Chapter 55
COLE
She came back.
Kate came back.
From the moment Nilsson told me she was across the street, I’ve been starting and stopping sentences inside my head. There are so many things I want to tell her, so many things I need her to understand.
We need to talk about the fucking leash.
I still don’t have the words—not any I’m certain will con her, will keep her here when she has every right to leave.
So I concentrate on her long, cool fingers between mine. I focus on the sound of her breath, slow and even like she’s meditating in a forest. I fight the sizzle in my brain, the inferno that threatens to jump the firebreak of every logical thought I’m desperate to apply.
Inside the house, she hesitates in the foyer. I catch her quick glance upstairs, toward our bedroom, where I caught her cutting. I clock an even quicker glimpse to the door at the end of the hall, to the steps that lead to the dungeon.
But I need her to understand what I’ve been thinking these past two weeks. I need her to know that everything’s changed—if she can trust me. If she’ll take what I have to give her.
Still holding fast to her hand, I walk her down the hall to my office.
It’s a greater request than I think it will be, asking her to step over the threshold. I forced her here last time.
“Please,” I say, when she hesitates outside the room. “I…” I don’t know how to beg. “Just… please,” I say again.
Face carefully blank, she enters my lair.
We cross the room together. I pull back the chair at my desk, jutting my chin so she knows to take a seat. I only drop her hand when she agrees.
She looks lost in the huge leather chair, like she’s wandered far from any path she’s ever known. Her gaze is locked on the monitors’ steel frame, on the leash still wrapped tight around the bottom bar.
“I left it there,” I say. “Because I need to remember.”
She raises two fingers to the hollow of her throat. “I’ll never forget,” she says coolly.
My cheeks burn. I deserve that.
I can apologize. I can try to explain. I’ll never forget either. These past two weeks are seared into my brain. I’ve never hurt like I did while she was gone—not my first night in juvie, not when Shannon died, not any of the times I’ve lost Megan.
I try to use my words.
“Shannon,” I say, as if that’s a reasonable place to start.
“My mother.” The word sounds foreign on my tongue.
“For her, the entire world was one giant con game. And everything was chaos. Megan and I were always one night raid away from a new home, a new school, a new man we had to call uncle. Shannon was the queen of grifters, but she was never, ever accountable to anyone for anything.”
Kate is listening, which is more than I deserve.
“When I went to juvie for her, when I took the fall, I promised myself things would be different after I got out. I would always—always—keep everything under control. My business, my emotions, my body, all of it locked down. And I did. For years. Decades, even. But when I saw you cutting… When I realized how easily I could lose you…” I take a shuddering breath. “I lost that control.”
I can’t read Kate’s face. I’ve said too much. I haven’t said nearly enough.
“I need to keep the leash,” I finally say. “It reminds me that my actions affect others. Every one of my decisions has consequences. I was wrong. I was so, so wrong.”
Everything I’m saying is true. I mean every word. But they’re not enough. They can’t prove I’ve learned my lesson.
Frustrated, I pull up the security screen on my computer. I’ve already completed the profile for her household credentials; all it needs is one scan of her palm and another of her iris. I’ve had the black box waiting since noon, against the impossible hope she would ever come home.
She eyes the laser-marked screen with something halfway between curiosity and mistrust. “What is that?”
“A biometric scanner.”
“A—” she starts to repeat. But then she asks, “What do I do?”
I show her how to set her palm against the screen. Her fingertips too, all ten of them, changing angles to collect her vital data. Last of all, she sets her cheek against the case, letting the lasers map her eye.
Once the data is collected, I enter a few commands into the security center. “There,” I say. “You have full access to the household system. All doors. The gate. The property across the street.”
“Thank you,” she says, uncharacteristically subdued.
“There’s something else,” I say.
There’s a titanium box under the desk, delivered just one hour ago. I watch Kate’s face as I pass it to her. She opens it carefully, like it’s a tin can filled with snakes. I watch her recognize the logo on her new ruggedized laptop.
“Jaysus,” she whispers. “I’ve never…” She pets the machine with one fingertip, the way some women would touch diamonds.
I gesture for her to open the machine. The screen is solid black, its only sign of life a cursor that blinks steadily—on, off, on, off. Trying to draw a full breath against the bonfire charring my lungs, I type:
superuser KaitlinMinolaLynch
Her lips part, the only sign that she’s surprised.
The computer responds:
type system password for superuser KaitlinMinolaLynch and press return
I follow the instruction.
untamed
Kate huffs a tiny breath as I enter the password I created for her. Before she can speak, I type a new command:
set new system password for superuser KaitlinMinolaLynch
I gesture for Kate to pull over the laptop. She looks from the screen to me, uncertainty tightening her face. “System password?” she finally asks.
“As superuser, you can access every—”
“I know what a feckin’ superuser is,” she snaps.
I’m tempted to laugh at her show of temper. Next, she’ll be calling me all sorts of Irish curse words. She’ll be back to normal. Back where she belongs.
Before I can try another response, she says, “What system is this?”
“Yours.”
“Mine?” The word is drenched with suspicion.
On my own computer, I pull up the schematic of the network I built for her, throwing it to one of the monitors on the far wall. One part of me wants to go through it step by step, explaining the decisions I made, pointing out each element of the structure. Another part—the wiser part—stays silent.
She works through the information in record time. Goes back to the beginning. Reviews it again, paying more attention to the details. Only after a third time through does she turn to me. Her words sound like they’re carved from ice. “You built this for me?”
I nod, fighting a burning in my chest that makes it hard for me to answer. “You deserve a safe place to work. A network that isn’t locked down. That isn’t compromised.”
“I don’t have anything for you. I didn’t bring a gift.”
“You did,” I correct her. “You came home.”
“Why would you do this for me?” she wails. “You know what I’ve done in the past. What I’m capable of doing in the future. Why would you create this network for me? Give me this machine?”
“Because I can,” I say. “Because it’s the right thing to do. Because you’re the best at what you do, and I hope you’ll choose to work with me, instead of against me. I want you on my team.”
That sounds like a business proposal. I’m tempted to leave the words there, to let her interpret them however she wants. But part of me can’t bear the thought of her misunderstanding.
So I try again. “I want more than that.” I meet her unwavering gaze. “Kate Lynch,” I say. “I want you.”
Something thaws inside her. Her green eyes turn glassy and her lips begin to tremble. She swallows hard and looks at the blinking cursor still waiting for her password. She finally finds her way back to me.
“My,” she says, her voice cracking on the word. “What big systems you have.”
“The better to bring you home, my dear.”
She doesn’t quite manage a laugh. “You hurt me,” she says.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“Not just the spying. Not just Winter Reckoning. The leash. It hurt my throat.”
“I know. I wish I could—”
“But that’s on me,” she interrupts. “The leash. I promised I wouldn’t cut, but I did. I thought I could keep it under control. I thought I could manage everything. Proud as a paycock, Granny would say.”
My lips quirk. “She’s a wise woman, your grandmother.”
That earns me a flash of a smile, but it’s gone so quickly I wonder if I imagined it. Especially when Kate says, “I’m scared.”
I want to cup my hand against her cheek. I’m afraid I’ll lose her if I try. Keeping my distance, I ask, “Scared of what?”
“That I’m too angry. Too broken. Too wild. Da…” She starts to say something and stops. “Mam…” She doesn’t get any further. “The entire feckin’ Lynch clan…” she finally manages.
You aren’t your family. I want to tell her that. I want to believe. Because if she’s damned for being a Lynch, then I’m ruined as a Wolf. Shannon broke me. There’s no coming back from that—not serving my sentence, not visiting Mr. and Mrs. A, not building Lone Wolf.
I settle for saying, “You aren’t too wild.”
“After all the things I said the last time we were in this room—”
“I had you on a leash.”
“I could have—”
“We both were wrong.”
“I’m sorry I—”
“So am I. I’m so, so sorry that I ever—”
She sets a single finger against my lips. I barely resist the urge to catch the tip between my teeth. “Turn around,” she says.
“What?” I’m confused.
“Face the wall. Or better yet, step outside the room.”
“I— What— Why?”
“I’m going to set my password. And I don’t want any chance you’ll see what it is.”
I close my eyes.
“No,” she says. “Out of the room.”
I do as she says. I stand in the hallway like a trained hound, waiting for a command to hunt.
It takes her less than a minute. “Thank you,” she says when she joins me.
“For what?”
“For the network. For taking care of Granny while I was gone. For saying that you’re sorry.” She takes a deep breath and raises her chin. “And for taking me downstairs and proving you truly want me home.”