4. Keaton （Skee）
Keaton (Skee)
By day eight, I know the Gallagher estate better than the men being paid to protect it.
That probably says something unhealthy about me. I choose not to examine it too closely.
Rain hammers steadily against the Grayline office windows while six monitors cast shifting shades of blue across the room.
Half-eaten takeout containers litter the desk beside enough empty energy drink cans for Rachel to stage an intervention, and a nest of charging cables that would probably qualify as a fire hazard if anyone besides me cared enough to look.
Personally, I think the chaos encourages creativity. The Gallagher estate occupies the largest monitor. Everything else exists to explain it.
Security logs scroll across one screen. Financial records populate another.
Vehicle movements update in real time on a third while my latest decryption runs unnoticed in the background.
I've spent the better part of a week buried inside Ronan Gallagher's life, and so far all I've managed to prove is that the man is either deeply paranoid... or genuinely expecting a threat.
Possibly both. His security isn't random. That's what bothers me. Every camera has purpose. Every motion sensor covers a blind spot. The lock logs update at precise intervals. Vehicle trackers route through encrypted private servers expensive enough to make Fortune 500 companies jealous.
It's excessive. But excessive isn't suspicious. Men in our world stay alive by planning for the worst day of their lives.
Which means every time my instincts whisper that something feels wrong, I force myself back toward the evidence.
Maybe Gallagher has enemies. Maybe there's an active threat against the family. Maybe someone already tried to take his wife. Maybe this really is protection. My feelings don't matter. The data does.
Unfortunately...The data keeps refusing to cooperate.
I tap twice against the desk while another spreadsheet expands across the left monitor. Financial routing. Offshore accounts. Shipping manifests.
Enough shell companies buried beneath Gallagher Holdings to hide half the eastern seaboard if someone knew where to dig.
Dirty money. Expected. Weapons. Expected. Political payoffs. Expected.
What I can't find is anything substantial enough to justify turning a private residence into a monitored compound. No incoming chatter. No credible threats. No active contracts. No unusual movement from rival families.
Nothing.
My eyes drift to another monitor. Except… Every Tuesday at exactly 9:17, Maeve Gallagher leaves the estate with a single driver.
No escort. No additional security. No deviations. She parks three blocks from a private medical clinic.
Walks inside. Signs the visitor log. Not as Maeve Gallagher. The last two times has been as Mary Collins.
Cash payment. Forty-three minutes. Then she goes home. The clinic's internal records are cleaner than most government servers I've hacked.
The receptionist's terminal says Mary Collins. The security footage says Maeve Gallagher.
Face recognition gives me a ninety-nine-point-nine-eight percent match. I rename the folder.
MARY COLLINS (MAEVE GALLAGHER)
The alias doesn't bother me. The reason for it does. Why the fake name? Why cash? Why scrub the records? I've spent eight days answering questions for a living. This one refuses to answer back. I shove it aside.
For now.
Because another pattern has been bothering me more.
The cameras. I noticed the newest one three days ago outside the second-floor west hallway after Maeve walked past it twice in one evening.
Yesterday another appeared near the library staircase.
This morning Ronan's contractor added motion alerts to the upstairs wing between midnight and four a.m.
I stare at the estate blueprint beside the live feeds. Most people harden the perimeter first. Exterior cameras. Gate access. Thermal coverage. Gallagher isn't doing that. He's increasing surveillance inside the house.
That...Doesn't fit.
Which means the threat isn't outside the house.
The thought settles in the back of my mind while the estate cameras continue cycling through their recorded feeds.
Kitchen. Main hall. Garage. Rear terrace. Second-floor landing. Then—Maeve.
Without thinking, I stop reading the financial reports altogether.
She moves through the upstairs hallway wrapped in an oversized cream sweater, her dark auburn hair falling loose down her back while one of the house staff follows several steps behind carrying garment bags.
Another wardrobe delivery. I pull up last week's footage beside today's. Same hallway. Different sweater. Different garment bags. Same pattern.
The first time I noticed it, I assumed I was inventing connections where none existed. Wealthy husbands bought expensive clothes. Closets changed with the seasons. Designer labels replaced last year's designer labels.
Normal. Until it wasn't. Eight days is long enough to expose habits. Long enough to expose routines. Long enough to expose replacement. Old clothes disappear. New ones arrive.
Ronan compliments the replacements in public. Pieces connected to her life before the marriage quietly vanish. Family jewelry. Favorite sweaters. Casual hoodies. Bright colors.
Nothing disappears all at once. That would be obvious. Instead...One piece becomes two. Two become ten. And eventually the woman wearing them looks exactly the same. Except somehow...Not at all.
The sweater she's wearing today probably costs more than my car. She still looks uncomfortable in it.
I enhance the hallway audio another twelve percent as the housekeeper says something I can't quite make out.
Maeve smiles. Politely. Not genuinely. Without realizing it, I open another folder.
Behavioral Baseline.
I shouldn't have one. Apparently I do.
Real smile. Slightly uneven. Eyes brighten first. Shoulders loosen.
Public smile. Perfect symmetry. Half-second delay. Never reaches her eyes.
I stare at the notes for longer than I should. Interesting. I tell myself that for what has to be the thousandth time this week.
Interesting. Nothing more. Professional curiosity.
The lie has become familiar enough that I barely notice I'm telling it anymore. On the monitor, Maeve pauses beneath one of the upstairs hallway cameras.
She glances toward it. Just briefly. Then continues toward the guest wing. Toward the spare bathroom.
Again. I sit forward. Day one...Coincidence. Day three...Habit. Day eight...Pattern.
I rewind the footage. Watch it again. Then yesterday's. Then the day before that.
Every time Ronan occupies himself elsewhere in the house, Maeve disappears into the same unused guest bathroom.
Six minutes. Twenty-one minutes. Eleven. Nine. She never carries her phone. Never brings a book. Never calls anyone. She simply...Goes inside.
Then comes back out. I split the monitors. Left screen. Entering. Right screen. Leaving. The difference is subtle enough most people would never notice it.
I do.
She breathes differently. Her shoulders sit lower. Her jaw unclenches. Whatever happens inside that room...It isn't dramatic.
It's relief. Something shifts coldly beneath my ribs.
I open the estate blueprint. Guest bathroom. No cameras. No audio. No motion sensors.
The only room upstairs Ronan Gallagher can't watch. I look back to the footage. Then to the blueprint. Then back again.
Once...Fine. Twice...Interesting. Seven times...Evidence.
I scrub a hand across my jaw while the chair groans beneath me. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm projecting onto a marriage I don't understand because my frame of reference consists primarily of Matt and Rachel...and several years of government-sanctioned violence.
Entirely possible. I pull up another file.
Mary Collins.
Tuesday. 9:17 a.m. Cash payment. Forty-three minutes. No records. No explanation.
I stare at both monitors. Guest bathroom. Mary Collins. Interior cameras. Changing wardrobe. None of it proves anything.
Separately...Each one has a reasonable explanation.
Together...They refuse to fit.
People don't repeatedly hide in the only unwatched room in their own house unless being watched has become exhausting.
The office suddenly feels too quiet. Rain hits the windows harder outside while another surveillance notification flashes across the corner monitor.
Gallagher system update scheduled tomorrow. My eyes narrow slowly. A thought begins forming almost immediately.
Absolutely not, I think.
The thought continues anyway. By the time I reach for my phone to call Callum, I already know—I’m going to do something profoundly stupid.
Callum answers on the second ring. “You know it’s after midnight, right?”
I keep my eyes on the surveillance feeds while typing one-handed across the keyboard. “Time is a social construct.”
“That sentence alone makes me want to fight you.”
“Noted.”
Rain continues hammering against the Grayline office windows while lines of Gallagher security code scroll steadily across the center monitor. Upstairs hallway cameras. Motion tracking. System redundancies. Access points.
The entire estate is built like a cage pretending to be a home. My jaw tightens slightly at the thought.
Callum exhales into the phone. “What happened?”
“I need to add separate surveillance on Ronan.”
Silence.
Then, “Define separate.”
“Independent.” I pick my word wisely.
“Skee.”
I tap twice against the desk, eyes moving over the estate map again. “I don’t trust the system anymore.”
“That’s because you trust literally nothing.” He sounds exhausted with me.
“That’s not relevant.”
“It’s extremely relevant.”
Normally I’d argue just to irritate him, but my attention catches on the upstairs hallway feed again. Empty now. Quiet. One small blinking camera watching nothing.
Except it wasn’t watching nothing earlier. It was watching Maeve disappear into the only room in the house where she could breathe. Something cold settles deeper beneath my ribs.
Callum’s voice sharpens slightly through the phone. “What aren’t you telling me?”
I lean back in the chair slowly. “I think Gallagher’s surveillance has less to do with external threats than he’s implying.”
A pause.
Then quieter, “Maeve?”
I hate that he got there that fast.
“Possibly.” I flick through some more screens already done with the conversation.
“What exactly are you seeing?” I can hear him move around and feel slightly bad I woke him up. But I can picture him heading to his office.
I glance toward the monitor again, replaying the footage in my head automatically. The hidden cameras. The movement patterns. The shrinking perimeter of privacy around her.
Nothing overt enough to explain cleanly. That’s the problem.
“Enough to want my own eyes inside the house,” I say finally.
Callum goes quiet again. Thinking now. Weighing. I know that silence. It’s the same silence Matt gets before a mission turns dangerous.
Finally Callum sighs. “Fine. Add secondary surveillance on Gallagher himself. Quietly.”
Already ahead of you. My fingers move across the keyboard automatically while another piece of code opens on screen.
“Okay,” I say. “I’ll let you know what I add to the house.”
Dead silence.Then—
“You’re doing what?” I almost smile. Callum’s chair scrapes loudly through the phone like he stood up too fast. “Absolutely not.”
I keep typing.
“You are not going into Ronan Gallagher’s house.”
“You just approved additional surveillance.” I remind him.
“I approved digital surveillance.”
“Mm.” I start typing in different codes.
“Skee.”
“He has security vulnerabilities.” I note. Mostly to myself but since I have him on the phone I will include him also.
“That sentence is exactly why I don’t trust you unsupervised.”
I reroute the first internal security call line while opening the Gallagher employee roster beside it.
Head of security:
Declan Murphy. Forty-two. Former private military contractor. Three ex-wives. Weak passwords.
Embarrassing, honestly.
Callum is still talking. “You are not physically entering that house.”
“That feels controlling.” I sing-song to him.
“Do not start with me.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Keaton.” In his full first name voice.
Interesting.
I crack my knuckles once while another rerouting script finishes compiling across the screen.
“Relax,” I tell him.
“You saying relax has historically made situations worse.”
Fair.
My cursor hovers over the Gallagher security network.
One click and the entire system will start eating itself alive. Temporary failures. Camera loops. Motion sensor glitches. Internal comm outages.
Nothing dangerous. Just enough chaos to require emergency repair. And when security calls for support—they’ll get me.
My pulse kicks once. Not nerves. Anticipation.
Callum must hear something in my silence because his voice drops dangerously flat. “Skee.”
I look back at the frozen frame of Maeve disappearing into the guest bathroom. Seven times in eight days. My mind is done pretending that's a coincidence. I click ENTER. Every monitor lights up instantly.
The Gallagher estate camera feeds begin blinking one by one across the screen while error messages flood the system.
Front gate offline. Motion detection failure. Internal feed corruption. North wing camera loop. Security lock desync.
Beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.
“Skee,” Callum snaps louder.
Somewhere inside the estate, alarms begin triggering one after another.
I go still in my chair while the entire Gallagher system spirals into chaos beneath my fingertips. And for the first time in weeks—I smile.
Not the polite fake versions Rachel keeps accusing me of using lately. A real one. Sharp. Alive. Dangerously satisfied. The kind that usually means I’m about to become someone else’s serious problem.
Callum hears the silence on the other end of the line and immediately groans. “Oh no.”
The Gallagher head of security reaches for his phone exactly three seconds later. Right on schedule. My reroute catches the call before it can hit the actual security company.
Incoming call: DECLAN MURPHY.
Perfect. I pick up before the second ring.
“Wright Security Solutions,” I say smoothly while Callum starts swearing in the background. “What seems to be the issue tonight?”