It appeared exactly ten minutes before the blaze. There wasn’t any name, user ID, or digital signature. The line was clean, empty, ghostlike. Merritt frowned. “Unassigned,” he murmured. In systems like this, “unassigned” normally meant hidden.
He leaned back, fingertips pressed together. Someone who wasn’t meant to be there had moved through that system, unseen but traceable by absence. It wasn’t proof yet, but it was enough to shift the ground beneath the prosecution’s certainty.