25. Miles
Twenty-Five
Miles
I’m a good hacker, I’m good at opening things which shouldn’t be opened, but even I’m starting to lose patience with this shit.
The decryption is at eighty-nine percent.
I've been watching the number tick upward for the last hour. I’m running the cross-reference work in parallel, the five city contacts mapped against the network database, the upper tier communication structure which is starting to resolve into something I can actually read.
It's close. Everything is close but still taking forever. The next twenty-four hours is either going to give me everything, or I’ve just wasted my time.
Mason comes in without knocking and drops onto the end of the bed. I don’t look over at him as I keep my focus on the screen.
"Grounds tonight?” he asks.
“Can’t,” I reply, and move my attention to the other screen.
“Got better things to do?’ Mason jokes.
“Out with Sadie.” I stop working on my laptop and turn to face him, and he smiles.
"You kissed her." I look at him, how the hell does he know? "Declan saw from the window. I'm not apologizing for Declan having eyes."
I go back to the screen. "Is there a question in there somewhere?"
"Several." He leans back on his hands. "Starting with, what's the plan, Miles?"
"Dinner.” I’m not sure what else he wants me to say.
"That's tonight's plan. I mean the actual plan with Sadie.
Because from where I'm sitting you've spent three weeks saying she needs to be kept at a distance to keep her safe and then this afternoon you kissed her outside the humanities block.
So, I'm wondering which version of the plan we're currently operating under. "
I close one of the windows and open another. The eighty-nine percent hasn't moved. Fucking hell, this is pissing me off.
"She knows," I say.
Mason goes quiet for a second, and even that's long for him. "How much does she know?"
"Who I am. What I've been doing." I pause. "The flowers. The contact. All of it." Mason is the best one at reading me, so there’s no point lying to him about anything. He’ll know straight away I’m not telling the truth.
"She figured it out."
"Yes."
He's quiet for a moment longer. "And she didn't run?" He starts laughing. Only he would see the funny side of her not being scared that I’ve been stalking her, and she finds it… okay.
"No."
"You know, going for dinner in public is putting her at risk," he says finally.
I sit back from the screen.
That's the thing I've been sitting with since I walked back from the humanities block.
The problem is what tonight means logistically, not emotionally.
The organization has been on campus. They've been in the stands at the athletics center during practice.
They have photographs of me at Grounds, at the merged table, with Sadie in the same frame.
They know who she is, and they know I’m with her.
Taking her to dinner in public means being visible with her. It means confirming to anyone watching that she matters, which they may already suspect, but suspicion and confirmation are different things.
I look at the five city codes on the screen. At the message on the stolen phone. Escalate timeline.
"It's not ideal," I say.
"Miles, they came to this house. They put three people through our front door. They…"
"I know what they did." The words come out flat. "I was here."
He stops. The room is quiet for a moment. Outside, somewhere in the house, Declan is on the phone, his voice carrying in the low murmur of someone keeping their tone down deliberately.
"She doesn't know about this," Mason says as he gestures at the screens. The five monitors, the case mapped across all of them. "Does she?"
"No."
"Are you going to tell her?"
Am I going to tell her? That’s the same question I’ve been asking myself. A part of me is saying yes, but if she didn’t run about me stalking her, she will run when she knows about this.
"Not tonight," I say.
"Miles…"
"She found out who I am today. That's enough for one conversation." I turn back to the keyboard. "The case stays here."
"And if the case decides to follow you to dinner?"
I don't answer that, because the honest answer is that the case has already followed me everywhere I've gone for three weeks and dinner at a restaurant is not going to be the exception.
The honest answer is that the organization already knows my face and the decision to take Sadie out tonight is a risk I'm choosing to take rather than one I'm pretending doesn't exist.
I know the difference. This is a risk, and I’m going to protect her no matter what happens.
Mason looks at me for a long moment. "I like her," he says. "For what it's worth, she's good for you in whatever way this is." He pauses. "She's also a first year student who came here on a gymnastics scholarship and has no idea what's sitting on these screens."
"I know."
"So at some point…"
"I know, Mason." I meet his eyes. "I know." Telling anyone this part of your life is hard, we know what we are getting ourselves into, we know the family business, it’s not right to bring someone into it without them knowing the danger of it. And that’s what I’m about to do with Sadie.
He holds my gaze. Then he nods once, then gets up off the bed and straightens his jacket.
"Be careful tonight," he says. Not just about Sadie, but about everything else.
"Always."
“I’ll be close by if you need me.” Mason opens the door and I hear him talking to Declan. "Declan wants to know if you want him to do a sweep of the restaurant before you get there." I look at him. "He'll be subtle about it," Mason adds.
I give him a nod, Mason leaves to let Declan know, and I lean back in my chair, rubbing my eyes. Am I doing the right thing here?
***
At six fifteen I finally step away from the desk. Not because the work is done because it isn't, the upper tier structure is still resolving, the decryption is at ninety-four percent and climbing.
I close it because Cain taught me compartmentalization before he taught me anything else. The ability to put one thing down and pick up another without the two contaminating each other. The case stays here tonight.
I shower. Get dressed. Stand at the mirror in my room and look at the week-old bruise along the cheekbone and the cut which has healed to a thin line. My eyes are burning from the lack of sleep.
I pick up my jacket. The burner phone goes in the inside pocket, not because I'm checking it tonight, but because the alert system doesn't pause for dinner.
If something raises a flag, I'll know about it.
What I do with that information when I'm sitting across from Sadie in a restaurant is a problem I'll solve when it arrives.
I go downstairs and Declan’s in the kitchen.
"The restaurant's clear," he says. "Nothing flagged."
"Good."
"Mason and I’ll be nearby."
"I know." I pick up my keys. "Don't be obvious about it."
"When am I obvious?"
Never. That's the honest answer. Declan is the least obvious Crawford in any given room, and he's been that way since he was twelve.
I go to the door and stop before going out when I hear Declan call my name. "She said yes to dinner knowing who you are. That means something." Without saying a word, I leave and go have dinner with Sadie and hope for a fun night with her afterwards.
***
The hallway outside her door is empty, someone's playing music two floors up, it seems like there’s a party. I knock at seven exactly and stand in front of her door with my hands in my jacket pockets and wait.
The door opens, and I smile. She's in a dress. It’s dark green, simple, but hugs her body to perfection. Her hair is down, properly down, the way it was in the dorm window the first night I stood in the car park opposite. And she’s wearing the bracelets I got her.
I can’t take my eyes off her.
"You're staring," she says.
"Yes, and I could stare at you all day,” I reply as I look down her dress, and see how fucking stunning she is.
She waits, like she's expecting me to say something else. I don't have anything else to say. She looks beautiful in a way that makes the word feel insufficient.
"Miles."
"You look beautiful," I say.
Something moves through her expression, and her cheeks start turning red and I didn’t think she could look any more beautiful. I was wrong.
"Thank you," she says. "You don't look terrible yourself."
I smile while holding in a laugh. "High praise."
"Given the bruising, yes." She picks up her bag from the hook inside the door. Then she steps out, pulls the door closed behind her, and she double-checks it. If only she knew the things I can do, and I could still break into her place.
We walk down the stairs ,and I hold the door for her as we step outside. She walks beside me, close enough that our arms almost touch, and I adjust my pace to hers without thinking about it.
It’s crazy to think she’s acting shy around me, even though we’ve had sex more than once.
"Where are we going?" she asks.
"Arlo's. It’s ten minutes away.” I move closer to her, I know I need to have dinner and explain everything, but there are so many more things I would like to do, and one of them involves being naked.
"I don't know it."
"You'll like it." I reassure her.
She glances at me sideways. "How do you know?"
"Because I know what you like." There’s a lot more about her I know than she realizes. She looks at the path ahead. Is she being shy around me? I need to get the confident Sadie back in front of me.
"Is this strange for you?" she asks.
"What?"
"This." She gestures between us. "Walking to dinner, normally." She pauses. "After everything…"
I consider the question for a moment. The honest answer is that nothing about Sadie has ever felt entirely normal to me. She’s always been special, always been someone I can’t stop thinking about.
"No," I say. "It doesn't feel strange."
All she does is nod and slowly places her hand in mine. I didn’t know how she would react to me after finding out who I was, but this wasn’t it. I thought she would fight me, hit me, but she didn’t do anything.