The Intelligence Unit Series

Addison surfaced slowly, clinging to the fragments of a dream. She'd been frightened, some nameless, faceless thing trying to hunt her down and hurt her. Thanks to the years of therapy she'd done at Master Ah-lam's gentle insistence, she knew the dream was a metaphor. Hell, she'd had this dream hundreds of times in various shapes and forms. But then, instead of the thing getting close enough for her to feel its breath on the back of her neck and true fear to pump through her and trap her in both panic and helplessness, a pair of arms closed around her, holding her tight. Protecting her, centering her enough that she could fight the beast...

She woke up in Ryan's embrace.

"Hey," he whispered into her hair, his chest against her back. It was still dark out, but the shadows had shifted across the walls enough to tell Addison they'd been asleep for a while. She'd never woken up in anyone's arms before, and even though her age-old defenses warned that she shouldn't like it, she stuffed them aside and burrowed deeper against Ryan's body.

"What time is it?" she asked.

"Five minutes before my alarm is supposed to go off. I was going to just get up and make coffee, but you were kind of restless in your sleep."

Her heart skittered. "Bad dream," she admitted.

"Ah." Ryan didn't push, simply tightened his arms around her. "Then, I'm glad I stayed in bed with you." "Me, too."

Addison's body loosened in the comfort of his arms, the rise and fall of his bare chest against her back relaxing her further. His alarm broke the sweetness of the contact a few minutes later, both of them groaning as they got out of bed. They moved around each other with surprising ease, her using the new toothbrush he'd just "happened" to pick up at the store while he made coffee, both of them getting dressed as the sun began to peek past the blinds.

"I'll be on shift until tomorrow morning," Ryan said, slipping a T-shirt into the duffel at his feet. "But will you text me if you find Bishop?"

"Nope." Addison kissed the scowl off his mouth. "You're on shift and you need to focus. I will text you if there's an emergency," she added, because that was only fair. "But otherwise, my lips are zipped."

He grumbled, but nodded in concession. "Fine. Then, I hope I don't hear from you."

Before she could say she hoped so, too, she was interrupted by the buzz of her cell phone. "What the hell?" she asked, fumbling for the back pocket of her jeans. It was still pretty early, and she never got happy phone calls in off-hours.

Oh, no. "It's Isabella," Addison said, her gut tightening as she answered, "Hale."

"Hey," Isabella said with zero pleasantries. "I know it's early, but how fast can you get to the precinct?"

Addison's mouth went dry as Ryan stilled beside her. "Is Chloe okay?"

"She's totally fine," Isabella assured her. "Still safe and sound at Ah-lam's. But I found something you're definitely going to want to see."

Addison madeit to the Thirty-Third just as rush hour started clogging the city streets. The Intelligence office was oddly busy for the early-ish hour, with both Isabella and Capelli at their desks, waiting for her arrival.

"Wow. You're both here early," Addison said, and Capelli nodded.

"I was up, so I figured I'd just come in. Shae's on shift at Seventeen today."

"I know. Ryan and I-" Addison slammed her lips shut, too late. Oh, screw it. There was no sense lying to her unit-mates. "I was up early, too."

She ignored both sets of lifted eyebrows and shrugged out of her jacket, channeling her very best nothing to see here.

Not that it worked. "Were you up early with Dempsey?" Isabella asked, her curiosity obvious.

Addison nodded. "Yep."

"Ah," Isabella said. When silence followed, Addison had a realization, and shit. Shit!

"My, uh, relationship with Ryan has nothing to do with my judgment in Chloe's case," she said, swinging a gaze between them. "I'm still totally fine to stay on the investigation."

To her surprise, Isabella laughed. "You do remember that Kellan and I were involved with each other when we worked that case against Julian DuPree way back when, right?"

Capelli pushed his glasses up and nodded. "Shae and I were together when we took down The Shadow, too."

"You don't have to do any explaining to us," Isabella said, lifting her cup of tea for a sip. "We know you'd never jeopardize an investigation. You're one of the best cops I know. And, for the record? You and Dempsey? It's about frickin' time." "Right. Thanks," Addison said, fairly certain her cheeks were on actual fire. "So, you found something you wanted me to see?"

Isabella nodded. "Elijah's teething, so we were up with the roosters. Of course, he's currently sleeping like an angel for the sitter, but it's fine, because that means I can come in early and catch some bad guys. And on that note..."

She turned to the case board, which showed a page from a university database and the résumé they'd been scouring for the past twenty-four hours. "Hollister and I had a hell of a time digging into Bishop's education. The guy is like a ghost-there one minute, gone the next." "Okay," Addison said. "Maybe I haven't had enough coffee yet, because I'm not following."

"Well, as far as I can tell, his education is entirely fake," Isabella said, and whoa, that Addison understood.

"What?"

Isabella nodded. "His résumé says he got his undergraduate degree at Ohio State University, which currently has over sixty-five thousand students enrolled."

"Actually, it's sixty-six thousand, four hundred forty-four," Capelli piped up, and, oh, his mind was such a fabulously weird place.

"Got it. A crapload of people," Addison said.

"Well, a crapload minus one, because it looks like Bishop never actually went there at all," Isabella said. "He claims he was there for the four years listed on his résumé, and initial online searches of the university database do have him listed as a student during that time. But when Hollister and I dug deeper, we couldn't find anything else that put him there. No yearbook photos, no class schedules, no transcripts on file, at all."

"As if he's a ghost," Addison echoed.

Isabella nodded. "When I got in this morning, there was a voicemail from the university registrar, who apologized profusely for the error. They have no idea how Bishop is listed in the database, because as far as they can tell, no one by that name ever went there. They have no idea how his name ended up on record, but it looks like it was added about a year ago from an unknown source."

Addison took a second to process the facts, her chin whipping up as she connected the dots. "His job history is weird, too," she said, tapping her desktop computer to life. "Maxwell and I called all of his references and previous employers yesterday and got generic voice mailboxes for all of them. No return calls."

"Did his current employer speak to any of them when she hired him?" Isabella asked, and Addison sighed.

"She only contacted the first reference, which was favorable, and called it good."

Isabella's brows shot upward. "Seriously?"

"That happens more often than you'd think," Capelli said. "And Bishop seems to have chosen strategically. He claims to have worked for large companies, where the turnover is high, even in management. Tracking down references can be difficult, so if an interview goes well and the first few things are in order, the person hiring glosses over the rest."

"But the one Bishop's boss checked did pan out," Addison said. "He had to have at least worked there, right?"

"Not necessarily," Capelli said. Turning toward his keyboard, he began to type, his fingers flying over the keyboard in a blur.

"So, you think he's faking his employment history, too?" Isabella asked.

Capelli frowned and pushed his glasses over the bridge of his nose. "I think he's faking everything. In fact, the odds are quite high that Myles Bishop doesn't even exist, except on paper."

Whoa. "Okay, but how can a person even do that? Everything is online, now. Searchable. Traceable. I mean, we just uncovered this," Addison said.

"Yes, but it took us this long to get here, and we dug deep. Plus, his faked credentials may be just the tip of the iceberg." Capelli gestured to his monitor, where Bishop's driver's license photo stared back at them, sending goose bumps over Addison's skin. "If Bishop bought surveillance equipment on the dark web, he could've easily bought identities there, too. In fact, it's likely that he used the same person for all of it."

"The person at the other end of the Bitcoin transactions," Addison said, and Capelli nodded.

"It makes perfect sense, given all the transactions between them. He also could've hired this person as a search engine fixer to manage what pops up in Google searches."

"That's a thing?" Isabella asked, and Capelli tilted his head.

"You'd be surprised at all the things that are things on the dark web," he said. "But yes. Search engine fixers can manipulate data so that only preferred content-in this case, the fake university reference and past job references-appears in an online search." "And in so doing, it looks legit when it's not," Addison said. Just when she thought this thing with Bishop couldn't get any deeper. He was faking his whole identity?

"Exactly. Any halfway decent fixer could've hacked into the university's database to insert a name, or set up fake voicemail accounts for job contacts at large companies that would likely never go double-checked. Manipulating the search data is the first thing I'd do if I were looking to portray a forgettable presence for a fake identity," Capelli said.

God, it explained a lot. All the ways in which Bishop had strived to be totally average. The large businesses he'd claimed to have worked for, the huge university before that, both easy to blend into with less notice. He'd given up just enough information not to raise red flags, then hired someone to make sure the cursory internet searches anyone might do would turn up nice, tidy answers to check all the compliance boxes. Degree, check. References, check. Former places of employment, check. And it was just perfect enough to pass muster.

Except for the fact that every word of it was a complete and utter lie. Myles Bishop wasn't an average guy.

He didn't f*****g exist.

"How the hell are we supposed to find him if he's been using a fake identity and now he's in the wind?" Isabella asked, and at least this, Addison could answer.

"We find whoever's on the other side of that Bitcoin exchange." Heart beginning to race, she nodded at the case board. "Bishop had to get this identity from somewhere, and chances are it's not his only one. If we find whoever's supplying him with these aliases, we'll find Bishop. And all the people he's pretended to be in the past."

They had to. There was only one reason he'd fake an identity, and that was to leave his past behind. A past that almost certainly held other women he'd stalked, just like Chloe. Women he'd frightened. Maybe even hurt. Or worse. Which meant that, even in hiding, Bishop was more of a danger than ever.