immediately.”
“Verifying voice print,” Miller said calmly. “Okay, Kayla, I see the attempt. They are trying to bypass the two-factor authentication. They are hitting the resend-code button repeatedly.”
“Kill the session,” I commanded. “Revoke all tokens. Lock the account. Do not let them in.”
“Executing,” Miller said. I heard the furious clatter of a keyboard. “Okay. Account locked. Device flagged as hostile. We are tracing the IP. It looks like a residential address in the suburbs.”
“It is a theft,” I said, my voice shaking with rage. “The device was stolen from my previous residence. Please log it as a theft so I am not held liable for the attempt.”
“Logged,” Miller said. “You’re safe, Kayla. But you need to change your master key phrases within the hour, and you need to retrieve that device.”
“I will handle the device,” I said. “Thank you.”
I hung up.
I was trembling. I felt like I had just sprinted a mile.
He had tried to break into my work computer. He had tried to break into the one thing that was solely, purely mine.
My phone rang.
It was Deborah.
I stared at the name. The audacity was breathtaking.
I answered.
“What did you do?” she screamed.
She wasn’t crying this time. She was shrieking.
“Why is the computer locked? Carter was ninety percent downloaded. He needs that file!”
“He is hacking a federal contractor,” I shouted back, my voice echoing off the brick walls. “Mom, do you have any idea what he just did? That is a company asset. If he had gotten in, I would be in prison.”
“Oh, stop it,” Deborah scoffed. “He wasn’t hacking. He remembered you saved his intro music on your cloud drive last year. He just wanted to get his song back. He found the old laptop in the closet and thought you wouldn’t mind. He’s crying, Kayla. He is punching the wall because you locked him out. He is punching the wall.”
I laughed. A harsh, jagged sound.
He should be thanking God I didn’t send a SWAT team to the house.
“That laptop is property of Northpine,” I said. “He has no right to touch it.”
“It was in my house,” Deborah yelled. “Everything in this house is for the family. You are so selfish, hoarding your files while your brother’s dreams die. Just give him the password. He just needs the MP3 file.”
“No,” I said. “He can record a new one or he can buy one, but he is never touching my equipment again.”
“You are destroying this family,” she screamed.
“No, Mom,” I said, deadly quiet. “You are.”
I hung up.
I sat there in the dark, waiting for the fallout. I knew it was coming. Carter was a cornered rat, and rats bite.
Ten minutes later, my phone buzzed with a notification from Instagram.
I had been tagged in a story.
I opened the app.
There was Carter, looking disheveled, tears in his eyes, recording himself in the dark living room.
“I don’t usually do this,” he said to the camera, his voice breaking, “but I’m at my limit. I have been working so hard on this launch, and tonight, my own flesh and blood—my own sister—sabotaged me. She locked me out of the files I created. She stole my equipment. She left me and my mom with nothing. It’s crazy how money changes people. Some people make it to the top and forget who carried them there.”
He didn’t tag me directly in the text, but he tagged my handle in the corner. Small enough to be subtle, but clear enough for our mutuals to see.
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