Pursuing My Rejected Luna by Cara Anderson novel Chapter 280

ch.50

Noah

It’s two days later when we finally get our first break. Cole comes in mid-morning with a folder he’s holding and the look of a man who has found something he didn’t expect.

“Eastern correspondence cross-reference,” he says cryptically. “Administrative flagged something.”

He sets it on my desk almost reverently. I pick it up and read it. Then I read it again.

Cassandra-I know that’s who did this because that’s the only person it can be. I haven’t hired anyone else permanently, why would I when she can do it for free-has cross-referenced six weeks of eastern border correspondence against Ironwood’s internal administrative calendar, specifically the council meeting schedule, which is the information we log in the public-facing administrative record.

And the correlation is exact. The skirmishes don’t happen randomly within a window. They happen in a specific sub-window: the forty-eight hours following a logged council meeting. When leadership is occupied with internal governance, Reeves moves. When leadership is visibly free, he doesn’t.

Which means Reeves has either an inside source or someone watching our public administrative record closely enough to predict our occupied windows.

The analysis is clean. The methodology is sound. The conclusion is unambiguous once you see it-and you don’t see it unless you’re looking at the right two data sets simultaneously, which requires knowing which data sets to look at.

“She did this on her own?” I ask incredulously.

“Apparently.” Cole’s expression is the one he uses when he’s impressed against his better judgment. “She routed it to me rather than bringing it to you directly.”

I don’t respond to that last part. Of course she wouldn’t bring it to me. Would I have even bothered to look at it if she had? Taken it seriously? She knew I wouldn’t. If Cole hadn’t already reviewed it and found it noteworthy, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.

It;s definitely relevant.

And, fuck me, Now I’m going to have to thank her directly.

“This helps, man. It helps a lot.” Cole rambles on, oblivious to my inner turmoil. “We can finally get ahead of him.”

“Yeah,” I answer half-heartedly. “Yeah, we can.”

That door in the back of my mind cracks open again but I slam it closed. I’m not opening it. Not now.

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