"You can be sorry later," Naomi said. "Right now, I want her to pay for what she did."
"So do I," Everett said.
He meant it more than he'd meant almost anything in the past year. There was no hesitation left in his voice anymore, none at all.
They sat together on the porch steps for a while after that, saying very little. Caleb eventually fell asleep against Naomi's shoulder. Jonah kept reaching for Everett's tie, tugging it loose without any real intention behind it. Everett let him. It felt like the first completely ordinary moment he'd had in over a year.
That first night, they didn't talk much more than that. Naomi let him hold Jonah for a few minutes before he left. Everett drove home in silence, the radio off. His hands stayed steady on the wheel, for the first time in weeks.
Over the next three weeks, they worked with Silas to build a case. Silas pulled the full IT access logs from the company's servers. Every login tied to Paige's employee credentials. Going back six years. Every reactivated account. Every redirected call. Every falsified ticket.
