Bonus Epilogue
JACKSON KELLEY
OFF THE COAST OF MIAMI
The boat pitched gently under him, the steady thrum of the engine carrying it over the chop.
Every small jolt knifed through his ribs, a pulse of pain he couldn’t outrun.
Jackson wiped a streak of dried blood from his forearm with the back of his hand, muttering when the movement pulled at the gash along his side.
He wasn’t sure whether he’d cracked a rib or just bruised it, but it didn’t matter.
Pain was background noise now. A companion who never abandoned him.
He kept the running lights dim—just enough for a few fishermen in the distance to mistake him for another night cruiser, not enough for anyone with a thermal scope to mark him as something worth investigating.
Miami glowed brightly on the horizon. Warm and alive with the vibrant colors of this city.
He hadn’t planned on coming this close.
Of course, he hadn’t planned on a lot of things. Like getting framed for an assassination attempt and a missile spoof that almost caused a nuclear holocaust.
Jackson leaned against the railing, breathing through the tightness in his chest as he stared toward the shortest building in the cluster of lights—the one with temporary construction scaffolding still clinging to its bones.
Black Tower’s new office on Brickell Key.
Marshall’s new command.
He had to believe that Marshall didn’t believe what they were saying about him. The thought was one of the few that kept him going.
He’d told himself he only needed to get within signal range. To send one clean, untraceable burst. Just enough to let his brother know he was still breathing. Still fighting.
But when he’d gotten close—when he’d watched through his binoculars, debating what message to send—he’d seen the two figures on the roof.
Marshall and Norah.
He’d typed his message into the close-range encrypted push relay.
I need your help. You owe me for that thing in Denver with the bull.
And then Marshall had dropped to one knee. And Jackson had forced himself to delete it.
Forced himself not to imagine climbing the emergency stairwell and stepping onto that roof, not to imagine Marshall turning and seeing him standing there, alive.
He couldn’t do that to them. Not while a target was still painted on his back.
So, he’d typed a new message.
Congrats. Miami looks good on you both.
You better wait a while longer—I’m not missing the wedding.
He hoped it hit the way he meant it to. He hoped it told Marshall what he couldn’t say aloud.
I’m alive. I’m close. I’m coming home—just not yet.
Jackson lowered himself onto the bench beside the helm, the exhaustion crashing hard now that adrenaline wasn’t propping him upright.
His hands trembled from cold, from fatigue, from blood loss.
He closed his eyes and let the ocean wind press against his face—warm and salty.
He could almost pretend he wasn’t half-feral from months on the run.
Almost.
His mind drifted somewhere softer for a moment. Someone softer.
Miranda.
He hadn’t said her name out loud in months, but it lived in his head the way the ocean lived in the spaces between waves. Steady. Inevitable.
He wondered what she’d say if she could see him now—filthy, injured, and sporting a beard he hadn’t meant to grow.
Running instead of sleeping, surviving instead of living.
She’d probably hand him water, give him that look that wasn’t pity but wasn’t quite disapproval either, and tell him he was doing too much again.
She’d been helping him. He wasn’t sure if she thought he didn’t know, but he recognized her fingerprints on every anonymous supply stash that showed up exactly where he needed it. She was covering her tracks well.
But she should've known better than to think he wouldn’t recognize the pattern of her care.
He scrubbed a tired hand over his face. Part of him wanted to reach out. Wanted to hear her voice, even distorted over an encrypted channel. Wanted—heaven help him—to let her know how much it mattered that she still believed in him.
But reaching out meant exposure.
Exposure meant danger.
He wouldn’t do that to his best friend. His baby girl.
“No more mistakes,” Jackson muttered under his breath.
As if on cue, his secure tablet buzzed on the cracked vinyl beside him—a soft vibration, the signature alert of one of his passive field traps.
Jackson straightened.
He’d planted a dozen trail cams in the past few weeks—tucked into vents, behind molding, inside false wiring boxes. All positioned near pressure points in Syndicate’s network.
Most weeks, the feeds stayed empty. Most days, he wondered if he was chasing ghosts.
Tonight, one of the cameras blinked to life.
His screen displayed a grainy still image, a hallway outside a restricted office tied to Morris’s private schedule. Someone standing where no one had business being. Shoulders hunched, posture furtive, expression nervous.
Features Jackson recognized immediately.
Jackson felt the exhaustion bleed out of him, replaced by something colder. Sharper.
He had it. Proof the mole wasn’t a phantom after all. And it was someone no one suspected.
He straightened slowly, ignoring the pull in his ribs, the throb in his shoulder, the sting of the hastily stitched-up knife wound along his hip. He brought the photo closer, studying the face of the person inside Black Tower who’d helped frame him.
He breathed in once, long and steady.
Finally.
“All right,” he murmured, gripping the wheel with blood-stained fingers. “You want to show your hand? Let’s play.”
He turned the boat, the engine humming as it cut away from the Miami lights and back into the open sea. He didn’t look back. Couldn’t. Not yet.
But as the coastline thinned into a band of gold on the horizon, he let one truth settle deep in his chest.
The mole just made a mistake. Which meant Jackson finally had a lead.
And God willing—a way back home.
Don’t miss the next book in the Black Tower Security Series - False Security featuring Jackson’s story.