Chapter 3
JAX
T he hum of Break Point Run carried through the office walls like a living thing.
Engines tuning, crews calling over each other, the metallic rattle of bleachers being unfolded into place.
The smell of exhaust seeped in even here, clinging to the air vents, as if this whole place breathed racing fuel instead of oxygen.
I let the door latch click behind me and rolled the tightness out of my shoulders.
Lark crashing into me was still in my head.
The thump of a clipboard against my chest and her apology tumbling out fast and sweet while she tried to catch everything before it hit the ground.
Her scent—warm skin mixed with a hint of something floral—had gotten into my system and stayed there. My jaw still ached from locking it.
Kane leaned against the scarred desk, his arms folded across his chest, eyes cutting toward me with that steady weight he carried. Always watching, always calculating. The kind of man who didn’t waste words unless they mattered.
He read my face in one look.
“Don’t start with me, Jax,” he muttered, but there was a twitch at the corner of his mouth. “Edge already tried to put the ‘no limiter’ car on the card for tonight.”
“Your problem, not mine,” I countered. “I have a different fire.”
His brows went up. “Lark.”
“Hired her fast,” I said, keeping my tone level. “You call the references yourself or delegate?”
“I called.” Kane never bristled at me checking the locks, so there was no offense in his tone.
I stayed where I was, leaning on the doorframe, tablet balanced against my forearm. “And?”
“She’s young, so she doesn’t have a long work history.
Last job was assisting in event planning.
The woman who answered vouched for her, with no hesitation.
Said she was competent and reliable. Didn’t give me a reason to doubt her.
” He shifted his weight, the light catching in his green eyes.
“She also completed that motorsports course online. Eight weeks, intensive, focused. It’s legit.
Qualified her enough for the assistant coordinator spot. ”
“So the basics cleared.”
“They did,” he confirmed. He studied me with a steady gaze. “Which is why I green-lit her.”
I flicked my eyes up from the tablet. “References can be faked. Especially if the background itself is built that way.”
Kane didn’t flinch, didn’t bristle. He just held my stare. “That’s why I have you.”
The simplicity of his words landed heavier than anything else could have.
He wasn’t blowing me off or dismissing my concern.
He was handing me the reins because that’s what I was there for.
If Jax Bishop found something rotten, it was gospel.
If I told Kane she had to go, Lark would be gone before the ink dried on her hire forms.
“Anything else you clocked?” I asked. “In person?”
He flipped a sheet over and scratched a note, buying himself a second to answer. “Nervous energy that’s not afraid of work. Didn’t fish for access. Eyes tracked details in the tent while she talked—crew badges, staging lists. That kind of awareness plays, as long as it’s not hiding a landmine.”
My lips quirked. “And I’m in the business of finding landmines before they pop.”
“Exactly.” His gaze sharpened. “You got a feeling about something?”
“Maybe.” I kept my voice even, not wanting him to pick up on the emotions rioting around inside me after meeting her. “The paper trail reads…tidy.”
Kane’s mouth flattened. He knew me well enough to get just from my tone that when I said “tidy,” it wasn’t praise. “Do your dig. See if we should be dodging a hit.”
I gave a short nod. “Always.”
“Good.” He clapped my shoulder once, then turned back to the mess of logistics scattered across the desk. For Kane, the conversation was finished.
But for me, the work had just begun.
As I ambled away, he called after me. “Jax.”
I looked back.
He didn’t say be careful . Kane didn’t waste syllables. He just nodded once, a quiet weight behind it that said everything else. Trust. Leash length. The usual.
I tipped the brim of my cap in return and walked out, the office door whispering shut behind me.
By the time I hit the compound, the heat had that end-of-day shimmer, the clubhouse rippling in the reflection of the late afternoon sun.
A couple of prospects were pressure-washing the concrete near the garage, cutting clean paths through the grease.
Drift stood with them for a minute, pointing at a hose clamp, then caught my eye and gave a chin lift.
I answered with a small one of my own and took the side entrance that kept me out of the lounge traffic.
In my office, I slid into the chair and woke the main rig. The world narrowed in the way it always did when I was where I belonged—my fingers on keys, eyes on moving numbers, and heartbeat finding the tempo that let me move faster than whatever tried to catch me.
Basic checks first, because even though I knew they wouldn’t show anything, I followed my procedures. Public records. County clerks. DMV stubs. Lease agreements. The same boring sprawl I’d skimmed before, but this time I traced every line to its edge.
It held. Too well.
Again, I went a little deeper, looking over the information that had sparked my suspicions in the first place. Clean—but not sterile. Someone had sprinkled just enough dust for her background to look lived-in.
Utility start dates lined up with the lease. Water, power, and internet. The internet package was basic, just enough bandwidth to stream in HD and handle video calls without buffering. No gaming spikes. No late-night spikes. Everything was average. Perfectly average.
And the absence of social profiles still rang like a fire bell.
I let the dead air hang a beat, then went where I already knew I was going.
Federal records.
Not the front doors. Not even the side doors.
Those were alarmed for people who wanted to get caught.
I worked my way in backward, through contractor portals no one cleaned up when a project ended, past an authentication layer that trusted the wrong kind of certificate, and across a dead-end subdomain that only looked dead.
A few more scrapes, and I was under the paint.
I kept my touch light. The DOJ didn’t scream when someone touched their glass; it whispered. If you tripped the wrong flag, the only sign was a silent call to a human who was suddenly having a better fucking day than you.
Two more turns, and I found the archive.
The label wasn’t “WITSEC” because they weren’t that stupid.
It was something that sounded like a budget line item for courthouse maintenance.
But the structure under it was the same book I’d read from the inside when they paid me to make strangers vanish and turn up as someone else.
I keyed in the alias—Lark Whittaker.
The first search returned a polite nothing. I pivoted through the parallel index—the one they thought no one remembered existed—and there it was.
Subject : Carly Nolan.
Current identity : Lark Whittaker.
Program : Federal Witness Security.
Status : Active.
Relocation : Florida—restricted.
The breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding let out slow. It wasn’t relief. More like recognition. The kind that landed heavily and sat there.
I clicked through authorization layers others couldn’t access without clearance, rode the rails of a credential I’d buried years ago and kept alive for just-in-case. The file opened.
The skeleton of the legend lay in neat lines.
Birthdate matched her alias. Educational entries aligned to the certificate she’d earned during her eight-week course.
Prior employment built out as an event assistant—real enough to answer a phone, but thin enough to avoid deep records.
The relocation date matched her last lease start to the day.
It ended abruptly right before a new one started here in Crossbend.
And it was all wrong in the ways that mattered.
When I worked as a civilian contractor for the DOJ, legends like this would have gotten me fired. Or worse, gotten someone killed. I’d built airtight covers, wiped real lives clean down to the last fucking library card, and rebuilt new ones from the ground up. My work held. Nobody cracked it.
I zoomed in on the financial scaffolding.
Whoever had crafted the history had done just enough to survive a civilian look.
But the metadata under the PDF revealed the real story—batch creation windows, template IDs, and a document author field I recognized from a regional office that had once sent me files I had to fix before a witness boarded a plane.
I’d taught a class to a handful of their analysts back in the day and left thinking they’d learned. Apparently, someone hadn’t.
I dug into the employment reference Kane’s team called.
It only existed on paper. Just enough to pass a phone check.
However, the VOIP carrier tied to the line was a private contractor who prioritized government dollars and lowered its standards when a purchase order hit its inbox.
The voicemail system header listed a firmware version I knew because I fucking wrote it once for a different agency and never turned the key for the spin-off product they used here.
I closed my eyes for one long second and pictured Lark again. The way she had steadied herself before looking me in the face. How her hands had moved quick and competently as she sorted the mess she’d dropped.
The deeper I dug, the uglier it got. The summary report in her file wasn’t long—WITSEC never wrote novels, just bullets sharp enough to cut.
She’d been under since twenty-three months back, relocated after handing the DOJ enough classified material to shut down a private military contractor that had been neck-deep in trafficking and weapons deals.