Chapter Twenty
Ace
It’s fine, at first.
I have it under control.
I have everything under control.
Carter and Casey want to move to the college town about 90 miles from the safehouse. They shouldn’t know there’s a college town about 90 miles from the safehouse, but I suppose that’s what I get for letting Travis go to Carter’s room half out of his mind and thinking things would be fine.
They will be fine. Totally fine. Kellan won’t find out and it’ll be fine.
They’ll go live in this town with new identities. They’ll go to college - or Carter wants to, anyway. Casey isn’t ready yet. Casey isn’t ready to move out, if you ask me. Neither is Carter. But that’s not my place, so I don’t say it.
There is a checklist of tasks to be done.
New identities. Bank accounts. Cell phones.
An apartment. Fake references and renters histories.
Fake transcripts. Enrollment. More. A lot more.
So much more and - and my head hurts, a thick needle pressing into the corner of my right eye, nausea churning with the pain.
It’s fine.
I can do this.
There are even some tasks I can delegate to Maison, tasks that won't reveal anything that would ruin everything. It helps, having him carry some of the weight.
I have this under control.
What matters is that Kellan won’t find out.
He won’t.
He already asked me how the brothers are doing, when he called about Keaton and Travis partnering up. That alone was out of character for Kellan. There’s no way he’ll ask again. Not unless it would affect Keaton, and it won’t.
Even if he does ask, I’ll just say Carter left.
He left and…
And what?
And Maison just let him go, cutting off contact like the rules say he needs to? That’s not believable.
Maison quit so he could be with him? That’s a pretty hard lie to pull off considering Kellan is his boss.
Carter moved and Maison is going to go visit him sometimes, but Carter doesn’t know where the safehouse is? That’s… believable.
Yeah. Okay, yeah. That’s believable and it only breaks one rule. A smaller rule. Continuing contact is nothing compared to Carter knowing the location of a safehouse.
Maybe I could talk to Kellan about it. Explain. Get him to understand that just this once, this one rule should be broken. I'd assure him that Maison would maintain OPSEC start to finish. I could convince Kellan to let him have that, to let him visit his brother.
Kellan doesn’t have to find out Carter and Casey know the location.
He doesn’t. There’s no way he could find that out.
No possible way. That information is inside their heads.
If I warn Carter and Casey, remind them that they can never talk about this place, never try to find it again, there’s no reason Kellan would ever need to know such a massive rule was broken.
So, I’ve got it handled.
Everything is under control.
Then Jake freaks out in a way I wasn’t aware Jake could freak out when he learns about their plans.
Then the plans change.
They want Carter and Casey to be able to come back.
Here. To the safehouse. To the place they aren’t supposed to - aren’t fucking allowed to - even know the location of.
A place guarded by men and women who report back to the organization - to me.
I could try to delete the reports, might even get away with it for a while considering Kellan's ineptitude with technology.
Eventually, though, questions would be raised by the operatives filing the reports.
They would want to know why the rule is still being broken.
Maybe they would think their reports aren't going through. Maybe they'd get nosy. Maybe they'd start talking among themselves, piecing the command structure together, trying to figure out who's really in charge.
Maybe Kellan would somehow become aware of me deleting reports. I might be away from my desk or be asleep when one comes in. Sometimes he checks my profile, reads over the messages. He's allowed to. It's his organization. He likes knowing what's going on in it, at every level.
It's not worth it.
I tell them that - I tell Jake and Maison and Travis that this risk isn't fucking worth it.
They want to do it anyway.
They’re asking to get themselves fucking killed.
And nothing is under control anymore.
Nothing at all.