Chapter 11 #4
Rose snorted, and finished her sip. “Sorry about the Columbia remark. I was so engrossed I didn’t even notice.
” Though now that she had, it explained the growing pressure in her bladder.
“I found something,” she told Thorne as she put her mug down.
“Kennedy still has a partner on the inside. It’s either a new partner or he didn’t give this one up when he took his current deal to get out of prison.
And it’s someone with WITSEC access, too.
” She pulled up the trace log and angled the monitor slightly toward him.
Though he glanced at it, she could tell he didn’t understand it like Keys would have.
“They pulled Katy’s location three days ago. Her handler is dead.”
Thorne let out a low curse, looking at the screen with renewed vigor. With Rose’s permission, Keys had filled the Riley brothers in on everything about Rose and Oscar’s situation, including the fact that she’d done a switcheroo within WITSEC when she’d discovered her pregnancy.
“Is she safe?”
“I think so. They would have moved her immediately.” Rose reached for her coffee again.
“I’ve been corrupting the data trail. Making every search for her location return garbage.
” She took a large gulp, practically burning her tongue.
“It’s temporary, but hopefully buys her time to get to a new secure location. ”
“How long?”
“Days,” Rose shrugged. “Maybe a week if the insider is trying to be extra careful. But I did leave a few trapdoors behind too, which means if anyone makes an inquiry into her location, I’ll know about it and be able to follow the trace back in real time.
” At Thorne’s confused look, Rose elaborated, “I’ll be able to know who Kennedy’s partner is if he searches for Katy again.
” She set the mug back down. “But that’s the better of the bad news.
Kennedy knows I’m watching. He left me a calling card. ”
Thorne pulled out the chair Keys had vacated three days ago and sat down. “Show me.”
She pulled up the post. This time he had no trouble understanding as he took in the photograph of the handler, the poison ivy, the blatant threat in a single line of text.
“He’s trying to flush you out,” Thorne said succinctly.
“Yes.”
“Are you going to let him?”
Rose looked over at the older man. His expression was exactly what she’d come to expect from him—steady and direct. She liked his no-bullshit demeanor, and could understand why the man had had such a successful military career in the Teams.
“No,” she told him honestly.
Thorne nodded once. “Then what do you need?”
Rose turned back to the monitors. Behind them, Oscar stirred on the cot, made a small sleepy sound, and then went quiet again. She listened until she was sure he was settled before she answered Thorne.
“I need to find out who the insider is before Kennedy realizes I’ve been salting his data.” She pulled up a new window, fingers moving. “And I need to do it without becoming visible myself.”
Thorne lifted a graying eyebrow. “Can you?”
She appreciated his genuine inquiry into her capabilities rather than making an assumption in either direction. He might not understand what it was she was doing or how she was doing it, and despite being fifteen years older than her, he seemed prepared to learn.
Unfortunately, this time Rose couldn’t make a boastful comment. “I don’t know yet,” she answered honestly. “But I'm going to try, and Keys is only a phone call away if I get stuck.”
Rose made to start again, but Thorne stopped her with a gentle hand on her wrist. “The damage has already been done. Go take a quick break. Get something to eat, take a piss, shower… Hell, listen to twenty minutes of a dirty smut book. Just step away for a minute. You need it.” Rose’s eyes flicked to Oscar, but before she could ask, Thorne added, “I’ve got him.
Go. I won’t leave this room until you return. ”
Rose bit her lip, debating the tempting offer. In the end, nearly four cups of coffee made the decision for her, and she left to use the bathroom. Thorne was right. Whether she continued working now or in twenty minutes, it wouldn’t make a difference.
Besides, somewhere Kennedy was impatiently watching a screen, waiting for Rose to surface, and she had no intention of giving him the satisfaction.
* * *
Present
It felt like Keys had been gone far longer than twelve days.
He came through the door of the apartment at half past nine, looking like something the club had chewed up and forgotten to spit out.
Twelve days of snatched sleep in hospital waiting rooms and his computer van’s passenger seat had carved new shadows under his eyes, of nonstop searches and feeling powerless, of burying the sadness and standing over fresh graves.
Jigsaw had even gone as far as to describe him as looking “gaunt”, and Keys did not doubt for a heartbeat that he had the appearance of a man who had been running on adrenaline and obligation for so long that his body had simply stopped registering the difference between functioning and surviving.
His beard was past the point of needing trimming, and his glasses sat slightly crooked on his face but he was honestly too tired to fix them.
His cut was dusty, his boots were scuffed, and there was an orange stain down the front of his white dress shirt that had long turned crusty from when he’d spilled his soda.
The sight of Rose waiting up for him was the best thing Keys had ever seen. He’d never had anyone to come home to before, and the knowledge that she was here, that she’d stood by him through the chaos, was heady. He never wanted to lose that feeling.
She crossed the apartment in four steps and stopped in front of him, close enough that she had to tilt her head back to look at him properly. She looked as exhausted as he felt—probably more so because she also had Oscar to take care of.
Reaching up, she straightened his glasses. “You look like shit.”
He honestly could not find it in himself to disagree. Leaning his head forward, Keys rested his forehead against hers. “You look beautiful.”
Rose chuckled, leaning into him as their fingers laced together at their sides.
“Hi,” he mused, simply breathing her in. He wondered if his voice sounded as rough to her as it did to him.
“Hi,” she said softly back.
He hadn’t bothered to drop his backpack off at the computer lab.
That would have taken precious extra seconds that he would have much rather spent right where he was.
His arms came around her at the same moment hers went around him, and for a long moment, they just stood there in the doorway of the apartment.
No further words were spoken because they simply weren’t necessary.
He felt the slow exhale move through her entire body, and he knew that feeling.
Like he’d been subconsciously holding his breath until he found his way back into her presence.
She smelled of coffee and exhaustion and that natural scent women had that was something almost citrusy—and in that moment, Keys felt something shift inside his chest. Like a constricting bind that was finally loosened.
He didn’t know which one of them moved first, and honestly, it didn’t matter.
Torn apart by circumstance, crisis, and the general chaos of a world that had not stopped demanding things from them for six straight days, they ended up in a heap of limbs on the couch.
There was no grace or posturing or pose, yet somehow their lips found each other.
His backpack landed on the floor in a heap, and was soon followed by his dirty cut and soda-stained shirt.
His hands found their way into her hair.
Her fingers curled around his back, nails finding purchase in his sensitive skin.
The kiss did not start out slowly and gradually build.
It held tension and specific hunger of two people who knew without a shadow of a doubt that they had found their other half, their soulmate.
Keys pulled back just far enough to look at her, gray-blue eyes slightly unfocused behind his steamed-up glasses. She reached up, tracing her thumb along his scruff-covered jaw in a way that made coherent thought particularly difficult.
Staring up into his eyes, she softly admitted, “I missed you. So much. There were times when it felt like I couldn’t breathe without you.”
Keys opened his mouth to answer, but suddenly heard the distinctive sound of small feet hitting the floor. That was all the warning he had before fifty pounds of four-year-old energy hit him directly on the back like a heat-seeking missile that had finally acquired its target.
“Keys!”
The impact drove Keys forward with an “oof” that was fifty percent genuine and fifty percent theatrical, though he was careful not to allow his weight to drop down onto Rose under him.
Oscar had both arms locked around his neck and both legs around his ribs, clinging to his back with the full-body commitment a boa constrictor would envy.
His little face pressed into Keys’ shoulder, and when Keys felt something wet touch his skin, he found himself praying it was drool and not boogers.
“Oscar,” Rose started, but Oscar shouted over her warning.
“He’s back! He’s back!" His voice rang out like he was announcing this to an entire auditorium rather than the two people he was trying to squish together into a Keys sandwich on the couch. “Keys is back!” He lifted his head, and out of the corner of his eye, Keys saw the boy’s expression turn to exasperated seriousness.
“You were gone for so long! Like forever! It was a really long time.”
“I know, bud.” Keys reached back and got a hand under Oscar, adjusting the boy so they created an Oscar sandwich instead. Rose shifted, too, as Keys moved to his side. “I’m sorry about that.”
“Did you bring me something?” Oscar asked with eagerness.
“Oscar,” Rose chastised.
“What?” he turned his head to look down at his mom. “I’m just asking.”
Keys snorted, which resulted in Rose losing her composure and laughing. Too exhausted and elated to be back together with his favorite people in the world, Keys could only shake his head. “As a matter of fact, I did bring you something. It’s in my backpack.”
Oscar tried to squirm his way out from between them, but Keys stopped him before the boy managed to topple all three of them onto the floor.
Sitting upright, Keys reached for his bag as well as his shirt.
Rose sat up too, moving Oscar onto her lap.
After Keys put his shirt back on, she patted the cushion beside her in invitation.
When he sat, she pulled his arm around her shoulder, and Oscar let out a triumphant shout as Keys handed him a stuffed stegosaurus plush.
Within minutes, Oscar had chosen the dinosaur’s name, Baxter, and an incredible amount of detail about the life Baxter lived in such confidence that it was hard to believe it was make-believe.
Keys listened with complete seriousness and asked the appropriate follow-up questions.
It took a long time before they could get Oscar and Baxter settled back into bed, and the couch was once more taken up by just the two adults. As much as Keys would have loved to go to bed himself, he owed her some answers, particularly the details about Ranger’s captivity that he’d kept from her.
During the four days of his captivity, Ranger had been forced into compliance through repeated heroin injections.
Additionally, he was beaten, starved, and humiliated through methods that even Keys didn’t know the full extent of yet.
And on top of all of that, Ranger was now suffering through withdrawal from a drug he’d never willingly taken.
Keys tried to explain the turmoil of watching someone he loved and respected fight a battle that had been forced on them, but feared his words fell short of the hellish reality.
Becks was also in recovery, but for a head injury she sustained while held captive.
She negotiated her brother’s release—at a cost. Ghost was barely holding it together, worry for his best friend’s and wife’s lives making his own health and recovery from injuries he’d sustained in the explosion secondary.
Beyond the natural depression of funerals, there was a tension now in the club, as if they were all floating around each other rather than leaning on each other.
Rose listened to his entire tale without looking away.
And when he finished, she told him about what she’d discovered about Kennedy’s partner within the Marshal Service, the death of Katy's handler and the poison ivy, the dark web post, and Kennedy’s obvious threat.
He went very still.
“You’ve been sitting on all this for nearly a week,” he accused as gently as he could.
She didn’t back down. “You were dealing with your club. Between the hospital and the funerals, I didn’t want to put more on your shoulders.”
“Rose.” He couldn’t keep the rebuke out of his voice.
“I handled what I could,” she told him quietly. “The trapdoors are in place. If Kennedy’s partner searches for Katy again, I’ll know who they are in real time.” She reached over his lap to lace his fingers with hers. “I wasn’t going to call you away from your club for something I could manage.”
The silence between them held weight. Not anger, exactly. More like the friction of two people who trusted each other completely and were still learning the shape of what that trust meant now that they were in the same building instead of hundreds or thousands of miles apart.
“Next time,” he said firmly.
Rose nodded. “Next time,” she agreed.
It wasn’t absolution or argument. Merely the two of them, finding the edges of something new, the same way they’d been finding them since the moment she revealed to him the most important secret in her world.
Keys squeezed her hand gently. There was so much that they still had to do. So much that tomorrow would bring. But for tonight, Mount Grove was quiet, Keys was finally home, and he was looking forward to a full night’s sleep with Rose wrapped in his arms.