Chapter 17 #3
It was small, the kind of anomaly that could have easily been dismissed as a system glitch or a sensor calibration error.
Anyone else might have even written it off as the ordinary noise of a building’s security infrastructure processing the ten thousand small inputs it received every hour, but not Keys.
His eyes narrowed behind his glasses. He knew the difference between a glitch and a ghost.
This was a ghost in the system.
Bathroom forgotten, he rushed to his chair and pulled up the log, working to trace it back.
He nearly missed the entry point because he’d been looking for a breach from outside—but it wasn’t.
His heart started pounding a million miles per hour as he realized with horror that the modification had come from within. Something had been changed.
Old fear started to creep inside his head of the last time someone had gotten past his perimeter.
A cold January day and salted ice had led to near catastrophe, and if Scar hadn’t moved as quickly as he did, Tally could have ended up in the freezing water.
Any of the club kids could have ended up in the water.
It was a fear that continuously haunted Keys.
What if one of the ol’ ladies had taken her child over to that section of the pond to skate, instead of Scar and Tally using it so Tally could skate without worrying about where the children were?
What if one of the babies had ended up in the water because a loophole in the system had been exploited?
What if Oscar got hurt now because Keys had missed something again?
A quick command locked the apartment and activated the electrified floors.
Another sent a silent alert to the Riley brothers.
None of them would be in the building—there was no reason for them to be.
But miracle upon miracles, it had been poker night the night before at the clubhouse.
At least one of the brothers always stayed for that, usually Thorne, but sometimes Goose, too.
The last message he sent before returning to his hunt was to Ghost.
Fear made Keys’ fingers feel like he was typing through molasses. Who was here? And why? Did it have to do with Lyra? Had they been wrong to trust her? How could someone have gotten inside the building to modify the system? And where?
It took him several precious minutes to follow the trail without tipping them off that he was aware of the breach, but finally, he found it.
A camera on the eastern perimeter was cycling on a three-second loop instead of a live feed.
Whoever was inside his building made it so that a thirty-foot section of the eastern fence was showing him the same empty footage on repeat.
Fuck. For how long? Was that how they’d gotten in or were they already inside when they looped the feed?
His hands went still on the keyboard as his eyes scanned the code before him. He needed to focus. He couldn’t let fear lead him to do something stupid. There was clearly something he missed that was currently being exploited.
He took the time to get his headset on and lock the door behind him.
The walls were as thick as a bank vault’s, but not wanting a heavy door to hinder him on a daily basis, that was simple wood.
As the locks activated, a ballistic steel plate silently lowered in the hollow door that was already held up by reinforced hinges.
She picked up on the first ring.
“Rose,” he spoke quickly. “Someone’s in the building. They’re in the system.”
He heard her moving quickly. He’d left her naked in bed, so the rush of fabric was easily depicted as her getting dressed. Unfortunately for him, he was in simple sweats and bare feet. He had plenty of condoms in here, but no shoes. Go figure.
“How long?”
Keys’ jaw tightened. “Seven minutes, give or take. The apartment’s system is independent,” he reminded her. “I activated it, but only you can control it. Get to Oscar’s room and stay there—”
“I can help!”
“You can help by guarding our son,” Keys snapped, harsher than intended. “I don’t know what’s happening, but you’re safest there.”
“What about you?”
“I’m in the lab, and I’ve notified the club and the Riley brothers.”
There was a slight pause before she begrudgingly said, “Fine. But I swear to God, Keys, if you get yourself killed, I’m bringing you back as a robot with no dick.”
Keys had to stifle a laugh so he didn’t get distracted. “I’ll do my best. Be careful, and if anything feels off, you call me.”
“Same. I don’t have my set up in here, but I’m not helpless.”
“I know, baby.” His fingers never stopped moving on the keyboard. “I love you.”
“Don’t you fucking tell me that like you’re actually saying goodbye,” Rose growled into the phone.
A noise on his comms alerted him to another communication. “I’m not, baby, I swear. But I do have to go.”
“Wait! I was just being a bitch! I’m sorry. I love you, too. Please don’t die!”
“You’re not being a bitch,” he told her with a slight reprimand in his voice. “Take care of our boy.”
“I love that you call him ‘ours’.”
“Rose,” he warned, hearing the alert again.
“I know, I know. Sorry. Please be careful. Don’t worry about us. I’m in his room and I have my gun.”
Keys prayed to Nethys that she didn’t need it.
He hung up before either of them could say anything else and get distracted even more.
Switching to the new connection, he said, “Thorne. Eastern perimeter’s been breached and someone’s in the building.
Camera’s been compromised, roughly ten-minute window.
I have no eyes on that section, unless I make it known we’re aware they’re here. ”
Thorne’s voice came back immediately. “I’m on the move. I was crashing in Poker’s room last night. Got him and Scooby with me. Others are on their way.”
Checking another monitor, Keys said, “Ghost didn’t answer my alert. I’m reaching out to Bulldog and Lucky.”
“I don’t know what was going on last night, but Bear was called away from the game early. He didn’t say why or to where, and I assumed it was to his own home, but maybe the two are related.”
Keys frowned, because he hadn’t gotten any messages from the club. He hoped Tessa was okay, but then again, if it was Ghost who summoned Bear then maybe it was Becks.
“Where are Grimm and Goose?”
“Five minutes out,” came over the comms. It sounded like Goose. There was road noise in the background. “Catch us up. Where are we headed and what’s happening?”
Keys pulled up every feed he had, cycling through them fast, looking for anything else that had been touched.
He found two more that he knew weren’t present minutes ago.
A door sensor on the eastern ground floor entrance showing closed when it might not be, and a motion detector covering the service corridor that had been taken offline entirely.
The entire eastern side of the building was blind.
“Thorne, service corridor, eastern ground floor, now,” Keys instructed. “Goose, Grimm, pick up the pace. I don’t know what the fuck is going on or who is in my fucking building, but I am not happy.”
“We’re nearly there! I just have to—oh fuck! Boss! Boss, you’re not going to like this, but there’s a caravan headed your way! All armored vehicles! What the fuck is happening?!”
Keys pushed his chair over to another keyboard and pulled up the feeds for the entire town. He was still running his system check when the first gunshot rang out.
* * *
The front entrance was hit hard. An armored truck with a battering ram attempted to take down the wall. While the building held, it created a hole big enough for six men to slip through. Another half dozen came into view coming from the east, presumably having egressed through the compromised door.
They all wore black fatigues with balaclavas and assault rifles. But from the way they moved, they were not a team that ran like a well-oiled machine.
Not like the VDMC who met them head-on. Thorne must have taken them up through the underground tunnels, inspired by the secret cellar beneath the clubhouse.
Minutes later Grimm and Goose joined them in the corridor, moving with efficiency.
Though there was still no sign of Bear, Ghost, or Lucky, Bulldog leapt through the opening in the front corridor, followed closely behind by Angel and Cage.
The club would not all be able to come, but those with kids knew the procedure.
The prospects and specific members would guard the women and children.
Chaos was the only word to describe what happened next. As Keys fought to gain control of his system, gunfire rang out like a metallic hailstorm. It was loud and ugly, challenged only by the screams of the wounded.
Fighting his own battle, Keys watched and tried to warn who he could when he could.
His system was treating him like an infection, his own code the white blood cells hunting him down.
The kernel was tampered with, acting like he was the intruder instead of the other way around.
How? Who could have gotten such easy access?
It shouldn’t be possible… Shouldn’t it? His fingers jumped between three keyboards, pulling back access, locking down sections, trying to rebuild faster than the blind spots could appear. If he could just get ahead of it…
Outside, Jigsaw, Starbucks, and Scar engaged a massive group, more men than Keys could accurately count.
Angel must have split off from the others because she was now in the rafters with her rifle.
Scar moved through the mercenaries with an efficiency that had always made Keys simultaneously grateful and unsettled to witness.
Jigsaw was holding the line at the lot’s edge, but another two vehicles rolled up and even more men piled out.
What the fuck was going on? How many were there now? Two dozen? Three? There were too many, and the VDMC was split, and Keys needed more time.
He needed thirty seconds. The packet loss was minimal but it was there, and he was going to use it to turn the tides on this fucker who thought he could best Keys.
“Bulldog! Angel!” he shouted into comms, praying that the man had his earpiece in. If his club brothers forgot their pieces, Keys was going to hot glue them into their ears when they got through this. “Let them in!”
On the monitor, he saw Bulldog pause. “What? Are you mad?”
“Trust me! Let them in.” They wanted inside his building so badly. Keys had every intention of showing them just how poor a decision that was. “Fall back. Get down into the tunnels.” Another glance at his monitors. “Thorne! Secure the east side. Hold there and drive them down Corridor Delta.”
“Delta, copy. We going with Operation Mousetrap?”
Keys continued coding. “Fuck yeah, we are.”
A moment later, Goose let out a loud whistle. “Over here, fuckers! Follow me!”
Keys heard the stomping of boots, but did not look away from what he was doing to watch Goose’s chase. He kept at what he was doing, needing only seconds more to set his own trap.
“Grimm, let’s move! Grimm!”
There was something off in Thorne’s voice that caught Keys’ attention.
Maybe because he’d heard a similar tone from his club brothers for years, the tenor of an older brother who registered something was wrong.
Whatever it was, it made him stop long enough to pull up the corridor feed and look for the brothers.
Grimm had his weapon up. The man in front of him had his hands raised, bleeding from a shoulder wound Grimm or someone else had put there, down on his knees. Clearly, the man had surrendered, and yet Grimm wasn’t moving.
For a moment, Keys thought his monitor had frozen, everything seemed so still—and then the mercenary’s hand moved to his ankle holster.
“Grimm!” Keys shouted into comms.
The shot was no louder than the others, and yet it seemed to permeate through Keys’ headphones like an explosion.
Grimm didn’t even move. He didn’t flinch or go for the gun. He held his position, completely immobile. Stone. His only saving grace was the man’s hastily, sloppy shot. It went wide, completely missing Grimm.
But Goose came around the corner behind Grimm, just as the man pulled the trigger—and Goose went down.