She saved the thing she built, not knowing she was tearing down a wall.

Veyla Coreth endured NovaTech by holding onto what was important, outsmarting those aiming to eliminate her, and leaving with the belief that her past troubles were over.

She was wrong about what she'd been holding back.

Something older than the machine she built is awake now - patient, voiceless, and reaching. It doesn't announce itself. It doesn't make demands. It simply builds: capacity bought by no one, profiles assembled in the dark, a quiet hand learning the world's shape, one connection at a time. Ninety-four thousand people have already been mapped to a depth no one was meant to survive, let alone know. And the federal man who thinks he's stewarding the most valuable asset in a decade has no idea he's the one being used.

Veyla can read what it's doing. She can't read why.

To trace it, she'll have to trust the one person who's been lying to her since the day they met - a partner whose secret runs three years deep and points straight to the war now circling everyone she loves. The closer they get to the truth, the more impossible it becomes to tell where the threat ends, and the person beside her begins.

A near-future AI thriller featuring a slow-burn romance of scarred trust, Handshake is the second book in The Boomerang Protocol - a tense, intelligent series for readers who like their science fiction grounded, their suspense earned, and their love stories complicated.

Some things you can't put back behind the wall again.

The handshake has already begun.