Keaton （Skee）
I don't know what I'm feeling. Normally, that would bother me.
Everything has a cause. A pattern. An explanation that can be pulled apart and examined until it makes sense. Even emotions, despite what Rachel likes to claim, are nothing more than chemical responses to external stimuli.
This should be easy. It isn't.
Maeve is sitting on the edge of the bed with the green sweater pressed against her chest, running her fingers over one frayed cuff as though she's making sure it's real.
Every few seconds, she reaches into the box and pulls out something else, and each time she does, another piece of the woman I've been watching for months seems to come back to life.
A faded black T-shirt makes her laugh. Actually laugh. She holds it up in front of her, shaking her head.
"I wore this until my mother threatened to burn it."
I glance at the cracked lettering across the front. "Your mother sounds violent."
Maeve's eyes lift to mine. "She hated this shirt."
"Still seems like an extreme response."
"It has holes."
"Ventilation."
The laugh comes again, warmer this time, and something in the middle of my chest shifts. I don't know what it is. I don't particularly care. Which might be the most concerning part of all.
Ten minutes ago, the idea of someone hurting her had sent something so dark and violent through me that I'd touched her without permission. I'd put my hands on her face and said words I hadn't taken the time to analyze first, which is a mistake I don't make.
Ever.
Now I'm sitting across from her, watching her bury her face in an old sweater, and somehow the anger is being pushed aside by something else entirely.
Something warm. Unfamiliar. Inconvenient. I should probably analyze that. Instead, I watch her.
Maeve pulls another shirt from the box and runs her hand over the fabric. Her movements have changed since she opened it. They're softer now. Less hesitant.
For months, I've watched her move through that house as though she were slowly learning to take up less space. She'd started walking more quietly. Sitting more carefully. Laughing less. At some point, she'd stopped dancing in the kitchen while she made coffee.
I noticed because I notice everything. At least, that's what I'd told myself. Now I wonder if that was ever true.
Maybe I noticed because it was her.
"This one was my favorite."
Her voice pulls me out of my thoughts.
She's holding up a dark sweatshirt that looks like it has survived at least one natural disaster.
I study it. "Why?"
She looks offended. "Because it's comfortable."
"It appears to be disintegrating."
"That means it's broken in."
"That's not how fabric works."
"That's exactly how fabric works."
"I don't think it is."
She narrows her eyes at me. I stare back. A smile slowly spreads across her face. And there it is again.
That feeling.
I lean forward, resting my forearms on my thighs as I watch her fold the sweatshirt carefully and place it beside her.
I rescued most of the clothes in that box from trash bags. At the time, I told myself it was evidence. A pattern worth documenting. Ronan was removing pieces of her identity one item at a time, and I needed proof of that.
Which was why I'd dug through bags of garbage. Taken the clothes. Washed them. Folded them. Put them in a box. Then moved the box to my apartment instead of Grayline's evidence storage.
In retrospect, there might have been flaws in my reasoning.
Maeve reaches into the box again. My phone screams. The sharp alarm slices through the quiet room, and Maeve jumps so hard the shirt in her hands falls into her lap.
Shit.
I immediately lift both hands.
"It's okay." Her wide eyes snap to mine. "Sorry. That's my—" I stop. There probably isn't a way to explain that I assign different alert tones based on threat levels without sounding insane. "Phone."
Her eyebrows lift. "Yes. I gathered that."
Right.
I pull it from my pocket and silence the alarm, but the second I see the notification on the screen, the warmth inside me disappears.
BULLET:
They know. Sorry.
That's it. Three words.
I close my eyes. Of course they know.
Bullet would have tried to cover for me, but there are limits to what even he can do when I show up unannounced at a safe house no one is supposed to know exists with the missing wife of a man connected to the Irish mob.
I had a window. Apparently, it just closed. My fingers find my thigh. Tap. Tap. I breathe in slowly through my nose. Hold it. Release. Again. Air fills my lungs, but it does nothing to loosen the pressure building behind my ribs.
I can already see the next several hours. Matt arriving. Matt being angry. Wheels asking questions. Rachel asking worse questions because hers usually involve feelings. Bullet wanting to know how I found his house.
That one, at least, will be fun. None of that is the problem. Maeve is. Not Maeve. What happens to Maeve now.
I should've—
Warm hands settle against my face. Every thought in my head stops.
Completely. I open my eyes. Maeve is standing directly in front of me.
I didn't hear her move. Didn't notice her cross the space between us.
Didn't realize she'd gotten close enough to touch me until her palms were already resting against my cheeks.
My brain, which has successfully processed several million lines of code at once, offers me absolutely nothing useful.
Her hands are warm. That's the first thought. The second is that her left thumb is resting near the corner of my mouth. The third is that I need to stop thinking about where her thumb is. Immediately.
"What's wrong?" Her voice is soft.
I stare up at her. She's touching me exactly the way I touched her. The realization does something strange to my chest. Something I don't have time to examine because her fingers shift slightly against my skin, and suddenly I can't remember why I was panicking in the first place.
This isn't normal. People touch me. Rachel hugs me every time she sees me. Wheels has absolutely no concept of personal space. Sloane once fell asleep with her feet in my lap during a movie and threatened to break my fingers when I tried to move them.
Touch has never bothered me. It's also never felt like this. Maeve's hands don't feel like hands. They feel like...I close my eyes again. I don't know. I fucking hate not knowing. Except I don't hate this. That's the problem.
For one second, I let myself sit there. I feel the warmth of her palms. The slight movement of her thumb against my cheek. The way my pulse has somehow slowed even though Bullet's text should have sent it in the opposite direction. I take another breath. This one comes easier.
When I open my eyes, she's still there. Still watching me. Still waiting.
"My team knows." The words leave me before I consider how little sense they'll make to her.
Her hands still against my face. "Your... team?"
Right. I close my eyes again. Not because of the tapping this time. Because I'm an idiot. When I open them, Maeve has already taken a small step backward, her hands falling from my face.
The loss of her touch is immediate. So is the suspicion slowly replacing the concern in her expression. "What team?"
I stand carefully, making sure not to move too quickly. Less than an hour ago, she'd believed I worked for Ronan. Before that, she'd known me as nothing more than words appearing on her phone and a person who could somehow reach into her life without ever being seen.
Apparently, my team knows where I took you isn't the reassuring statement I'd intended it to be.
"I work with three other men."
Her eyes narrow. "Doing what?"
"Depends on the day."
"That is not an answer."
"It's the most accurate answer."
"Taibhse." The warning in her voice almost makes me smile.
Almost. Because she has no idea what she's just done to me.
I've read that name thousands of times. Watched it appear in message threads.
Heard her whisper it into the bathroom microphone when she thought I might never hear her voice again.
Something tightens beneath my ribs. I ignore it.
Mostly because I don't have the first fucking clue what to do with it.
"We handle problems," I tell her.
Maeve stares at me. I wait. Her eyebrows rise. "That's somehow worse."
"Is it?"
"Yes." She folds her arms across her chest. "You do realize that sounds like something a serial killer would say."
"We don't kill people." Her eyes widen. "Usually."
"Taibhse."
"That was a joke."
"Was it?"
I consider it. "Mostly."
She makes a sound somewhere between a laugh and a groan before pressing her fingers against her forehead.
For one brief second, the panic that had been crawling through me eases.
Then I remember Bullet's text. They know.
Matt knows. Which means my window for figuring out how to explain any of this before they arrive is probably measured in minutes instead of hours.
Maeve lowers her hand. "How many people know I'm here?"
The humor leaves the room. I look at her. "At the moment?"
"Why would you phrase it like that?"
"Because the number is increasing." Her lips part. I immediately regret the answer. "Four," I add.
"Four people know you took me?"
"Three of them know now. One of them knew I needed this house."
Her expression shifts. She looks around the bedroom as though she's only just remembered we're standing in a strange place in the middle of nowhere.
"Whose house is it?"
"Bullet's."
Silence. Her eyes slowly return to mine. "Is that a name?"
"Technically, it's a nickname."
"Of course it is."
The resignation in her voice nearly makes me smile again. She points toward me. "And you're Taibhse."
"To you."
Her hand drops. I watch the question form before she asks it. "What's your actual name?"
There it is. A simple question. One I've answered thousands of times without thought. But standing here, with Maeve watching me and waiting for another piece of the person behind the screen, it doesn't feel simple.
"Keaton."
She repeats it softly. "Keaton."
My name has never sounded like that before. I decide immediately that this is information I don't need to analyze right now.
"Keaton," she says again, more firmly this time. "Who are you?"
That's a much harder question. I drag a hand over the back of my neck and glance toward the window, half expecting headlights to appear at any second.
"My team and I work for a private security company."
"What kind of security?"
"The complicated kind." She gives me a look. I sigh. "We find people who don't want to be found. We get people out of places they don't want to be. We gather information. Protection. Surveillance. Other things."
Her gaze sharpens at that word. "Surveillance."
I nod.
"And you've been surveilling Ronan."
"Yes."
"For how long?"
"Several weeks."
Her face changes. Not fear exactly. Something more fragile. "And me?"
The question is quiet enough that I almost wish she'd yelled it. I don't want to lie to her. "Yes."
She looks away.
My stomach twists. "Maeve—"
"Was I the job?"
Fuck. There are questions that have easy answers. That isn't one of them. Because she was. At first. She was a name connected to Ronan Gallagher. A face on a file. A potential source of information I needed to understand before I could figure out what Ronan was doing.
Then she'd cried over a missing sweatshirt.
Then she'd asked for her father. Then she'd laughed at my terrible answers and told me things about herself no surveillance file could ever contain.
And somewhere along the way, Maeve Gallagher had stopped being anything I could define with a mission parameter.
"At first," I tell her. Her eyes close. "But not for long." She looks back at me.
"Then what was I?"
I don't know how to answer that without saying too much.
I don't know how to tell her that for the last seventy-three hours, she was the only thing I could think about.
That I had ignored every order, every rule, and every logical part of my brain because she'd whispered goodbye into a microphone and something inside me had snapped.
So I give her the only truth I understand. "Someone I needed to get out."
Her lips part slightly. Before she can answer, my phone vibrates again. I don't need to look. They're coming. I can feel it. Maeve watches me reach for the phone, but I don't open the message this time.
"Are you in trouble?"
I let out a slow breath. "Almost certainly."
"Because of me?"
"No." The answer comes so quickly she blinks.
I shake my head. "Because of me. You didn't do anything."
Her gaze stays on mine. "What happens now?"
That's the question, isn't it? I had planned the extraction. The route. The vehicle. The safe location. Backup locations if Bullet's property was compromised. What I hadn't planned was this.
Maeve standing barefoot beside a bed covered in pieces of the life someone had tried to take from her. Maeve touching my face and somehow making the entire world go quiet. Maeve asking me what happens next as if I have any idea.
Before I can answer, headlights sweep across the bedroom wall. My phone vibrates again. Then again. Maeve's eyes jump toward the window. I stand and move between her and the door without thinking.
Her gaze catches the movement. "Your team?"
"Probably."
"Probably?"
I look toward the hallway as a car door slams outside. Then another. And another. I calculate the number. At least three. Maybe four.
Shit.
Maeve steps closer to me. Not away from me. Closer.
"Keaton?"
There goes my name again. I'm going to have to do something about the way that affects me. Later. Assuming Matt doesn't kill me first. I look down at her.
"My team knows we're here."
Her eyes widen as voices carry faintly from outside. "And they're coming in?"
"Yes."
"Are they angry?"
I consider lying. I hear Wheels shout something unintelligible from the front porch, followed immediately by Matt telling him to shut the fuck up.
"No," I say. Maeve stares at me.
I let out a long sigh before I tell her the truth. "Very."