Chapter Twenty
Elise
It was go time.
I had spent the hours away from Brady quietly making sure the old fringe house would be the perfect test. No one at the compound knew I had routed a temporary test instance of our newest security prototype here.
Retinal scanner. Keypad with layered fail-safes.
Silent alerts. The whole works. I had personally verified every line of code and every mechanical interlock.
If Brady was anything more than the optimistic, people-first guy he appeared to be, he would reveal it during the test. And then I would know.
The house looked abandoned. Overgrown yard, peeling paint, windows filmed with years of dust. Perfect. Just as I had described it.
“See?” Brady said, eyes bright as we reached the front porch. “Your instincts were spot on. This place has that ‘nobody has been here in decades’ vibe, but somehow feels important.”
I gave him a small nod and stayed back a step while he approached the door. My pulse stayed steady. I knew what was coming.
The panel was discreet but unmistakable once you looked for it. There was a sleek keypad set into the wood, with a small iris scanner mounted just above the handle like an afterthought. Brady let out a low whistle.
“Fancy for an old house,” he said. “You were right about the high-tech part.”
He rolled his shoulders like a kid about to try a new video game and started tapping numbers. No hesitation, no tools, just pure Brady optimism.
First try: 1981. The panel blinked red. “Year ‘Don’t Stop Believin’ ’ came out,” he explained with a grin. “Seemed worth a shot.”
Second try: 5723. Red again. “KRAFT on an old phone keypad,” he said, laughing at himself. “Long shot, but the mac and cheese thing stuck with me.”
I felt a little bad for him. Three strikes and the system would lock down, send the alert, and we would be standing here while nothing happened except my quiet relief that he was exactly who he seemed.
He punched in one more set of numbers.
The lock clicked.
The door swung open on silent hinges.
No alarm. No secondary lockdown. Just a soft green light on the panel and cool, stale air drifting out.
Impossible.
I had run the test sequence myself. There was no access code.
The door shouldn’t have opened. I knew the rate limiter, the biometric rejection protocol, the motion sensors that should have flooded the interior with silent notifications the second an unauthorized entry occurred.
My mind raced through every fail-safe I had personally double-checked. None of them had engaged.
Brady looked more stunned than I felt. He actually took a half-step back. “Well. That worked.”
That should have reassured me.
If he was surprised, he hadn’t known the answer.
Except surprise didn’t explain how he’d bypassed my system.
I forced a neutral tone. “Apparently.”
He glanced at me, eyebrows raised, a playful glint in his eye. “Did you expect me to fail spectacularly?”
I smiled despite myself. “I was hedging my bets.”
He grinned and held the door open with exaggerated gallantry. “After you, partner.”
The teasing tone did something dangerous to my stomach. I stepped inside before he could see it on my face.
The house was mostly empty. Dust motes floated in the slanted afternoon light. A few books still lined the shelves in the front room. Old framed stock photos hung crooked on the walls. Dad and I had chosen them randomly back when we’d used the place.
Brady moved through the space like he knew the follow-up systems had been disabled.
How was that possible?
He walked around, assessing each room. “Secretive people are funny,” he said, as he pulled a book off the shelf and flipped through it.
“They don’t hide things in secret rooms. They hide them in full view because they figure anyone smart enough to look will overthink it and miss the obvious.
” He slid the book back and tilted the next frame on the wall, checking behind it with exaggerated spy-movie care.
“Like here. There should be a safe behind this photo.” Nothing.
He grinned at me anyway, completely unbothered. “Still fun to check.”
Fun? I could not help it. I laughed.
He moved to the next room, tapping walls like he was listening for hollow spots, narrating in a ridiculous low voice. “If I were paranoid, where would I stash my old college secrets . . .?”
Every time he glanced over to make sure I was still there, warmth spread through my chest that had nothing to do with the desert heat outside.
He wasn’t performing for himself.
He was performing for me.
Making sure I was enjoying myself had somehow become part of his objective function. He was ridiculous. And that confused me.
We reached the back study. An old wooden desk dominated the room, beautiful joinery, clearly custom-made.
Brady dropped into the chair behind it and ran his hands along the edges like he was greeting an old friend.
“A skilled carpenter built this. He knew what he was doing,” he murmured.
“Solid. No cheap shortcuts.” He felt under the desktop, then along the legs.
His fingers paused at a small knot in the wood grain on the right front leg.
“See this?” he said, looking up at me. “Looks natural, right? But the grain around it is just a hair off. Like someone carved it after the desk was finished.”
He was paying attention to an irrelevant detail. I’d seen the blueprint for this desk. It included a fingerprint scanner that was embedded in the top drawer pull. That was where anything important would be kept and it had been calibrated to only work for my father’s fingerprints.
Brady pressed the knot once, twice, then a third time in a slow, deliberate sequence. A soft mechanical click came from inside the desk. The false bottom of the center drawer lifted half an inch. He looked up at me, genuinely surprised again. “No way. I can’t believe that worked.”
I stared. My pulse hammered in my ears.
Brady eased the drawer open the rest of the way, completely bypassing the security system. Inside lay a single manila envelope, yellowed with age.
He lifted it carefully and slid out the contents.
An old photograph.
Three young men on a tennis court, arms around each other’s shoulders, laughing.
Gabe Holliston, Cody Burke, and my father.
On the back, in handwriting I recognized from the yearbooks, someone had written: Krafty and the boys after we finally beat the engineers. Don’t stop believin’.
Brady let out a soft laugh. “There he is again. Krafty.”
But there was more in the envelope. A few loose sheets of notebook paper, edges frayed, covered in different handwriting styles that had clearly been passed back and forth.
Brady spread them across the desk so we could both see.
I scanned the pages quickly.
Sketches. Bullet points. Dream notes more than plans.
Phase One – Cody builds the core tech. Gabe secures funding. I handle the connections. We own the valley.
We’re going to change everything. No more working for someone else’s dream.
Rule Silicon Valley or die trying.
The handwriting shifted between the three of them, casual and excited, full of inside jokes and half-formed ideas.
Nothing specific enough to identify the actual project.
Just three young men who believed they were unstoppable together.
Brady’s finger traced one line. “Look at this. They really thought they were going to take over the world.” His voice held that same warmth he brought to everything. “Makes you wonder what happened.”
I stared at my father’s handwriting. It was confident, slightly slanted, exactly the same as the notes he still left on the kitchen counter at the compound.
Why would he keep this?
The question lodged in my chest like a splinter.
If the friendship had ended so badly that thirty years later no one spoke the names aloud, why hold on to these pages?
Why hide them here instead of burning them?
Brady looked up at me, eyes bright. “This is exactly the kind of thing I was hoping we’d find. Not answers, maybe, but proof they were working on something that mattered. Something went wrong, but Thomas cared enough to keep this. That means there’s still a way to fix it.”
He reached over and gave my hand a gentle squeeze, completely unaware of the storm happening inside my head. “I could not have done any of this without you, Elise.”
I swallowed hard.
The envelope.
The photograph.
The notes.
The impossible way he had walked through every layer of security I had personally designed.
Why hadn’t he failed?
And who is he?
The worst part was that I believed he really wanted the best for my father.
I hated that he thought we were solving this together.
And that I wasn’t entirely sure we weren’t.
And that scared me more than any security system ever could.