3. Jax
JAX
I watch Myles’s eyes dart around, his face flushed from exertion and probably fear, as he scans the woods for any sign of me.
After about thirty seconds of searching, he hastily pulls his ID out of his running pouch, taps it against the sensor next to the back door, and disappears inside the building.
When the door closes behind him, I make my way through the woods to the tree across from his window and climb up to the branch that’s beginning to feel like a second home from how much time I’ve spent on it over the past week.
I have no idea why I let him see me on the trail or why watching him sprint away from me like his ass was on fire after he did was so damn thrilling.
I don’t even remember deciding to step out from my hiding place; I just did it, which is fucking weird. I’m not an impulsive person, not anymore, and I’m not the spontaneous type, but I can’t deny how much I enjoyed messing with him just now.
Which, again, is fucking weird. I’ve never revealed myself to a mark, but then again, I’ve never had a mark like him.
Most of the people I’ve tailed have eventually realized they’re being watched on some level, but a few have been completely oblivious the entire time. Myles is the only one who’s ever immediately clocked my presence and sensed that something was going on from the first day.
I see it every time he tenses his shoulders or a little shiver runs up his spine. It’s in the furtive way he scans his surroundings as he tries to spot me, and there’s something incredibly satisfying about the times when he stares right at where I’m hiding, but he can’t see me.
He knows I’m there. He can feel me watching, but he hasn’t done anything to stop me from watching him.
He hasn’t altered his routines at all, doesn’t make any effort to sneak around or hide, and he’s kept his curtains wide open, giving me the perfect view of him from my perch.
That sets him apart, and it makes him interesting.
Before I can get too deep into those thoughts, the door to his room opens, and he rushes inside.
He doesn’t spare the window a glance as he unclips his running belt and tosses it on his bed, then peels off his running clothes and drops them in a pile on the floor.
Something strange prickles at my chest as he pads across his room naked and disappears out of sight, then reappears a moment later with a towel wrapped around his waist and his shower kit clutched in his hand.
I know he’s just getting ready to take a shower after his run, but I can’t shake the feeling that he’s taunting me. Like he wants me to see him vulnerable and stripped down.
Like he’s showing me what could be mine.
I blink a few times at that thought. Myles is a mark and nothing more. My entire reason for being here is to figure out if he’s a threat to us and if he had any part in planning the hits on Felix.
That’s it. It doesn’t matter if he’s interesting or that I’m enjoying this job more than any other. It’s just a job, and he’s just a mark.
Myles pauses near his door to shove his feet into his shower slides, then he slips out of the room.
As soon as he leaves his room, I climb down from the tree and slip deeper into the woods, heading toward a rock wall Jace and I discovered during our freshman year.
I need to get out of my head for a while, and the only way to do that is to climb.
The school has a climbing gym, but even the most difficult section of it doesn’t pose any sort of challenge for me or Jace, especially since the gym staff won’t let anyone near the walls without full safety gear and someone to act as your belayer.
That’s not the kind of climbing we enjoy, so we found our own spot.
No point climbing if there’s no challenge or danger, same with pretty much everything else we do.
“Why does your face look like that?” my brother asks as I close the door to our room behind me.
“No reason,” I say, not bothering to point out that he still has his back to me, so he has no idea what my face looks like.
Jace is incredibly intuitive, and not just when it comes to me or our sixth sense about each other. His instincts about people are almost always dead on, and he knows me better than I know myself most days.
He clicks a few keys on his keyboard, then spins around in his desk chair so he’s facing me. “Liar. You went climbing.”
I peel my sweater off and toss it on my bed.
Unlike Myles’s plain and simple room, the dorms at Hamilton House are the definition of extra and over the top. The entire building was designed to look like an old Gothic, Victorian-era mansion, but with all the modern amenities that a bunch of spoiled rich kids would want or need.
Then there’s the Rebel House, the mansion where the frat leadership and high-ranking senior members live.
It’s even more opulent and insane than our digs, and that’s saying something, considering we sleep on giant canopy beds with chandeliers over them and have intricately carved vaulted cathedral ceilings and massive, arched stained glass windows.
To be fair, only the people who live on the top floor have vaulted ceilings and fancy stained-glass windows, but the rest of our room is identical to every other one in the building.
Privilege has its perks, but at the end of the day, it’s just a place to keep my stuff and sleep. I’m loyal to the frat because of my family history with it. I’d be a dumbass to not take advantage of the opportunities being a member gives us, but I’m not fanatical like a lot of the guys are.
“Just needed to clear my head.” I sit on the edge of my bed and lean my forearms against my thighs.
“Did it help?”
“Not as much as I hoped.”
“Come on.” He makes a “go on” gesture with his hand. “Tell your older bro what’s going on in that big old brain of yours.”
“We don’t actually know for sure that you’re the older one,” I point out.
One of the running jokes in our family is that our parents hit copy and paste when they had us because we’re completely identical, down to the few birthmarks we have.
The only people we’ve never been able to fool when we’ve switched identities to fuck with them are our cousins Killian and Xave.
Not even our parents can tell us apart when we don’t want them to.
When we were ten, we asked our mother if she ever mixed us up as babies because, as an identical twin herself, we assumed she had some sort of mom/twin power and would inherently know which one of us was which.
She admitted that they mixed us up so many times that it’s possible we’ve been living as each other our whole lives.
Thanks to her revelation, I get to bring that up every time Jace says he’s the older one.
He grins. “Nope, but Jace is the older one, and since I got to be Jace, that makes me older unless proven otherwise. Now, how about you tell me what’s going on, and maybe we can turn that frown upside down.”
I hold up my hand with my middle finger pointed toward the floor. “Turn this upside down.”
“You’re stalling.” Jace shoots me a knowing look. “You only stall when your head is busy.”
I lean back on my hands and roll my shoulders in a shrug.
“Is it the kid?” he asks.
I nod. “He knows I’m tailing him.”
“Either he’s good, or you’re slipping.” Jace pulls one of his older butterfly knives out of his hoodie pocket and spins it around his fingers.
“I’m not slipping.”
He leans back in his chair and stops spinning his knife. “Really? Well, color me intrigued. Seems our hacker friend is full of surprises.”
“He really is,” I agree. “Have you had a chance to do more poking around in his system?”
Jace nods. “Yup, but it’s taking fucking forever because it’s like a damn fortress in there. I have to be careful he doesn’t catch me snooping around in real time. TBH, I’m not confident I could best him in a 1 v 1.”
“He’s that good?”
“Don’t tell anyone I said this, but he’s better than me.” Jace’s expression is serious. “I’d put him close to the same level as Carter.”
“Really?” I can’t hide my surprise.
Carter is the head of the Rebels’ cybersecurity, and he also runs our security systems. He’s the only person on campus who knows all the layers of security we have in place, and he’s the only one who can access them.
He also has a lucrative side gig doing hack jobs for past members and stress-testing their cybersecurity because of how incredibly skilled he is.
If this kid is as good as that, then Jace has his work cut out for him.
“Yeah.” He nods. “I’m doing what I can, but it’s like trying to swim upstream through molasses because his entire system is organized chaos.”
“What do you mean?” I ask. “Like it’s a mess, or it’s purposely messy?”
“Both.” He taps his fingers against the arm of his chair.
“Nothing about it makes any logical sense, but there’s enough of a pattern that I know the chaos isn’t random.
He’s created so many loops and turns and dead ends and fake pathways it’s like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube while navigating a labyrinth blindfolded, and you still have to solve three riddles and pull a sword out of stone before you can escape.”
“Is that normal?” I ask.
“You’re asking me about being normal?” Jace grins. “Sorry, don’t know her.”
“I mean, is that typical for hackers?” I correct with a smirk. No one has ever accused Jace or me of being normal.
“To a degree, yes. We all hide shit in case anyone gets into our systems, but the layers of encryption and the insane number of traps he’s woven into every aspect of his system are beyond anything I’ve ever seen. It’s even more complicated and efficient than mine, and that’s saying something.”
“Do you think that’s an offensive or defensive move?”