Page 7 of Jax
I pulled a fresh legal pad from the drawer and started a list. Not in code. Not on the network.
Old-school.
Steps I’d need to take if we kept her. Locks I’d need to harden. Holes I’d have to patch that weren’t mine but would become mine the second I told Kane because there was noif. I was keeping her.
Front-facing work history: deepen three points. Scatter secondary references that’ll confirm if called.
Lease cover: adjust payment timings to human inconsistency.
Utilities: introduce one late fee three months back, reconciled the next cycle.
Medical: create a routine clinic visit stub; flu shot record in a public health database (uncontroversial, low risk).
Social footprint: —
Unfortunately, there wasn’t much I could do about that. WITSEC didn’t allow social media accounts. But there were some small things I could fabricate to make the lack of social media more plausible.
Phone: rotate the carrier under the same number but keep the SIM quiet.
Email: plant junk mail in the right places to make her inbox look lived-in.
It was the kind of list I hadn’t written for a while. My hand remembered the rhythm anyway.
I stared at it for a long moment, then capped the pen and set it down.
I needed to tell Kane.
I never kept shit from my prez, not when it touched the club. But the fewer ears hearing WITSEC, the fewer chances a wrong word traveled where it shouldn’t. Telling the table wasn’t anoption. Telling the old ladies wasn’t even a thought. This was a two-man conversation until it needed to be more.
The clock on my second monitor told me I’d been at this longer than I thought. It was after seven. The race would have just ended, but an underground race was being prepped now. Since Lark wouldn’t be involved in that, she was probably at home, no longer buried in credentials, wristbands, radio checkouts, and corralling volunteers who didn’t know a paddock from a pit box.
An image sparked in my head from after she bumped into me. She’d looked up at me like she’d been bracing for me to snap. Instead, I had muttered, “You’re fine,” and walked away before my mouth made trouble.
I hadn’t been fine. I’d been a live wire in a human shape.
Two years.She’d been carrying this weight for two years, hoping they would catch the other criminals so she could leave this life. And some pencil pusher had slapped together a sloppy backstory and shoved her into a place like Crossbend, where the only safety net was hoping nobody looked too close. My hand curled tight on the mouse. One mistake in the paperwork, one random hit from the wrong search string, and her entire cover would burn. And now she wasn’t just some file in a government system. She was here. Inourworld. Inmyworld.
I wanted—no, needed—to see her. To look her in the eyes and know she was breathing, moving, alive. To assure myself that whoever had botched her file hadn’t already signed her death warrant.
The possessive burn in my gut deepened. She was under our roof now, working in our world. And whether she knew it yet, Lark had been claimed the second Kane put that file in my hands.
I stood, pocketed my keys, and shut down the sensitive windows. Not because I was done, but because the next step wasn’t on a screen.
Outside, the hallway was quiet. The clubhouse had a certain lull on race nights. A lot of the boys were out at the track or busy in the garage. Someone had started a pot of coffee that smelled like it could strip paint. I ignored it and kept moving.
The faint smell of oil and leather followed me out into the Florida air. It hit thick against my skin, the humidity wrapping around me like a weight.
I could have called Kane from the parking lot. Less than a minute, and he’d step away from the grid sheets and meet me in the small office by the tower. But my mind wasn’t on Kane first. It aimed for her.
There were times you sold yourself the lie that it was purely tactical—check the asset, confirm the status, observe in the wild. This wasn’t that. This was a pull I didn’t want but couldn’t argue with.
I fired up the Harley and took the long way off the compound, a habit as much as anything else—checking mirrors, checking shadows, and making sure no tail got a free ride. Traffic in Crossbend wasn’t heavy, but you learned to see patterns where other people saw color. Nothing popped.
By the time I pulled up to her apartment, the tight coil in my chest hadn’t eased. If anything, it had wound tighter, every muscle ready to snap.
Her apartment sat in a cluster of buildings that tried to look upscale and nearly got there. Cracked stucco, plantings that needed more water than the sprinklers were programmed to offer, and a pool with a CLOSED FOR MAINTENANCE sign that had been there too long.
I parked where I could see the approach and the stairwell. A couple of kids dragged scooters across the sidewalk, theirlaughter high and ricocheting. A woman in scrubs hustled toward a door with grocery bags and a tired smile.
