SOPHIE BARELY slept.
By six in the morning, she was already sitting at her dining table surrounded by laptops, external drives, notebooks, and enough coffee to concern a medical professional.
The apartment remained unnervingly quiet.
Ordinarily, she enjoyed silence. It helped her think.
Today, however, silence felt invasive.
Someone had been inside her home.
Not a hacker operating from another continent. Not an anonymous attacker hiding behind encrypted networks and compromised servers.
Someone had physically entered her apartment.
Someone had stood where she was sitting now.
Someone had touched her equipment.
And worst of all, someone had left without taking anything.
The realization bothered her far more than theft would have. A thief wanted something obvious. This person wan
