Chapter 12
Present
Keys did not get his wish. His system’s alarm blared, startling him awake before the sun even hit the horizon.
On his feet before he was fully conscious, Keys fought to find his glasses on the nightstand in the pitch blackness of the room.
He really needed to set automatic lights for when the alarm went off.
After shoving his glasses so roughly onto his face that he nearly took out an eyeball, Keys ran from the bedroom and was scrambling for his ThinkPad that he’d left in his backpack in the living room.
In some recess of his mind that was still figuring out up from down in this early hour, he noted that Rose ran directly across the apartment to comfort a crying Oscar, who also had been violently woken from the obnoxious alarm, too.
Shit. When Keys had designed the system, he hadn’t imagined a kid living in the building with him.
Hell, he hadn’t imagined he would be living in the building.
Another downside of the attack on the bar had shown Keys just how absent he’d been from his club recently. Not digitally, but physically.
As soon as Rose and Oscar were safe, and she felt comfortable coming out of hiding, Keys planned to amend that.
But even if she wanted to build a house on the club’s property next to his brothers’, it wouldn’t change the fact that he needed to be alerted as soon as his system picked up on something major.
Maybe he could switch the alarm to something on his person, like a watch, so it would not disturb Oscar’s slumber, too.
Movement caught his eye, and Keys looked up to see Rose holding Oscar to her chest. Guilt and sadness at the boy’s tears held Keys’ attention for several precious seconds.
In his dinosaur pajamas, Baxter clutched to his chest, his hair sticking up in four directions, and his tight hold on his mother’s shoulders, Oscar looked so small and vulnerable.
“It’s okay, baby,” Rose told him, rubbing his back. “Keys is turning off the loud noise right now,” she added pointedly to Keys.
Shit. Fuck. Several strokes of his fingers later, and the blaring noise became nothing more than an echoing memory.
Glancing up, Keys mouthed, “Sorry.”
The expression Rose gave him said not to worry about it, but he most definitely would—after he figured out what had tripped his alarms. The system wasn’t alerting him to something or someone physically in the building with them.
That was a completely different alert notification, one where the building itself would protect them.
No, this was something more specific, something that had triggered one of his many protocols.
As Rose brought Oscar back into his bedroom, Keys reached for his tablet. Sitting on the couch with his ThinkPad in his lap wasn’t ideal, so he might need a second screen.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
Keys hadn’t been paying that close attention to Poison’s whereabouts and doings while dealing with Becks’ and Ranger’s abductions, the bar explosion, and everything else that had come up in the past week.
He hadn’t looked at Rose’s traps yet. What if she’d tripped something herself?
It didn’t seem like her, she was too good for that, but they both were exhausted past their limits, plus she could have been distracted by Oscar.
Keys didn’t like wondering if she had made a mistake—a normal, well-rested Rose would not have—but even he’d made some doozies this week.
Regardless of how, Kennedy had found Poison and had issued a capture order for Ivy “Poison” Benson.
In Rose’s defense, Poison also had never been one to hide.
It was MV’s doing that kept her hidden digitally and her movements from being tracked.
Had Rose not been keeping up with that this week?
That didn’t seem likely, as she should have tightened her protocols since they laid their trap for Kennedy, but again, possible.
The timestamp on the order was forty minutes ago, with the clinical instruction to bring her in alive, by any means necessary, and to kill anyone who got in their path.
Keys’ hands were already moving, pulling up the tracking data Rose had planted in Kennedy’s network three days ago.
He hadn’t had time to look into it fully yet, making this his first real window into the man’s operational structure.
It was certainly more extensive than Keys would have thought, after the man had been imprisoned for five years.
Clearly, someone had kept his operation running while he was, hopefully, becoming someone’s bitch behind bars.
The three men were moving. Based on their bank data, he didn’t think they were guns-for-hire.
There were too many regular transfers for that.
He could see their rough positions from cell tower data, all three converging on Providence, Rhode Island, the last known position Kennedy had for the Non Cras, from various points across the country.
He had a day, tops, before they caught up to the club.
Keys grabbed for his phone.
Thorne picked up on the second ring, which made Keys wonder if he hadn’t gone to bed yet or if he was already up. “Yeah, Boss?”
“I need you and Grimm to roll out.” Keys was already sending the brothers the location data and calculating the fastest route for them.
“Kennedy sent three men after Poison. They’ll be on her within the day.
” He pushed the coordinates through to Thorne’s phone as he spoke, his fingers never pausing over the keyboard.
“I want them alive and here. They’ve got some answers I need to pick from their brains. ”
“On it,” Thorne answered automatically. “You got a ride for us?”
Keys was already a step ahead of him. “One of our clients’ planes has had an accidental flight plan change. His jet will be arriving in Morgantown shortly.”
“Remind me to stay on your good side. We’re Oscar Mike,” he reported before hanging up.
Keys exhaled, feeling slightly better now that Poison had some backup coming her way.
The Non Cras could certainly handle their own, but there was a high possibility the three men coming after her wouldn’t live long enough to identify themselves, let alone answer any other questions.
Then he pulled up four simultaneous feeds and got to work tracking all five moving pieces, because if Thorne and Grimm didn’t reach Poison’s location first, Keys was going to need a contingency plan.
He was so deep in the feeds that he didn’t hear Rose come back out of Oscar’s room until she sat down on the soft cushion next to him. Picking up the tablet, she caught herself up on the events she’d missed while taking care of her son.
“Oscar?” he asked without looking up from his screen.
“Finally back to sleep.” She rested her head against his shoulder as she continued to read through the data. “Thorne and Grimm?” she asked curiously.
“Thorne mentioned to me earlier in the week that Grimm’s been antsy since the explosion. Getting him back in the field will do him some good,” Keys answered evenly. “His nightmares aren’t as bad as they were, but they’ve returned.”
He felt Rose frown against his bare shoulder. “I’m sorry. I know it turned out not to be our fault, but the entire situation still sucks. Those greedy assholes who wanted Ranger and Becks’ inheritance deserve to rot in Hell.”
Keys nodded, agreeing completely. He had no doubt that Ghost had already personally ensured that it was a painful journey down. Pulling his glasses off his face, Keys pinched the bridge of his nose. “I really want to go back to sleep, but I also should keep working on this.”
Rose turned her head to press her lips to his skin. “We can’t do anything until Thorne and Grimm have boots on the ground. Why don’t we go take a shower, get some breakfast, and actually make an effort at being human today?”
“That sounds positively dreadful,” Keys mused. Then realizing what he’d said, he corrected, “The latter part of your statement. The former sounds incredible.” He felt Rose’s smile. “And when you say ‘we’…?” he inquired pointedly.
“I mean, you and me and some hot water with a soapy loofa.”
Her sentence wasn’t even completely out of her mouth before Keys was up and running towards the bathroom.
* * *
The jet was exactly where Keys said it would be.
Thorne didn’t ask, nor did he want to know, how a private aircraft had developed an accidental change to its flight plan in the middle of the night.
He’d worked for Keys long enough to understand that some questions weren’t worth asking, and while he considered himself a well-educated man, he doubted he’d be able to understand the answer, anyway.
The important thing was that the plane was there, fueled, and pointed in the right direction.
He and Grimm were wheels up and out of Morgantown before four in the morning.
The cabin was small, and thankfully quiet.
Grimm had taken the seat across the aisle and was studying the target data Keys had pushed to both their phones.
With his jaw tight and his eyes moving with careful precision, Thorne knew his brother was running through the countless scenarios of what they might encounter.
Thorne watched his little brother out of his periphery. There was no way that Grimm didn’t know he was watching, but that didn’t mean Thorne had to make his observation obvious.
Grimm looked steady, but looks could be deceiving. Thorne knew that better than anyone. His instinct would always be to keep one eye on his objective and the other on his family. He was the oldest, the protector. It was his job to keep his brothers in line, no matter their ages.
“Three targets,” Grimm said without looking up. “Converging from different points. They’re not traveling together. Rose was wrong about how big Kennedy’s reach was.”