Page 41 of Viking
We sat at the kitchen table the next morning, each of us with a cup of coffee.As amazing as my time with her had been last night, something was weighing on me.I hadn’t been completely honest about Kris and everything I knew.
“I need to tell you something.About Kris.”
She set her cup down.“What about him?”
I took a deep breath, knowing once I started, there’d be no going back.“After I stopped coming to your family holidays, we kept meeting up, whenever he was stateside.Never anything formal, never at his place or mine.Always some random bar halfway between wherever he was stationed and here.”
“Why the secrecy?”she asked.
“Because what he was doing wasn’t exactly on the books.”I rubbed my palm against my jeans.“The last few years, Kris was involved in operations that officially didn’t exist.Deep cover stuff.”
“Like what Wire found,” she said, connecting the pieces.“Ghostwalk.”
I nodded.“Three years ago, he reached out after months of silence.Said he needed to meet, needed someone he could trust.I found him in this dive bar about two hours from here.Place was practically empty, just a couple of old drunks at the bar and us in a back booth.”
I could see it now -- Kris hunched over his beer, eyes constantly checking the door, shoulders tight.Different from the laughing kid I’d grown up with.Haunted.
“He didn’t look good,” I continued.“Skinnier than I remembered, dark circles under his eyes.He’d been overseas, wouldn’t say where.Kept checking his phone, the exits, like he expected someone to burst in any minute.”
“That doesn’t sound like Kris,” Karoline said, frowning.“It hadn’t been long since I’d seen him.How could have changed that much in such a short time?”
“War changes people.And what he’d been doing was worse than war.”I leaned forward, elbows on the table.“He slid a thumb drive across the table, said if anything happened to him, I needed to keep it safe.Said he’d stumbled onto something big -- government officials selling classified intel, backdoor deals with foreign agents, money laundering through defense contracts.I’d forgotten about it until you showed up on my doorstep saying Kris was dead.”
Her face paled.“And they killed him for it.Is that what you’re saying?”
“Not just for finding it.For documenting it.”I ran a hand over my beard, remembering.“Kris was smart -- set up fail-safes, stored evidence in multiple locations.He knew what he was dealing with, knew the risks.And he didn’t enter Ghostwalk lightly.He assumed he had all the facts.But it turns out, the corruption he was chasing went deeper than he realized.Even the higher-ups of Ghostwalk appear to be involved.”
“Why you?”Karoline asked.“Why not tell me?”
The question I’d been dreading.“Because he was protecting you.And because…” I hesitated, knowing the next words might change everything between us.“Because I was already in this life.Already had resources, connections, the kind of protection you’d need if they ever came looking.He knew exactly what both me and the Dixie Reapers were capable of.”
“That’s not all, is it?”
“No.”I met her gaze directly.“He made me promise that if anything happened to him, I’d look out for you.Said there was no one else he trusted to keep you safe.I should have told you when you showed up that day, but… I was still unsettled by the news of his death, and with the letter he’d left you, I didn’t feel it was necessary to say anything.”
Her expression shifted from confusion to hurt to something harder to read.“So all of this -- taking us in, protecting us, even the things between us -- was that just keeping your promise to my brother?You told me last night that it wasn’t.Did you lie?”
The question hit like a physical blow.“When you showed up at our gate with Athena, I was honoring a promise to a friend.But it became more than that.So much more.When I said I wanted to keep you, that it was more than me owing your brother something, I was telling the truth.I probably should have told you sooner, but I was afraid you wouldn’t trust my motives if you knew I’d been keeping secrets.”
Karoline was quiet for a long moment.When she finally looked up, her eyes were clear, determined.
“No more secrets.”It wasn’t a question but a statement.“From now on, I need to know everything.About Kris, about the danger, about what comes next.All of it.”
I nodded, relief flooding through me at the absence of anger in her voice.She hadn’t pushed me away.Hadn’t taken Athena and run.She was still here, still willing to trust me despite what I’d kept from her.
“No more secrets,” I promised.“Everything I know, you know.Starting now.Well, except for club business.That’s always off-limits.Club rules.”
* * *
The tech room buzzed with quiet tension as I guided Karoline through the door, Athena balanced on her hip, eyes wide at the sudden crowd of leather-clad men.Wire and Atlas sat surrounded by glowing monitors, their faces illuminated by the blue light of multiple screens, making them look like figures from some digital underworld.Around them, brothers had gathered in a loose semicircle -- Sticks leaning against the wall, arm in a makeshift sling.Tank perched on a desk corner.Savior and Saint standing shoulder to shoulder near the main display.All eyes turned to us as we entered, a mixture of respect and curiosity in their gazes.Not just for me, but for Karoline, who had survived the night’s terror without breaking.
“They’re here,” Wire announced unnecessarily, turning back to his keyboard.His fingers flew across the keys, bringing up files on the main screen -- emails, maps, fragments of code.“We’ve been piecing together what we’ve got from the men we took alive and cross-referencing it with what we already knew about Operation Ghostwalk.”
I positioned myself slightly in front of Karoline, not blocking her view but establishing a barrier between her and the rest of the room.Old habits.Protective instincts I couldn’t suppress, even knowing she was stronger than she looked.
“What have you found?”I asked, scanning the information sprawling across multiple screens.
Atlas spoke up, his quiet voice commanding attention despite his youth.“Ghostwalk was officially terminated three weeks ago, but there’s still a team operating.The men who attacked us were part of that team -- cleanup crew, assigned to eliminate all traces of the operation.”He glanced at Karoline.“Including anyone who might have received information from your brother.”
