Chapter 6 Daniel
DANIEL
The air in the loft presses down, thick with the scent of sex and ozone.
Kaila sits on the edge of the desk. My leather cut swallows her frame, blending my usual scents of gun oil and cold mountain air with her sweet citrus and the sharp, metallic tang of drying sweat.
Blue light from my monitors casts long shadows across her face. Her chest rises and falls in a rapid, jagged rhythm.
Staying between her legs, I keep my hands resting on her thighs. My thumbs trace the soft skin just above her knees, anchoring me to the physical data. She is here. She is mine.
"You okay?"
The words scrape my throat. Softness escapes my programming. Protection and extraction are my defaults. Looking at her messy hair and swollen lips forces a tightness into my chest, a system glitch resisting every patch.
Her chin dips in a lie. I spot deception easily, being fluent in it myself.
"Kaila."
Her eyes snap to mine, her pupils swallowed by the black of her irises. The adrenaline of the hack and the sex fades, leaving her completely exposed as the high crashes.
"I’m fine, Daniel. I just..." She trails off. Her hand drops to the pocket of her jeans. She retrieves a cheap plastic burner phone.
My instincts flare. "What is that?"
"Dead man’s switch," she whispers. Her thumb hovers over the screen. "If I don't check in every twelve hours, or if I send the wrong code, they hurt him."
Her brother. Kevin.
My jaw locks. The violence inside me wakes up and stretches its claws. I pull the phone directly from her fingers.
"Show me."
She types in a passcode. The device rattles against her trembling fingers. The screen lights up with a grainy image sent via an encrypted message.
I look at the display. Ice floods my veins.
A kid fills the frame, maybe eighteen but looking far younger, tied to a chair in a concrete room. His face bears heavy bruises. One eye is swollen shut. A newspaper from yesterday is taped to his chest, confirming both life and pain.
Kaila makes a choked, broken noise that hits me harder than a bullet to the vest.
She slides off the desk. Her knees buckle. I catch her, pulling her solid against my chest and wrapping my arms around the oversized leather of my Cut. She buries her face in my neck. The dam breaks.
She cries like a wounded animal. Deep, gut-wrenching sobs shake her entire frame. Hot tears soak my shirt.
"They sent it three hours ago," she gasps against my skin. "While I was hacking. I didn't want to look. If I messed up the code... if I missed a line..."
"You didn't." I grip the back of her head, tangling my fingers in her hair. "You didn't miss anything. You're the best I've ever seen."
"He's hurt. Look at him." She pulls back and shoves the phone at my chest. "They're hurting him because of me. Because I wouldn't give them the backdoor to your accounts."
I grab the device and toss it onto the desk. It slides across the surface, hitting the keyboard with a loud clatter.
"He's alive," I say, dropping my voice to a lethal pitch. "That's the only data point that matters right now. He is functioning and breathing."
"For how long?" She shoves out of my arms, pacing the small space of the loft.
The leather of my cut swings around her knees.
Her posture turns completely feral. "Dominic Costa drops leverage once it stops being useful.
Now that we hacked their node... now that they know I'm with you. .. he's a liability."
She stops at the window overlooking the compound below. Snow falls harder now, painting white streaks against the black night.
"I have to go back," she says.
I step forward. "Excuse me?"
She turns to face me. "I have to trade myself. It's the only way. I walk in, I offer to unlock everything, and they let Kevin go."
"No."
"Daniel, you don't understand—"
"No." I close the distance between us. My hands clamp down hard on her shoulders. I need her to feel the anchor, to know she is tethered to this ground and to me. "You aren't walking anywhere. You think Costa honors trades? You think he's going to let the boy go just because you ask nicely?"
"I have to try!"
"You will die," I growl, giving her a slight shake. "He will kill the boy in front of you. Then he will use you until there is nothing left but code and bone. Is that what you want?"
She flinches. The tension drains right out of her posture. She slumps forward, resting her forehead on my chest. "I promised my mom," she whispers. "Before she died. I promised I'd keep him safe. I failed."
"You haven't failed until the game is over."
I guide her back to the desk. I sit in my modified, reinforced Herman Miller chair and pull her directly into my lap. She resists, then completely folds. Exhaustion radiates from her skin. Her brain has run at maximum capacity for eight months, and she needs to power down.
"Look at the screen," I command.
She blinks, swiping the back of her hand over her damp eyelashes. "What?"
Reaching past her, my arm brushes against her side. Heat flares at the contact. It serves as a problem and a distraction, yet keeps me entirely focused.
I pull up my personal sandbox, bypassing the standard MC interface. The Ghost Protocol.
A map of the Grizzly Peak District appears, obsessively detailed with topographical lines and thermal pockets. Old mining tunnels that haven't graced an official map since 1950 glow in neon green.
"I haven't just been sitting here waiting for you to trip a wire, Kaila," I say. "I'm a Tracker. It’s what I do."
I type a command string. Red dots populate the grid.
"Costa surveillance drones. I hijacked their feed three weeks ago."
Another string of keystrokes sends blue lines weaving through the mountain render.
"The patrol routes used by the Cleaners run on a predictable algorithm. They execute a shift change every six hours, leaving blind spots in the ravines."
Kaila leans forward. Her eyes scan the data, tracking the illuminated pathways. The hacker is back online. "How did you get this resolution?"
"Satellite piggyback and a weather station relay." I tap a cluster of thermal signatures on the Eastern Cliffs. "This is where they operate. The abandoned chromium mine."
She touches the monitor. "That’s where Kevin is?"
"The transaction node we found confirmed my suspicions. See the heat signature variance?" I trace a ventilation shaft on the schematic. "That shaft runs too hot for an empty mine. They’re housing servers and people."
Shifting in my lap, she turns to face me. Her features hover inches away. Gold flecks catch the monitor light in her brown eyes.
"You knew?" she asks.
"I suspected. I lacked confirmation until you cracked their encryption tonight."
"Why didn't you tell the club? Why didn't you go?"
I stroke my palm down her back, tracing the curve of her spine through the heavy leather. "Because I needed the key. I needed to pinpoint the exact cell. The mine possesses four miles of tunnels. Going in blind guarantees they execute the hostage and vanish. I needed you."
She inhaled sharply. "You used me."
"I waited for you." Correcting her takes priority. "I knew the Ghost was out there, hacking us while hurting them. I figured waiting long enough would force you to make a mistake or reach out. I didn't know you’d look like this."
My thumb brushes over her lower lip, relishing the swollen texture left by my mouth.
"I didn't know I’d want to keep you."
She leans into my touch, offering a subtle, quiet surrender.
"Can we get him?" she asks, dropping her volume. "Really?"
"We have the location, the patrol routes, and the thermal." I scan the map, calculating vectors. "Logan will authorize the raid. Shane is already itching to shoot something, and Austin has the gear."
"But the compound is a fortress."
"We are the Gunnars," I say. "This is our mountain. They are just tourists."
Shifting her weight, I pull open the desk drawer. Pushing aside tangled USB cables and my Glock 19, my fingers close around a small, cold object I keep in the back.
I pull it out.
Smooth as glass and shaped like a rough arrowhead, the dark stone sits heavy in my palm.
Kaila frowns. "A rock?"
"Obsidian." I take her hand and unfold her fingers. Pressing the stone into her palm, I fold her fist shut over it. "My grandfather found this on the ridge above the clubhouse forty years ago, long before the MC existed. He gave it to my dad, who passed it to me when I prospected."
She stares down at her closed fist, then meets my gaze. "Why are you giving it to me?"
"Obsidian protects against negative energy. That’s what the locals say.
" My shoulders roll in a shrug. Magic holds no value for me compared to ballistics and bandwidth, but this physical piece of the mountain carries weight.
"It’s sharp, Kaila. It cuts if handled carelessly. Respect it, and it anchors you."
"Daniel..."
"Hold onto that," I command. "Keep it in your pocket. Possessing that stone places you under the protection of the Broken Halos. You operate under my protection."
She squeezes the stone. Her grip tightens until the edges bite into her palm. "It’s cold."
"It warms up."
Standing, I lift her entirely off the chair. Her legs lock around my waist by pure instinct, a reaction that settles deep in my gut. I carry her over to the small cot in the corner of the loft. Setting her down on the mattress, I keep my hands firmly on her hips.
"We move at dawn," I say. "Logan called a War Council. I need to present the intel."
"I’m coming with you," she says.
"To the meeting, yes." I pause. "To the raid, no." My instinct screams to lock her in the Vault, burying her under six feet of concrete out of the trajectory of stray bullets.
I study the rigid determination locking her jaw and the raw intelligence burning behind her eyes. She serves as a weapon, our absolute Eye in the Sky.
"You run comms from the van," I say. "Guide us in. Hack the doors and kill the camera feeds."