6. Keaton （Skee）
Keaton (Skee)
Getting inside the Gallagher estate turns out to be embarrassingly easy.
Honestly, it irritates me a little.
I expected resistance. Additional verification. Maybe at minimum someone competent enough to question why the emergency security contractor showing up to repair a catastrophic systems failure looked more like he hadn’t slept in three days than an actual corporate technician.
Instead, the second I step through the front doors carrying a black tool case and a tablet, everyone starts treating me like I belong there.
Humans are deeply disappointing creatures.
Declan Murphy—the head of Gallagher security—meets me in the foyer already sweating through the collar of his dress shirt despite the cold rain outside. Mid-forties. Former contractor. The kind of man who mistakes volume for authority and expensive security systems for actual intelligence.
He shakes my hand too hard while explaining the failures from last night in increasingly irritated circles as we move through the main hall.
“Every interior feed started looping around twelve-thirteen,” he says while motioning toward one of the wall panels. “Then we started getting motion desyncs, lock failures, alert delays. We need to know if someone breached the system.”
Someone definitely did.
I hum thoughtfully while crouching beside the first exposed panel, glasses slipping slightly lower down my nose as I pretend to examine hardware manually.
Meanwhile, three hidden windows run silently across my tablet screen.
One maps the estate network in real time. One monitors internal security chatter. One keeps a live feed on Murphy’s private phone communications because apparently the man uses the same password format for everything like a complete psychopath.
I almost respect the confidence.
“Cloud redundancy?” I ask casually while reconnecting wires I personally broke eight hours ago.
“Dual redundancy.”
“Local mirror backup?”
“Yeah.”
“Mm.”
The estate security system spreads through the house like veins beneath skin, every hallway and doorway feeding back into a centralized monitoring hub downstairs. Expensive setup. Sophisticated enough to impress rich men who think throwing money at technology automatically makes them protected.
Unfortunately for them, every system still has a human being behind it eventually.
And human beings are almost always the weak point.
Murphy continues walking me room to room while I map camera placement, access points, and internal blind spots in my head. By the time we reach the second floor, I already know more about the Gallagher estate than half the men currently employed to protect it.
That’s usually the part where I start getting bored. Except the farther upstairs we go, the worse the camera placement becomes. Not sloppy. Intentional.
Main hallway. Secondary hall. Library staircase. Upper landing.
Too many cameras. Far too many interior sightlines for a house supposedly protecting against external threats.
My attention stays carefully neutral while Murphy keeps talking, but something colder starts pooling low in my stomach with every step deeper into the second floor.
Because exterior protection makes sense. Tracking movement inside your own house does not.
“These all recent installs?” I ask while crouching beside another panel near the west hallway.
Murphy glances up from his phone distractedly. “Mr. Gallagher expanded interior coverage after the wedding.”
Wedding. Not break-in. Not threat escalation. Not attempted hit. Wedding.
My fingers still briefly against the wiring beneath the panel.
Interesting. Very fucking interesting.
“How long ago was that?” I ask without looking up.
“Six months.”
The exact same amount of time Maeve Gallagher has been living inside this house. The realization lands quietly, but hard enough that my jaw tightens before I can stop it. I keep my expression blank anyway while reconnecting the panel.
“Reasonable expansion,” I murmur.
Murphy nods, relieved I’m validating his employer instead of questioning him further.
That alone tells me more than he probably realizes. People stop examining things too closely once they’ve accepted them as normal. That’s how systems like this happen in the first place.
We continue deeper into the upstairs wing while I catalog every surveillance angle. Most cameras cover broad movement patterns.
Except several don’t. Several are angled specifically toward transitions between rooms Toward hallway intersections. Toward private doors. Toward movement itself.
Tracking. Not security. The distinction matters more than most people understand. A camera facing outward protects a home. A camera facing inward controls it.
My eyes drift briefly toward the upstairs guest hallway.
And stops cold. No camera. The absence stands out so sharply it might as well be glowing. Every surrounding hallway has surveillance coverage except the guest bathroom near the library.
One blind spot. One untouched pocket of privacy sitting in the middle of a monitored house. The exact same room Maeve disappears into almost every night.
Something unsettled moves low in my chest. Not anger exactly. Recognition. Because I understand why she goes there. Not for secrecy. For silence. For one room where the walls don’t watch her back.
I straighten slowly while Murphy answers a radio call farther down the hall, my mind already working through possibilities faster than I can slow them down.
I need inside that room. Preferably alone.
“I need a restroom,” I say casually.
Murphy gestures toward the master suite. “Bathroom’s through there.”
I start walking without hesitation. Then hear footsteps following behind me.
An escort. Cute.
Before I reach the master bedroom door, one of the younger guards steps awkwardly in front of me. Mid-twenties maybe. Former military judging by posture alone, though still green enough that he hasn’t learned how to hide nerves properly yet.
“Uh—not that one, sir.”
I glance at him over the top of my glasses. The poor bastard visibly swallows.
“Mr. Gallagher prefers nobody use the master suite bathroom,” he explains quickly before motioning toward the guest wing instead. “You can use the guest bath here.”
And there it is. I have to bite the inside of my cheek hard enough to stop the smile threatening to break loose. Because this kid just redirected me straight toward the only room in the house I actually wanted access to.
God, I love incompetence.
“Appreciate it,” I tell him evenly, giving him a small salute as I turn on my heels.
Then I step inside the guest bathroom and lock the door behind me. The silence hits. No faint electronic hum. No motion sensors clicking alive. No tiny blinking green lights tucked into corners.
Nothing.
For the first time since entering this house, it actually feels empty in here. I stand still for one second longer than necessary, understanding with uncomfortable clarity why Maeve keeps retreating into this room over and over again.
Because this is the only place in the estate where she can exist without being observed. The realization settles heavily beneath my ribs while rain taps softly against the bathroom window.
Not my business, I remind myself automatically. The thought sounds weaker every time now.
I crouch beside the sink instead, opening the hidden compartment inside my tool case and pulling out the microphone carefully between my fingers. Small enough to disappear beneath plumbing hardware. Audio only.
No camera. Even thinking about installing one makes something in my chest recoil sharply.
Thirty seconds later the microphone sits hidden beneath the sink hardware, nearly impossible to detect unless someone physically dismantles the pipes beneath the vanity.
Perfect placement. I reconnect the panel while my mind runs through the logic anyway.
Audio gives me: conversations, emotional state, escalation, patterns. Enough to know if things get worse.
Not enough to steal the tiny scraps of privacy she still has left.
Because despite everything currently wrong with my brain—some part of me still understands certain lines matter.
I’m reconnecting the secondary hallway panel when the estate gates open unexpectedly.
My attention flicks toward the security feed running silently across the tablet balanced beside my knee. SUV approaching. Earlier than scheduled based on the movement logs I intercepted this morning.
Interesting.
Murphy notices it too. “Mrs. Gallagher’s back already.”
Something strange pulls tight behind my sternum at the words. Not anticipation exactly. More like…awareness. Like my brain suddenly shifts priorities without asking permission first.
I tell myself it’s because I’ve spent over a week watching surveillance footage of this woman and finally seeing someone in person after that long would naturally feel disorienting.
That explanation seems reasonable enough. Still, my fingers stop moving over the wiring entirely as the front door opens.
And then there she is. For one brief second my brain genuinely fails to process what it’s looking at. Not because she’s beautiful. I already knew she was beautiful.
I’ve seen her through dozens of camera angles at this point. Charity galas. Hallways. Grainy nighttime footage from the upstairs landing while she wandered the estate unable to sleep. I know exactly what Maeve Gallagher looks like.
But cameras flatten people. Real life doesn’t. Real life has movement and warmth and presence. Real life has rain catching in dark auburn hair while she steps from the SUV looking distracted and elegant and tired in a way most people would never notice unless they were specifically looking for it.
Unfortunately for both of us—I am specifically looking for it.
The security guard says something beside me that I don’t hear. Because the second Maeve looks up and our eyes meet, something in my chest shifts hard enough to physically throw me off balance for half a second. Not lust. Not obsession. Not anything clean enough to label immediately.
Just…recognition.
The kind that feels deeply inconvenient. My pulse stumbles once against my ribs while she freezes near the entrance beneath the rain-darkened light spilling through the open doorway. And Christ. The surveillance footage did not prepare me for her eyes.
They’re sharper in person. More expressive. You can actually see the intelligence moving behind them in real time, hidden beneath all that careful composure she wears around everyone else.
For one impossible second, it genuinely feels like she looks directly into me instead of at me.
Which makes absolutely no sense. She doesn’t know me. Technically, we’ve never met. Still, something about the moment lands strangely deep beneath my skin anyway.
I become abruptly and painfully aware of the fact that I know things about this woman.
Not invasive things. Not private things.
Patterns. The way she smooths her expression before answering Ronan.
The way she exhales when entering unwatched rooms. The difference between her real smile and the polite public versions.
The fact that she touches the ring on her right hand whenever she’s anxious.
And standing here now, seeing her in person for the first time while all those observations sit in my head, feels unexpectedly intimate in a way I absolutely did not prepare for.
That’s…probably unhealthy.
Mental note: ask Rachel later if this is what emotional attachment feels like or if I’m developing some kind of neurological condition.
Honestly could go either way.
Maeve’s gaze catches on me fully now, and I watch the exact second she realizes I’m not part of the regular staff. Tiny pause. Tiny shift. Her breathing changes almost imperceptibly.
Interesting.
Then something else flickers across her expression so quickly most people would miss it. Recognition. Not actual recognition. Instinctive recognition. Like some part of her notices me too. The thought settles low and dangerous beneath my ribs before I can stop it.
Absolutely not.
I drag my attention back toward the open panel beside me, forcing my fingers to resume reconnecting wires even while awareness of her stays sharp in the edges of my mind.
Focus.
You are here because Ronan Gallagher is potentially controlling and surveilling his wife because of external threats her father is worried about. You are not here to psychoanalyze why making eye contact with Maeve Gallagher suddenly feels like someone rewired part of your nervous system.
Important distinction.
Behind me, I hear her footsteps cross the foyer slowly before disappearing toward the staircase. I wait exactly three seconds before looking up again.
She glances back at the same moment.