Page 7 of Outside The Wire

Lock tossed him a folder. “All files stay offline. We don’t know who’s watching.”

“Shouldn’t we have Rae or Dash in on this?” Eli asked.

“They’ll be looking into this also, but they’re both busy at the moment. Kavanaugh, you said your old man was about to tell you something at the bar.”

I nodded, brushing away the memory of his cold, dead eyes. “We were arguing. He didn’t want to talk in his office. He was paranoid—said someone was listening in on him. I figured it was a campaign worker or an opponent. He said things were leaked that would only hurt him. He was pretty adamant that it wasn’t an opponent or anyone from his campaign. He was scared.”

I remembered how terrified he looked, how nervous he got as I brushed off his worries once again. He didn’t want to tell me, and I was ready to walk. I was tired of him always making excuses. Only this time, he really had something to be nervous about. They really were watching him. And as soon as he opened his mouth, they knew.

How? How did they fucking know he was going to talk? Did they have the bar tapped? Or was someone inside listening to our conversation? If only I had taken him seriously, he might still be alive today. He’d be telling us this information himself instead of me guessing at what he was trying to tell me.

I glanced up and noticed everyone was staring at me, waiting for me to continue. I cleared my throat and got back on track. “Um…he was worried about Mom and he said there was nowhere to hide from them. And then…and then I said some pretty shitty stuff to him. But I got through to him.”

Suddenly, I didn’t feel so righteous in my anger. I felt like a kid who failed his father. Because as wrong as my father was, he had come to me for help, and instead of getting him somewhere safe when I had the means and ability, I had taunted him, and now he was dead.

I swallowed down the growing lump in my throat and remembered his hand on mine at the table, how he stopped mefrom leaving. The last time he ever touched me. Fuck, he was reaching out to me and I failed him.

I swiped my hand at my face, shaking away the tears that threatened to fall. “He said…Shadow.”

“Shadow?” Lock asked.

“Yeah,” I croaked out.

When I finally looked up, it was to everyone staring at each other with an uneasy feeling in the room. I remembered thinking the same fucking thing as I stood over my father’s casket. But it couldn’t be. There was no fucking way it could be him.

“You don’t think?—”

“He’s everywhere,” Lock said, his brows furrowed in thought. “He has his hands in everything.”

“He’s Cash’s father,” I pointed out. “He’sRafe’sfather. If…if any of this were true, that would mean that not only did he help a man kidnap his own daughter and hold her for thirteen years, but he also allowed that man to have his own son killed.”

Lock looked around the room at all of us. “And he’s with Cash right now.”

“He has no fucking clue,” Eli muttered.

“No, but Knight is out there, too,” Red pointed out. “He’s the most likely to be objective. He didn’t know Rafe, so he doesn’t have the same skin in the game. We need to get ahold of him and fill him in on what we know.”

“Which is what, exactly?” I asked, still not sure where we landed on this. “Because all the old man said was Shadow. He could have meant anything.”

“He could have, but do you know many Shadows?” Lock asked.

I didn’t, but it also hadn’t felt like the senator had finished telling me whatever the hell he was going to say. And if there was more, we might be chasing the wrong fucking man.

“Just trust me on this. There could be more to this than we know. If Shadow is corrupt, then I know we have to go after him, but if he’s not?—”

“Alright,” Lock agreed. “We’ll talk to Knight. He can get a feel for what’s going on. We’ll take it from there.”

“And if it is Shadow?” Eli asked.

Lock shook his head. “Then I don’t know if we’ll ever get Cash back.”

2

ASHER

My heart racedas I crawled through inky darkness, trying desperately to crawl my way out of the fog that surrounded me. I swatted at everything around me, trying to find a clearing, but there was nothing. It was suffocating, too much to take. I could hardly breathe, barely suck an ounce of air. I was going to die like this.

“Asher.”

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