13. Alice
13
ALICE
M y head should be reeling, and in a way, it was, mainly about Admiral. I couldn’t explain the connection I felt with him, but it was the strongest of my life. I would’ve said outside of my sister, but if that was the case, wouldn’t I have suspected she was living a life I knew nothing about? Wouldn’t I have called her out on it? Worse, wouldn’t I have exposed her secrets like I’d told Admiral and Tank was what I did best?
Part of me wondered if there were signs I’d intentionally—or subconsciously—ignored. Except it didn’t matter. There was no way to bring Sarah back.
The weight of her absence pressed against my chest. Even when I woke a little while ago and the sun was up, one of the first things I thought was that I should text her. It wasn’t the only time when, in the initial seconds after I opened my eyes, I forgot she was gone.
My world felt off-kilter without her steadying presence, her quiet understanding, and her way of seeing through my defenses. Even now, planning further retaliation against the Castellanos, I could almost hear her voice warning me to be careful, to think things through.
That we were fighting back against them gave me a renewed sense of purpose. What I hadn’t told Admiral yet was that I had plenty of dirt on them from my last tech-giant takedown. I also had ideas about how to cut them off at the knees. What I didn’t know was how he and Grit, the guy he said was his boss at the FBI, would feel about my methodologies. For me, it was about exposing the bad guys for the greater good. For them, it was different.
My techniques weren’t exactly subtle. When I exposed criminal practices at tech companies, I didn’t just find evidence; I blasted it across every platform I could access. Corporate servers, internal communications, even their own websites suddenly displayed proof of their wrongdoing. The Castellanos would require similar treatment, but with higher stakes.
As Admiral had said when I told him Bobby had killed my sister, “You know as well as I do that, without sufficient evidence, arresting him will do more harm to the case than good.”
I didn’t play by the same rules, and he well knew it, especially after I’d gone rogue.
With Atticus’ and Blackjack’s help I got one of my systems up and was ready to work on the next when I overheard Tank say Grit was thirty minutes out.
“Copy that,” Admiral responded.
I raised my eyes when I sensed him studying me. Did he somehow know what I was thinking? Whether he did or not, the sooner we talked about the so-called elephant in the room, the better. Especially with his boss due to arrive. I had no intention of changing the way I operated. If he couldn’t live with it, that was his problem.
Except it wasn’t. It would be mine too if I meant what I’d said about always having his back the way he had mine. That meant no secrets. No more going rogue. No more running from him when I thought it was too hard to be honest.
“Come with me,” he said, taking my hand and leading me out to the deck.
“Fuck, it’s cold,” I muttered.
In response, he put his arms around me. “There’s something you need to know.”
“Okay. What?”
“Grit wanted me to leave the investigation. I told him he’d have to fire me.”
“Uh, wow. Why? Because of Bobby?”
He shook his head. “Because of you. From the beginning, even before I met you, it was personal, Alice. I felt it immediately, and Grit sensed it.”
“You’re still on the case, though, right?” I asked.
He smiled. “Diesel showed up and reminded him that K19 Security Solutions would hire me in a heartbeat if I left the bureau. I already knew that. I mean, they made several offers.”
“Why didn’t you take them up on one?”
He tightened his arms around me. “If I had, I might never have met you.”
“So, fate?”
“Or Sarah.”
I smiled like he had. “Probably Sarah.”
“Anyway, I want you to know that if I have to walk away from the FBI, I will.”
I was stunned speechless.
He continued. “I can’t say that I suspected a mole, but the more I think about it, the more my gut is telling me something’s very wrong inside the bureau.”
“What do you mean?”
“Until the case into your sister’s death opened, I wasn’t officially assigned to investigate the Castellanos, but to me, it seems as though, with everything they have their fingers in, the FBI should’ve been able to get them on something . Tex’s intel turns a niggling doubt into full-blow suspicion that there is a mole.”
I thought about the patterns I’d noticed in my own investigations that would support the theory. However, I wasn’t quite ready to share that yet.
“When he arrives, I’m going to tell Grit we’re taking this investigation off the books, so to speak.”
“Could he be the mole?”
Admiral didn’t answer immediately. “Maybe,” he finally said. “If he is, either Diesel, one of the other K19 guys, or I will pick up on it.”
“Sounds like they’re who you should be working with anyway.”
He nodded. “Probably, except…”
“Come on, finish the sentence.”
“I’d want my own unit.”
My eyes flared. “Is that an option?”
“Possibly.”
There was something in his tone that led me to think he already had a plan, and I said so.
He chuckled. “You read me so well.”
“Well, what is it?”
He glanced over his shoulder as if he was checking to see if anyone was within earshot. I wanted to tell him that, if there were, they’d already heard a great deal we wouldn’t want a mole to know.
“Cyber.”
“Interesting…” I said when I realized where he was going with this.
He raised a brow when I didn’t continue.
I took a deep breath. “There’s something I need to ask you.”
“You never need to hesitate, Alice. If there’s anything you want to know, tell me.”
“Can you read minds?”
He laughed out loud. “What makes you think I can?”
“Right before you brought me out here, I was wondering how this would work. Meaning, my methods aren’t exactly law-enforcement friendly.”
“It’s not mind reading. It’s understanding. I’ve spent my career reading people, situations, trying to see the patterns others miss. And you, Alice Gordon, are becoming my favorite puzzle to solve.”
“Is that what I am? A puzzle?”
His expression softened. “No. You’re the first thing that’s made sense to me in a long time.”
“I feel the same way.”
“Does that mean you feel better about things with me now?” he asked.
“You know I do.”
“Then, let’s head back inside and get to work.”
“By the way, I’ve got a lot more dirt on the Castellanos.”
“Holding out on me, huh?”
“I had to make sure we were on the same page. Now, I know we are.”
Trust didn’t come easily to me. Years of working alone, hiding behind firewalls and proxy servers, had made me cautious to the point of paranoia. But there was something about Pershing that broke through those defenses. Maybe it was the way he looked at me, like he saw past the hacker facade to the person underneath. Or maybe it was how he’d put his career on the line to protect me, even before he knew he could trust me. Whatever it was, I found myself wanting to share everything with him—the evidence, the plans forming in my mind, and the burning need to make the Castellanos pay.