Page 20

What she found made her pulse jump—a trail she hadn’t expected, buried beneath layers of obfuscation, coded just subtly enough that most eyes would skim past. But not hers. The telltale fluctuation in timing. The inconsistency in IP mapping. It screamed movement. Hidden hands moving familiar pieces on a new board.

The funds had been restructured through a shell in the Caymans. On paper, nothing unusual. But the timing? Off. Less than forty-eight hours ago, someone moved half a million through a front that just happened to be registered to a Boston-based import company. The same name she remembered from one of the low-level logistics files buried in the job parameters she never got to finish.

Her fingers flew, dancing across the keyboard with muscle memory precision. This was her domain, her cathedral—code and firewalls, logic and instinct. Here, she wasn’t under anyone’s thumb. The rules were hers to write, the locks hers to pick, the secrets hers to unearth. In the quiet hum of circuits and blinking monitors, she found the kind of freedom Finn’s gilded cage could never offer. The noise of the house above faded, replaced by the familiar hum of focus, adrenaline laced with curiosity and drive.

She dug deeper, bypassed a soft firewall, pulled up the surveillance logs from a week ago. Nothing. Then last night… Static. Then mist. Thick and unnatural, blooming across the camera’s view like smoke pouring in from nowhere.

She squinted, leaning closer to the screen as a chill traced down her spine. Her heart stuttered, a beat gone sideways with recognition and dread. There—just for a moment—the unmistakable blur of something not quite natural.

The same mist she’d seen from the roof last night. Not fog. Not smoke. Something else—denser, almost luminous, with a cold shimmer that made her skin crawl. It had moved like it had intent. Worse, it had left the air around it still, heavy, and wrong. Silent in a way that pressed against her ears. Her skin had prickled as it passed, an electric awareness crawling over her flesh. And she'd heard it too—heard the low, distant rumble of thunder that shouldn't have been there. The night had been cold and clear, not a cloud in the sky. But the sound had rolled across the rooftops like a warning, dark and deep, right before the mist appeared. Something she couldn’t explain.

The camera feed cut out. Then came back with empty frames. No people. No activity. Just a faint echo of something that had passed through and left nothing behind.

She leaned back in the chair, tension knotting in her gut. Her jaw clenched and one hand tapped a restless rhythm against the armrest, the need to move or act winding her tighter with each passing second. "What the hell?" she whispered.

She wouldn’t ask Finn.

Not yet.

But the questions were forming—stacking up like live wires in her brain, sparking hotter by the second.

And soon, she’d demand answers he might not be ready to give.

CHAPTER 8

FINN

Finn watched from the doorway of the brownstone’s control room, arms crossed, one shoulder braced against the frame. Keira was deep in the system, her fingers flying across the keyboard like she was playing a piano only she could hear. The screen’s glow flickered in her eyes, and she murmured softly under her breath, the words half-code, half-spell, as if conjuring something only she understood. Intense. Sharp. Fucking brilliant. It should’ve eased his mind to see her locked in that zone, back in her element, but all he could think about was the fine edge she walked—too close to something she wouldn’t know how to fight.

She'd become more and more restless over the past few days. Her gaze kept darting toward the windows, toward the locked doors, like the walls were pressing in. She clenched her fists against her sides, the tension running down her arms like a live wire, as if bracing for something she couldn’t quite name. She paced. Fidgeted. Snapped. She needed air. She needed space. She needed out before the fire building under her skin forced its way loose.

He waited until she shut the system down before speaking, eyes scanning her posture for signs of resistance—or maybe hesitation. "Pack a bag, love. We’re leaving."

Keira swiveled slowly in the chair, one eyebrow arched in challenge. Finn’s mouth twitched—half irritation, half arousal. Christ, he’d missed that spark in her eyes, the way she never backed down. It made him want to kiss her and pin her to the wall in equal measure. His pulse ticked up, her stubborn fire tugging at the dominant edge in him like a live wire waiting to spark. She didn’t know the half of what she did to him—and if she did, she’d be even more dangerous.

"Is that you tugging on the leash, Finn?" she asked.

He grinned. "You were always too clever by half. We’re heading to the Cape. My place. Off-grid, secure, bigger than this bloody brownstone and it sits right on the water with acres between us and the neighbors. You'd have some room to move and breathe. You've been working really hard and you're starting to climb the walls."

She snorted, a sharp, dry sound. "You just want to isolate me somewhere new—tuck me away like a problem you don't want to deal with. Preferably somewhere with worse Wi-Fi and better curtains."

He shrugged and flashed her a devilish grin. "And if I do?"

Her eyes narrowed, but she stood with a huff, the fire in her gaze daring him to push her further. “Fine. But I’m bringing my gear—and if you so much as breathe near my hard drives, I swear I’ll reprogram your security system to blast Taylor Swift at full volume every time you enter a room.”

Finn paused just long enough to glance over his shoulder, one brow arched. “Taylor Swift? Bloody hell, woman. That’s cruel and unusual.”

But the grin that followed told another story—one that said he’d missed her mouth, her bite, the way a single look fromher could throw him off balance. The snark, the challenge, the sheer audacity of her had always lit a fire low in his gut. Christ, he’d lived off that heat once—and when she left, it had nearly destroyed him.

He turned and walked out, smug as sin, fully expecting her to follow—and to grumble the whole damn drive, just to prove she hadn’t lost the fight in her.

The drive to the Cape was quieter than expected, but not empty. Keira rode shotgun, her laptop bag tucked between her feet, a hoodie draped over her knees. Finn kept one hand on the wheel, the other resting loose on the gearshift. The city gave way quickly to stretches of tree-lined highway, warehouses turning to winter-naked woods, traffic thinning to a long, steady rhythm.

Keira fiddled with the radio until she found a classic rock station. Something slow and low filtered through the speakers, and Finn chuckled under his breath. "Sweet Baby James. My ma used to hum that to herself when she baked."

Keira shot him a look, but her lips twitched. "Didn’t figure you for a James Taylor fan."

"I’m not, exactly," he said. "But I know and appreciate what peace sounds like."