Page 35

TWENTY-FIVE

Jamie

It had been three days since the love-yous—three days since Killian had watched me gather my tools of fire with a silence that said too much and not enough.

He walked me to his car, and the kiss he gave me before I left was brutal—hungry, as if he was branding me with the press of his mouth.

I’d whimpered into it, wanting to crawl back inside the heat of him, but instead, he’d pulled away and said he had work to do.

I hadn’t seen him since.

It gnawed at me, this thing with Lassiter—how Killian was being blackmailed, how he’d carried it without telling me. Last night, I went digging, chasing any remote threads online that might connect Killian to Lassiter. I found nothing. No smoking gun, no secret files. Static.

Maybe I should have blind faith and trust in the man I said I loved.

But I’d said I loved my parents once, too.

And look how that had turned out.

It turns out that love doesn’t mean you get to keep people. Or that they ever truly belonged to you in the first place. They hurt you. They died. And I was left behind. So, no—I didn’t trust easily.

Not even when I wanted to.

This morning, I’d woken up buzzing with something—need, hunger—but it wasn’t only the fire this time.

It was Killian. It was the space he’d left behind and the way my chest kept caving in around it.

I didn’t like the spiral I was falling into, didn’t like the way every quiet second made me wonder if he was done with me, or worse, in danger and not saying.

I was supposed to be working. The clutch rebuild on a manual 1973 Dodge Challenger sat in pieces on the lift in Bay 2, and I’d already stripped two bolts trying to force parts into the gearbox casing that weren’t lined up.

My hands were shaking—not a lot, but more than enough to throw off the torque and make my grip falter .

I exhaled hard, scraping grease off my palm with the edge of a rag, and glanced over at Rio.

He was ass-up in the trunk of a rust-riddled Chevy, muttering curses at a seized latch.

I should go over and talk to him. Explain to him how I was feeling, but…

Hadn’t he made a big show about passing his responsibility over to Killian?

Rio was my best friend… he’d listen to me and stop the noise.

Right?

I reached for the torque wrench again, tried to focus, but ended up cross-threading the bearing sleeve. Metal clicked and ground wrong, and I hissed a curse through my teeth.

“Fuck this,” I muttered, tossing the tool down with more force than necessary. “Taking a break, Rio.”

Rio jerked upright at the sound of my voice and cracked his head on the lip of the trunk. “Shit!”

I winced. “You good?”

He grunted, rubbing at his scalp without turning around. If he bruised himself, no one would notice—not under the lingering mess from two nights ago. The cut under his eye had bloomed into a spectacular bruise, all jaundiced green and coppery orange, the kind you couldn’t fake .

Maybe it had come from a fight. Or maybe it was the aftermath of the enthusiastic sex I’d heard echoing down the hallway from his room.

I hadn’t asked. Didn’t want to. But it hadn’t stopped me from thinking about it.

From wondering what the hell Rio was burying under that usual swagger of his, and whether I was doing the same with my work, my fire, my silence.

Everything felt off.

The car, the air, my head. As if every gear in me was misaligned, and I was two steps from shearing my own bolts.

That was when Robbie wandered in, hands in the pockets of his hoodie. “Coffee and cookies in the kitchen. Fresh.”

I blinked at him. I didn’t need sugar. Or caffeine. What I needed was a walk around the block to clear my damn head. Maybe a call to Killian, even if he didn’t pick up. Maybe just screaming into the void.

But instead, I muttered a thanks, pulled off my gloves, and followed Robbie out to the kitchen.

The second I stepped through the door and smelled the bitter roast and warm vanilla, I gave in. Fuck it. I was spiraling anyway—might as well spiral with coffee in one hand and a mouthful of cookies. I fell on them like a man starved, shoving two into my mouth before the pot had finished brewing.

Determined now, I poured myself a mug, sloshing some over the edge, and made it my mission to clear the tray of cookies before anyone else had a chance to walk in. A tiny part of me knew it was dumb, that it wasn’t about hunger at all. It was control. Distraction.

Robbie didn’t say anything else. He just sat at the other end of the table, sipping his drink, watching me like I was a spooked animal, and he didn’t want to startle me further. Fair enough. I think I unsettled him sometimes, despite trying not to, and he wasn’t wrong to tread carefully around me.

“So, I have a question?” Robbie asked as he nibbled on his single cookie. He had his knees bent, feet flat on the floor, looking all neat and presentable—as if he was gearing up to welcome clients again. It was something he was trying, and to be fair, he looked the part.

And okay—he was cute. Enzo would kill me for thinking it, but there it was.

Not that it mattered. Robbie wasn’t my type.

It wasn’t a twink who did it for me. Robbie wouldn’t take control.

Wouldn’t grab me by the collar and drag me out of my own mess.

He wouldn’t pull me out of the chaos in my head when the walls started shaking.

He was careful and kind in ways that would never be enough to calm the storm inside me.

But yeah. Cute.

“Go for it.”

“Is the dark web open to anyone who knows how to look for it?” Robbie asked, tilting his head. “Like, why don’t the authorities just shut it down? And how do you even get on it?”

I froze mid-bite, the cookie crumbling in my mouth like ash.

Fuck.

Enzo would murder me if I answered that. Actually murder. Because just the fact that Robbie was curious—genuinely, naively curious—was enough to set every one of my alarm bells blaring.

“Why do you want to know?” I asked, wiping my fingers on a napkin. My voice stayed light, but tension coiled through my spine.

“Dunno,” he said with a shrug. “You guys talk about it sometimes, and I just… I don’t know what it is.”

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose.

“It’s real. It’s open to anyone, yeah, but only if you know what you’re doing.

And no, the authorities can’t shut it down.

Not entirely. It’s like… hundreds of tunnels under the internet, decentralized, hidden.

You use so mething like Tor to get there, and even then, you’re walking blind. ”

Robbie blinked. “So… you’ve been on it?”

I stared at him. “That’s not the point.”

He smirked. “That’s a yes.”

I shook my head and muttered, “You ask too many dangerous questions.”

Because the thing was—yes, I knew the routes, the backdoors, the dead drops. But this wasn’t a playground. And Robbie… Robbie was soft. Gentle. He didn’t belong in that world.

I shoved another cookie into my mouth to stop myself from saying anything else. Because explaining more? That would be the exact kind of stupid Enzo would never forgive me for.

Robbie shifted again, nervous energy buzzing under his skin. “I’ve been working on the coding stuff,” he said, like it was no big deal, as if he wasn’t about to send me into a cardiac episode. “Do you have anything I can practice my hacking on?”

This time, I choked on my cookie. Literally. Coughed so hard I had to slam my palm into my chest.

Enzo would kill me.

Robbie must’ve read the horror on my face because he went quiet, pulling his knees tighter to his chest.

“Okay, that’s a no, then,” he said. “I get you’re trying to protect me.” He tilted his chin, enough defiance to show me he wasn’t backing off. “But I want to try.”

I rubbed my temple, the sugar spike doing nothing to help the pounding in my head.

My thoughts drifted to the untouched heap of files I hadn’t yet sorted through.

Data dumps tied to cases in which Lassiter had been involved.

Not black-market stuff. Not snuff videos or anything that would get Enzo frothing at the mouth.

Just dry intel. Cross-referenced timestamps.

Bank transfers. Anomalous behavior patterns. It was boring.

And Robbie was so good with numbers and recognizing patterns.

Having him look at the stuff was harmless.

Probably.

“Where’s your laptop?” I asked, already second-guessing my decision.

Robbie brightened and rushed off, returning a moment later with the laptop Enzo had given him, still covered in Lord of the Rings stickers. He passed it to me, all innocent, all trust. I could’ve rewritten his entire OS in ten seconds flat .

“First off,” I said, powering it up, “never hand your laptop over to someone like me.”

He looked thoughtful. “Okay, but anyone like you. Not actually you, right?”

I grinned despite myself, fingers already flying over the keyboard. “Have a look at this.”

I passed the laptop back. On the screen, lines of code filled one half, file directories and scan logs on the other. Robbie squinted, his brows knitting in concentration, then his face lit up.

“A search algorithm. I can change the parameters.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Have at it. Then let me know what you find.”

He smiled, already clicking through windows, absorbing everything like a sponge.

“What am I looking for?”

“Anything that doesn’t look right.”

He nodded, serious as hell. “Okay.”

“Pass anything you find to me,” I swallowed, “and use the encrypted upload link that Killian gave us to copy your findings to Caleb, his tech guy.”

“On it.”

What could go wrong ?

Enzo slammed me up against the corridor wall, one forearm across my chest and the other hand locked around my throat.

“What the fuck did you do to Robbie?”

His voice was low, guttural, but his eyes—those were dead. Flat. Cold. The kind of look that said if I gave him the wrong answer, he’d finish what he’d started.