Chapter 6 Gage
SIX
GAGE
The office is too quiet.
Not the peaceful kind of quiet—this is the heavy, suffocating kind that means everyone’s pretending not to look at the same thing. The same video. The same goddamn lie.
River isn’t here yet. Her desk sits empty, a mug still half full of yesterday’s coffee.
Her cardigan hangs off the back of her chair, sleeve draped across the seat like she just stepped away for a second.
But she hasn’t been back since she bolted yesterday afternoon, and the whole place hums with the gossip she left behind.
I want to throw something.
I want to find whoever made that deepfake and delete them from existence, line of code by fucking line of code.
Instead, I sit still, pretending to scroll through game logs while my headset crackles with voices.
Arrow: “Trap’s live. The bait server’s mirroring the Cathedral feed. We’re just waiting for a hit.”
Knight: “He’ll bite. They always bite when they think they’ve got something to gloat about.”
Ozzy: “Still can’t believe HR’s doing nothing. If that video had my face on it, I’d torch the building.”
I clench my jaw. “Focus.”
Render: “Got it. Monitoring shadow IPs. One just pinged from NovaPlay’s subnet—internal connection.”
And there it is. The bastard can’t help himself.
The plan’s simple: we’ve built a mock dev server that looks like the company’s testing environment. I coded it myself—complete with fake error logs, user names, and a mirrored folder titled Cry.exe. Inside is a compressed “interview” file that leads straight to a dummy backdoor.
Anyone trying to download it gets tagged, traced, and silently logged before the server collapses into a lovely little cascade that wipes their hard drive instead. Digital karma.
Ozzy calls it poetic justice. I call it foreplay.
Knight: “He’s opening the file. Hook confirmed.”
Arrow: “Tracer’s clean. IP resolves to Mason’s terminal.”
My grip tightens on the mouse. “You’re sure?”
Arrow: “Positive. He’s logged in under his own credentials. That’s his mistake. Overconfidence.”
The room blurs for a second. Mason. That smirking prick. He’s been circling River for months—hovering in doorways, dropping those backhanded compliments. ‘You’re really good for a diversity hire.’ ‘Don’t stress, Quinn. The men don’t bite—hard.’
Now he’s gone and made her a punchline.
“Take him down,” I say, my voice rougher than I intend. “I want everything. IP logs, data pulls, browser history—anything that ties him to this.”
Arrow: “Already done. Trap’s closing.”
I watch the code stream across my secondary monitor. Mason’s machine fights back for a second, sending frantic pings to backup servers. But the script’s too fast, too precise. Cry.exe detonates cleanly, leaving a trail of breadcrumbs right to Cathedral’s admin logs.
Knight: “He’s locked out. Local IT’s gonna think it’s a hardware failure.”
Ozzy: “And Cathedral just booted his user. Account terminated. That’s one troll down.”
Render: “You want me to celebrate with a meme?”
Arrow: “Not yet. We’re still tracking where he got the footage in the first place.”
I lean back, exhaling slowly. It’s not enough. Nothing will ever feel like enough when I can still see the look on River’s face in my head—shocked, pale, humiliated. She looked like she wanted to crawl out of her own skin.
And she doesn’t even know she’s safe because of us. Because of me.
I minimize the window just as the front door opens. The noise of the office swells—keyboards, whispers, nervous laughter.
River walks in.
Her chin’s high, but I can see the exhaustion written in her shoulders. Her eyes are shadowed from no sleep, lips pressed tight like she’s holding herself together with sheer willpower. She’s wearing black again—her armor.
My chest loosens a fraction seeing her here. Alive. Breathing. Trying.
She heads straight for her desk. Everyone’s pretending not to stare. I want to fucking punch every single one of them.
I push away from my monitor and stand, forcing my tone into something neutral. “Hey.”
Her gaze flicks to me. Defensive. Wary. “Don’t.”
I stop mid-step. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t say you’re sorry. Or that people are awful. Or that it’s not a big deal. I can’t handle sympathy right now.”
“I wasn’t going to.”
Lie. I absolutely was.
She narrows her eyes. “Then what?”
I search for something—anything—to keep her here, talking. “Wanted to make sure you got home okay.”
“I did.” She sits down, opens her laptop. The tremor in her fingers betrays her. “I stayed at Tasha’s.”
Good. Safer than being alone.
“You should’ve called me,” I say before I can stop myself.
Her laugh is sharp, bitter. “Oh, sure. Let me just call the guy who steals my coffee and argues about semicolons.”
“I’d answer.”
“I bet you would.”
She’s trying to be flippant, but the cracks are there. I can hear them.
Before I can come up with something smart—something that doesn’t sound like please trust me—her phone buzzes. She freezes, glances down. Color drains from her face.
“What?” I ask.
She swallows hard. “It’s trending again.”
I move closer, ignoring her glare. On her screen, the fake interview is back on social feeds—different caption, same poison. It’s got over thirty thousand views.
“Jesus Christ,” I breathe. “They’re relentless.”
“Yeah.” Her voice shakes. “Guess I make good clickbait.”
“River—”
“I’m fine.”
She’s not fine. She’s breaking in real time.
I want to tell her we caught one. That Mason’s finished, his system fried, his Cathedral buddies scattering like rats. But that would mean admitting what I am. Who I am.
So I stand there and do the one thing I can do without revealing everything—I reach out and gently nudge a coffee mug toward her.
“Drink,” I say softly. “You’ll need it.”
Her eyes flick to mine, uncertain. She picks up the cup, takes a small sip. Her hand steadies a little.
Small victories.
Arrow’s voice buzzes quietly in my earpiece. “Mission complete. Mason’s fired. HR just pulled his access. He’s out.”
I can’t help the grim smile that touches my mouth. “Fuck yeah.”
River catches the expression. “What?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
“Gage.”
I meet her eyes. For a moment, it’s like the room falls away. There’s only her—angry, beautiful, hurt—and me, trying not to do something stupid like tell her everything.
“Whatever happens,” I say, careful, low, “you’re not alone in this.”
She looks at me for a beat too long, then back to her screen. “I know.”
No, she doesn’t.
That night, I watch her again—because I can’t not. She walks home with her hood up, earbuds in, the city lights painting gold across her hair. She keeps her head down until she turns the corner by the old bakery.
She doesn’t look back, but I do. I follow the GPS ping Arrow set up on the background sweep, making sure no new threats are tailing her.
When she finally disappears into her building, I stay parked across the street for a few extra minutes, just watching the glow of her window. She moves inside—small, tired motions. Then the light turns off.
Arrow texts.
ARROW: She's safe. Go home.
I type back.
ME: Not yet.
Because I can’t shake the thought: she doesn’t even know someone’s fighting for her.
She doesn’t know I’m the one who put Mason on his knees.
She doesn’t know I’d burn the world before I let her cry again.
And maybe that’s for the best.
Because if she ever looked at me that way… she’d never forgive me for all the ways I’ve already crossed the line.
“She’s being watched again.”
Knight drops the tablet on the folding table between us, screen facing up. A fresh post from Cathedral’s underground board is still glowing, timestamped six minutes ago. The image? River’s apartment building. Different angle. Different distance.
Same target.
I knew this would happen.
I just didn’t think it’d happen so fast.
Arrow scrubs a hand over his jaw and exhales slowly. “That’s the second pic in twenty-four hours.”
Knight pulls up another. “This one was from earlier. Caught her on the sidewalk. Walking home, hoodie up, headphones in. Same time stamp as the post.”
I try not to show it, but my fists curl.
“She’s not safe,” I say, flatly. “Not there. Not anymore.”
“Yeah,” Knight says, stretching his legs out in front of him, boot knocking into mine. “Which means it’s time.”
Arrow nods. “We move her.”
I exhale, already picturing it. The only place that makes sense—the one place we know is dark, disconnected, and damn near invisible.
Riverside.
A squat concrete building on the edge of the city, nestled between an abandoned factory and a busted-out strip mall that hasn't seen a tenant since dial-up. It used to be a print shop. We turned it into our mission control when we were tracking Arby Kate’s killers.
Barebones, but secure. Steel door. No windows on the first floor.
Secondary locks. Scram toggles. Mesh wifi. Soundproofed main room.
And no one but us knows it exists.
Knight’s already grabbing his coat. “We’ll take my truck. I’ve got the mattress still rolled in the back.”
Arrow tosses me the spare keys. “Let’s go set it up.”
The ride is quiet. Focused. Familiar.
We pull up to Riverside just before dark. The parking lot’s cracked and half-swallowed by weeds. The building is exactly as we left it: ugly, fortified, perfect.
Knight’s truck backs up to the loading door, and the three of us haul in the twin mattress, a couple of spare chairs, and a few crates of supplies. Arrow pulls the plastic off the cots and sets one up in the far corner, where the old blackout curtains are still taped in place.
“She’s going to hate this,” Knight says, unfolding a blue blanket with cute cupcake designs all over it. The saying ‘A cupcake a day keeps the blues away’ is scrawled across the top.
“She’s going to be alive,” I shoot back.
I walk to the corner, where the walls meet in a half-finished L of drywall and exposed brick. There’s an old cork board there with Arby Kate’s case photos still pinned like scars. I take them down, one by one, and carefully store them in a labeled box.
Then I start fresh.
New cork board. New mission.
River Quinn. Protect at all costs.
Arrow tosses me a fresh set of linens. “She needs to feel like it’s hers, not a bunker.”
“Right,” I nod, adjusting the small table we brought in. “We’ll make it comfortable.”
Knight snorts. “Define comfortable.”
“She likes lavender,” I say, before I can stop myself.
Both of them pause.
Arrow grins. “You would know that.”
Knight tilts his head, curious. “So… how deep are you in?”
I freeze.
Knight presses. “You’re watching her around the clock. You set up fake accounts just to reroute her search history away from trackers. You gave her the good coffee beans. And now you’re furnishing a safe house like you’re trying to impress her mother.”
“I’m not—”
Arrow cuts in gently. “You love her.”
I don’t answer.
Because I don’t have to.
The truth is already in the room, thick as smoke.
Knight raises a brow. “Damn. So it’s like that?”
“Yeah,” I say quietly. “It’s like that.”
They don’t tease me. Not this time.
I sit on the edge of the new bed, staring down at my hands. “I can’t tell her. Not yet. She trusts Mask. But she doesn’t trust me. Not really. Not enough. If I tell her now, I ruin the one thing keeping her sane.”
Arrow nods. “So you wait.”
“Waiting sucks,” I mutter.
“Falling sucks more,” Knight adds.
Arrow chuckles. “Nah. Once you find the right person… falling is the easy part.”
As if on cue, the door creaks open a few minutes later, and Juno, Arrow’s girlfriend, steps in, wrapped in a big puffer jacket and holding a small lavender plant in a blue ceramic pot.
“It’s not much,” she says, placing it on the shelf by the back window, “but it’s alive. Which is more than I can say for most of the vibes in here.”
Arrow grins and pulls her into a kiss. Soft. Familiar. Full of the kind of history I used to think wasn’t real until I watched them survive hell and walk out the other side.
“Now it feels like home,” he murmurs, forehead pressed to hers.
Juno smiles, then glances at me. “So. River?”
“Yeah,” I say. “We’re moving her in tomorrow. She doesn’t know yet.”
“You gonna tell her?”
I pause. “What? About this place?”
Juno gives me a look.
“Oh,” I say. “That.”
“She’s going to figure it out eventually, Gage.” She glances over at Arrow. “I did when Arrow tried to trick me.”
Arrow acts offended. “It wasn’t trickery, Juno. I was keeping you from doing something far more dangerous.”
Juno rests her dark eyes on me. “She’s gonna find out.”
“I know.”
Juno crosses her arms. “She’s smart. Fierce. But she’s tired of running. Don’t let her think she has to run from you, too.”
That hits harder than I expect.
Arrow brushes a hand down her back. “She’ll come around.”
Knight slaps me on the shoulder. “And until then, we make damn sure no one touches her.”
I nod, slowly, and look around the space we’ve rebuilt from trauma into protection.
The bed is made. The walls are cleared. The light bulb hums gently overhead.
River’s safe house is ready.
Now I just have to convince her to trust it.
To trust me.
Even if I can’t tell her what it’s costing me to keep my distance.
Even if I’m already falling.
Hard.
Silently.
And praying I don’t hit the ground alone.