Chapter 12
LINDEN
Keegan had his arm slung heavily around my shoulders, his fingers idly tracing patterns on the bare skin of my upper arm where my oversized T-shirt had slipped down.
I was tucked against his side, my legs curled under me on the wide couch, the glow of the massive flat screen washing blue light over us both.
On screen, some over-the-top action flick roared through its third explosion in ten minutes.
I wasn’t really watching. I was too aware of Keegan’s steady breathing and how his thigh pressed against mine.
Two days had passed since he’d suggested I think about going back to school, and I hadn’t been able to get the idea out of my head.
When I graduated from high school, I hadn’t been interested in college. But now that I’d figured out what interested me, I was reconsidering that decision. Assuming I could get admitted to a nearby school. I didn’t want to leave Keegan any more than he wanted to let me go.
He went from relaxed to instantly alert when Wizard strode into the room. He hit pause on the remote before looking up.
He stopped a few feet from the couch, his gaze flicking to me then back to Keegan. “Tomcat.”
“Wizard.” Keegan’s voice was calm, but I felt the way his muscles tightened under his casual sprawl.
Wizard’s eyes lingered on me again. “You want to come to my office to hear this?”
Keegan didn’t hesitate. “No, you can tell me in front of her.”
Relief washed through me, tangled with fresh worry. Whatever Wizard had found, it was big enough that even the Hounds tech wizard looked grim.
Wizard dropped onto the chair next to us and steepled his fingers. “Got in. Finally. Pulled the black box data from Carson’s last flight off a government mirror server. Official report still says pilot error. Stall at low altitude, failure to recover. Clean narrative.”
I bit my lip to stifle my cry. It hurt to hear, even knowing they were lies.
Wizard kept talking. “But the telemetry’s off.
Subtle shit like frame drops that don’t match the time stamp sync by the smallest of margins.
Someone smoothed it. Not enough for most analysts to catch, but they weren’t counting on me.
So I went hunting. Cracked the defense contractor’s internal archive.
Took enough proxies to make the NSA jealous.
They were more secure than the fucking Pentagon, Tomcat. ”
Keegan’s hand found mine, lacing our fingers together. His thumb stroked over my knuckles in comforting sweeps.
Wizard sighed before he explained, “It’s gonna take some time to analyze the shit I dug up.”
Keegan’s grip on my hand tightened until it almost hurt. “How long to fully compare and verify?”
“Days. Maybe a week to be thorough. Fallon’s already pulling parallel threads, but even with his help, it won’t be quick.”
“I can help. I’ve seen every format they use.” I straightened. “Gone through a ridiculous number of reports. It would be easy for me to catch any quirks in the export files. I know where to look. That’s how I stumbled on this mess in the first place.”
Wizard studied me for a beat, then glanced at Keegan.
Keegan exhaled through his nose. “She’s in. But we keep this quiet. Nobody but us three, King, Blaze, and Fallon need to know she’s helping.”
It was hard to believe I needed to worry about word getting out. Other than the quick trip to his very secure office, I hadn’t left the compound since he brought me here. But I trusted Keegan with my safety, so I was more than willing to go along with whatever he thought was necessary.
“She’s your woman, so it’s your call,” Wizard agreed.
While I bit back a smile at how easily Wizard referred to me as Keegan’s, my man tilted my face toward him. “I still have to play my part. Show up for meetings, test flights, act like nothing’s changed. They can’t know we’re digging until we have something concrete.”
I nodded even though I wished he didn’t need to go back there. “I get it.”
A ghost of a smile touched Keegan’s mouth before he pressed a quick kiss to my lips. Then he looked back at Wizard. “Set her up so she can help, but keep her safe.”
“Already on it.” Wizard stood. “I’ll be ready for her in ten. Need to air-gap a machine for her first.”
He gave us a chin lift and headed down the hall toward his office.
Keegan shifted, turning so we were facing each other on the couch. His hands framed my face, his thumbs brushing my cheekbones. “You won’t be doing this alone. Wizard and Fallon are the best. And I’ll be back before you know it.”
“I know. Thanks for letting me help. Carson deserves the truth. And if someone at Aegis Aerospace Systems covered this up, I want to help burn it down.” I wrapped one of my hands around his. “Just be careful. These are dangerous people.”
“I know how to keep my head down, little dove.” He kissed me again, resting his forehead against mine when he pulled back. “Stay safe. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“Promise?”
“Swear it.” He gave me one last kiss before he stood, tugging me up with him. He wrapped me in a tight hug, his chin resting on top of my head. “Knowing you’re here is a fuck of a lot of motivation to be quick.”
“Take as long as you need to be sure nobody at Aegis suspects you of anything.”
I didn’t know what I’d do if he got hurt digging into this. Losing my brother had been hard, but I wasn’t sure I’d ever get over it if something happened to Keegan.
“Don’t worry. I won't give them reason to suspect a thing,” he reassured me.
He gave me one last squeeze, then led me to Wizard’s office, where we had to wait for him to answer the door after Keegan knocked.
I didn’t think I had seen so many electronics in one place, and suddenly the security pad with a fingerprint and retinal scan on the wall next to the door made more sense.
There was an entire wall of monitors and several computers set up at a half-circle desk in the center of the room. And a ton of interesting gadgets that I wouldn’t mind getting a closer look at.
“Be good for Wizard.”
Keegan’s request pulled me from my inspection of the office. “I will.”
He gave me a quick kiss, then murmured, “Bye, little dove.”
Already pulling his phone from his pocket, he headed for the door. He stopped in the doorway to talk to Fallon, who’d been about to knock when Keegan opened the door.
Then he was on his way, and it was just his two club brothers and me.
They set me up at a small table in the corner of the office.
Wizard walked me through the setup—dual air-gapped drives, encrypted partitions, and read-only access to the raw data dumps.
Fallon sat beside me, and we started slowly with a side-by-side comparison of the two data sets, line by line.
I pointed out anomalies when I found them. Hours slipped by. My eyes burned from staring at numbers and letters, but every small discrepancy felt like a victory. As though we were peeling back layers of lies.
At some point, Fallon leaned back, stretching his arms overhead. “I’ve known Tomcat for a dozen years.”
I turned to look at him. “You have?”
“Yeah,” he confirmed with a nod. “We met when we were both at Fallon.”
“At Top Gun school?” Even if Keegan hadn’t shared with me that they’d been there together, I was a Navy brat, so I knew a lot about the different naval air stations and would’ve guessed.
“Yup.” His gaze turned mischievous as he added, “So I know what I’m saying when I tell you that Tomcat’s different with you.”
“Really?” I whispered.
“He’s never looked at anyone the way he looks at you. So you’d better be in it for the long haul because you’re quickly becoming the only thing keeping him tethered.”
I thought about how Keegan held me after I cried and hoped Fallon was right. Because Keegan might have grown up with parents who kept everything at arm’s length, but he was the opposite with me.
“Back off,” Wizard growled from across the room. “Unless you want Tomcat to kick your ass when he gets back.”
“It’s okay. Really,” I insisted when Wizard shot me a suspicious look.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable,” Fallon muttered.
I liked that Keegan had a friend looking out for him, but I wasn’t going to convince either of them of that.
So I decided to lighten the mood instead.
“I’ll forgive you if you tell me the real story behind his road name.
I’m not sure I believe it’s just because he’s related to someone who helped develop the plane he’s named after,” I teased.
“When he first told me, I assumed he earned the name because he was known for tomcatting around with lots of women.”
Fallon shook his head with a laugh. “That’s the last thing you gotta worry about.”
“Monk would’ve been a better name if it were based on his sex life before he met you,” Wizard added with a rare grin.
I laughed too, stunned to find humor in such a dark situation. Meeting Keegan hadn’t just brought me protection and a man I was quickly falling for…I was surrounded by people who acted more like family than friends.