Peak
Beside him, Maeve sat with Wren's coded strip unfolded on her lap. Every few minutes she'd glance toward the marshes rolling past the truck window before looking back down at the paper as if willing another clue to appear. The answer was there; she just hadn't seen it yet.
Warden broke the silence from the back seat. "Are we there yet?"
"Ten more minutes,” Maeve said, smiling back at Warden.
"You sure?" Warden asked.
Peak glanced in the rearview mirror. "No, I have no idea how much longer it’s going to take.”
"I hate that answer,” Warden said as he sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. Peak looked him over in the rearview and laughed. His club’s big, bad enforcer looked like a petulant child who didn’t get his way.
The Eastern Shore slowly woke around them as watermen backed trailers toward the docks.
Pickup trucks filled with crab pots rolled onto narrow county roads.
A school bus stopped beside a mailbox as the first streaks of sunlight pushed through the clouds.
To everyone else, it looked like another ordinary Maryland morning.
Peak wondered how many people drove on these roads every day without realizing one of the largest trafficking operations on the East Coast might be operating beneath their feet.
The Director had chosen well. The best hiding places weren't abandoned islands or underground bunkers.
They were ordinary places people stopped noticing years ago.
Maeve suddenly sat forward. "Stop."
Peak hit the brakes, and the truck rolled onto the shoulder of the road. "What’s wrong?"
She pointed across the marsh. "There." Peak followed her finger and saw an old Coast Guard navigation tower that stood half-hidden among tall reeds. Its white paint had peeled away decades ago. Power lines stretched toward it from inland.
"What about it?" he asked. Maeve didn't answer immediately. Instead, she unfolded Wren's note again and read it aloud. “Tide Before Dawn.” Then, she looked back at the tower. "Peak, I know that tower."
He frowned. "You do?"
"Wren and I used to come out here." She smiled sadly. "We'd skip class and eat lunch on the rocks." Peak couldn't picture Maeve skipping anything. She must have seen the doubt on his face. "I wasn't always responsible."
"I believe you,” he said, smiling at her.
"No, you don't,” she grumbled.
"Not even a little,” he admitted.
The ghost of a laugh escaped her as she opened the truck door. "I'm taking a look."
Peak grabbed her wrist before she climbed out. "What if it's being watched?" She looked down at his hand and then back at him.
"Everything's being watched,” Maeve said.
"I know,” he said.
"Then why are you stopping me?" she asked.
"Because running into another trap isn't on today's schedule,” Peak insisted.
Maeve softened. "I'm not running." She squeezed his fingers once before letting go. "I'm just looking around."
Peak sighed. "I'll go." She opened her mouth to argue, but he beat her to it. "I'm the one with body armor."
She rolled her eyes. "You never fight fair."
"Nope,” he breathed.
The tower sat only a hundred yards from the road.
Peak approached carefully. His old instincts kicked in automatically.
The marsh remained eerily quiet—no birds, no insects.
Just the wind pushing through tall grass, and that bothered him because nature usually made noise.
Unless someone else was nearby. He slowed immediately.
"Peak." Maeve's voice came softly through the Bluetooth earpiece Warden had insisted they wear.
"What?" he breathed.
"Look down." He did, and noticed fresh tire tracks. They weren’t from a truck but from an ATV, and from the looks of them, they were fresh tracks. "They're still damp," Maeve said. "They had to have come through after the rain."
Peak crouched and looked at them closely. There were two vehicles, and the tracks led right to the tower. He smiled grimly. "Good catch,” he said to Maeve.
The old tower's door hung half open. Rust streaked the hinges, and one glance would've convinced anyone it had been abandoned for years, but Peak wasn't anyone. He noticed the fresh scrape marks around the padlock. Somebody had removed it recently.
He drew his pistol. "Warden,” Peak called over the comms.
"Yeah?" Warden said.
"I'm going in."
"I'll cover from here,” Warden promised. Peak stepped inside and noticed that the air smelled of mildew, saltwater, and coffee—fresh coffee. His pulse quickened. Someone had been here recently—very recently.
The interior consisted of one circular room with a rusted ladder leading upward, but nothing else. At least, nothing obvious. Peak walked slowly around the perimeter as he listened for any signs of trouble.
He smiled when he saw what he was looking for. "There you are."
"What did you find?" Maeve asked. Peak knelt beside the wall where he had found a single electrical outlet that was completely out of place for a building with no power.
"No—” He whispered. The outlet plate sat half an inch farther from the wall than it should have. Peak pulled out his multitool. Thirty seconds later, the cover came free. Behind it was a fiber optic cable, and it was active.
Maeve inhaled sharply through the earpiece. "Oh, my God."
Peak nodded. "They're piggybacking off the state network." He followed the cable with his eyes. It disappeared into the concrete floor, not toward the tower.
Peak looked toward the ladder. "No."
Maeve seemed to immediately understand. "What else did you find?"
"This isn't the entrance." He smiled. "It's camouflage."
His phone vibrated with a text from a nearby Bluetooth signal.
Peak frowned. Somebody was broadcasting.
He opened his scanner and found one unidentified device, about eight feet from his current location.
He slowly looked around the room but found nothing.
He noticed that an old metal bookcase was out of place.
He looked it over and reached underneath it.
That was where he found a cheap prepaid cellphone taped to the bottom.
He picked it up, and the screen lit immediately with just one message.
KEEP DIGGING
Peak stared at it. "Wren," Maeve whispered the same word at exactly the same time.
He smiled despite everything. "She's helping us." The realization hit harder than expected. Wren wasn't waiting, and she wasn't hiding. She was actively sabotaging the Director from inside. Every clue, every message, and every breadcrumb—she'd been leading Maeve here.
Peak looked toward the floor again and then slowly stood. "Warden,” he called over the comms.
"What?"
"Bring the truck,” he ordered.
"Why?" Warden asked.
Peak holstered his pistol. "Because we're going underground.”
Within twenty minutes, the three of them stood around the tower while Peak unloaded equipment from the truck. Portable ground-penetrating radar, battery packs, and a fiber inspection scope. Maeve raised an eyebrow. "You just carry this stuff around?"
Peak shrugged. "I told you, I like to have options."
She laughed. "I bet you've been waiting all morning to say it."
"I really have been,” he agreed. Her smile lingered longer this time, and Peak caught himself staring at her again. He was getting bad at hiding it.
Warden cleared his throat loudly. "If you two are done flirting—”
Peak looked at him and sighed. "We're working."
"Sure, we are,” Warden smirked. "That's what the motel owner probably thought too." Maeve's cheeks turned bright red, and Peak threw a wrench at him. Warden caught it. "Missed."
"I wasn't aiming for your hands,” Peak said.
“When you boys are finished, can we please get back to the mission?” Maeve asked.
“Yeah,” Peak said. He rolled the radar slowly across the cracked concrete floor. Peak watched the display. Layer after layer of earth scrolled past. There were old utility pipes, bedrock, groundwater, and then he saw a perfectly square void about twenty feet below.
He stopped moving. "There."
Maeve stepped beside him. "That's too symmetrical to be natural."
Peak nodded. "Eighty by forty."
Warden whistled. "That's a bunker."
"No.” Peak zoomed in. "It's bigger." He followed another line extending east, and his stomach dropped. "This isn't one room."
Maeve looked at the screen. "It's an entire underground facility." The realization settled over all three of them. The Director hadn't hidden beneath an abandoned warehouse. He'd built an underground headquarters beneath the entire marsh.
Peak looked toward the old navigation tower. Now it made perfect sense. The tower had never been important. It was simply the marker hiding the real entrance. Maeve slowly folded Wren's coded strip and slipped it safely back into her pocket.
She looked at Peak. "We found it."
Peak nodded. "Yeah." Then his expression hardened. "Now we bring it down."
The marsh swallowed sound. That was the first thing Peak noticed as he crouched beneath the skeletal remains of the old navigation tower.
The wind still pushed through the reeds, but down here, twenty feet below the surface, everything felt muffled.
The only sounds came from boots shifting against damp concrete and the quiet mechanical hum vibrating through the walls.
There were thousands of servers. The Director had built an entire digital empire beneath the Eastern Shore. Peak rested one hand against the concrete wall. He could feel it. The vibration wasn't random—it pulsed. Wren had been right. This wasn't a prison. It was the heart of the operation.
Captain would've appreciated the irony. An outlaw biker club was about to raid one of the most sophisticated cybercrime facilities on the East Coast. Peak looked over the assembled brothers. Warden checked the action on his shotgun. Ruin slid a fresh magazine into his rifle as Diesel and Hawk adjusted their body armor. Six more patched Grave Prowlers lined the narrow maintenance tunnel behind them, every face hard with purpose. Nobody spoke because nobody had to. Captain was still missing, and that was enough to make them all focus.”