He had to know. Somewhere, somehow, he’d feel the ground shift beneath his feet.
Inside the Cave, the tension was suffocating. No one spoke louder than they had to. Caleb moved like a man possessed, setting up a slow-drip media schedule from his command post at the center of the table. We had weeks of drops prepared—carefully tiered levels of exposure.
And then, it started.
The first article went live barely three hours later.
“Corruption at the Highest Levels—More to Follow”.
By the evening: “FBI Regional Director Arrested After Armed Standoff in New Mexico.”
Another one followed close after:
“Senator Huxley Taken into Custody on Federal Trafficking Charges.”
By the end of the day, headlines littered the media landscape. Bank seizures. Resignations. Sealed indictments. The machine was grinding forward, slow but inevitable.
I stood with my hands braced on the edge of the board, watching the news feeds flicker in real time. The air in the Cave felt heavier with each headline. My palms were damp against the edge of the board, jaw tight, heart punching a slow, deliberate rhythmbehind my ribs. This was justice in motion—but it didn’t feel like triumph. Not yet. Not until everyone on the board was done. And even though I hated Jamie not being next to me, my team was covering everything.
I was due in court in the morning, playing the game, acting as if I didn’t have a thing to do with the chaos. Jamie wasn’t here because he had his own war to wage, his own planning to finish—and that was on him and the guys at Redcars. Different battlefield. Same war.
Lassiter wasn’t in the headlines, but he had to be watching. The storm was coming. And he had nowhere left to run.
At midnight, fueled by coffee and the righteous relief things were getting done, I sat back in my chair and asked for a status update from everyone.
Caleb leaned over his screen, tapping in a flurry of keystrokes before speaking up. “I’m having to stagger packet delivery via rotating proxies. If we keep pushing from the same source points, they’ll trace the origin within twenty-four hours. I’ve already started load balancing the uploads through Tier 3 mirror servers, but we’ll need to reroute the media drops again tonight.”
No one argued. I didn’t understand what he wasdoing, it was all magic, but I bet Jamie would get it. We trusted Caleb with this—the digital battlefield was his domain. If he said the infrastructure needed retooling, it did.
He added without looking up, “I’m also drafting a fallback path for the final dump. If Lassiter gets away when we release his file, I have a hard-coded trigger tied to two separate keys—mine and yours.”
I nodded slowly. It was overkill. It was necessary.
The elevator security pinged, and when I looked, there was my Jamie, staring up at the camera as if he owned the place. Just seeing his face knocked something loose in my chest. I cleared his access immediately, heart rate ticking up as the elevator began its climb.
By the time it dinged, I was already at the door. The second it opened, I pulled him close—my hand curled around the back of his neck, grounding, grateful.
“What are you doing here?” I murmured into his hair, not letting go.
He shrugged, a sheepish smile tugging at the corner of his lips. “Would you believe me if I said I can’t seem to go a night without you?”
I pulled back enough to look at him, hands still resting at his waist. “You just want to know whatwe’re doing,” I teased, shaking my head. “So transparent.”
He leaned in close, lips brushing mine. “But also…” he whispered, kissing me, slow and deep. “I genuinely can’t go a night without you.”
The weight in my chest shifted, something warm curling behind my ribs. I hadn’t realized how much I’d needed to see him until he was standing right in front of me.
“Hey,” he said and kissed me, wrapping his hands around the back of my head to hold me closer.
“Hey, Pretty,” I whispered and tightened my hold at his waist for a moment. My heart swelled with the weight of it—how much I wanted him, how much I’d missed him. And under it, fear bloomed. Because needing someone like this, needing him, wasn’t safe. Not in this world. Not with everything we were walking into. But in that moment, I didn’t care. I was his, and if it broke me, then I’d make sure the team was safe, and … so be it..
He tasted so damn good, like warmth and home, and something dangerous I couldn’t quit. I kissed him again, deeper this time, and the way he melted into it undid me.Mine. God help me, he was mine. And I didn’t know what the hell I’d done to deserve him, but I wasn’t letting go.
“You want us to clear the room?” Sonya asked.
We stepped apart after one last kiss.
“Our bad,” I said, but couldn’t help smiling.
