Rye, New York
5:10 p.m. EDT
Parked in front of a coffee shop that had free Wi-Fi, Kit sat with Castle’s laptop plugged into the power outlet and propped on her legs.
Combing through the copies on the external hard drive, she fished for any clues as to how the Outliers had gotten into this mess. She’d assumed Jasper had gone looking for a big payday, but what if Bravo had found him instead?
The idea hadn’t occurred to her until Castle suggested the possibility.
Last Monday, Jasper had saved several links to messages on Pastebin in a folder on his computer. The only way to see them was directly on the website.
“They’re copies of chat logs. Floating messages he wanted to keep. You were right,” she said to Castle, who stared out the window. “Jasper misrepresented himself as the new handler for the Outliers. Bravo approached him about the job.” She scrolled through the rest of the text. “Insisted on meeting in person for—”
Kit stopped talking, because he clearly wasn’t listening.
“Castle.” She put her hand on his forearm. “Did you hear me?”
“Hmm.” He seemed to rouse from a daze. “Yeah, Bravo found Jasper, not the other way around.” His focus remained outside the window. “Good work.”
“You’ve been quiet since we got on the road.” Since he’d spoken with Sanborn. “Why won’t you tell me what’s wrong?”
“It’s nothing.”
Two minutes in Sanborn’s presence—that was all it had taken to drive a wedge between them. “I can tell something is bothering you.” Distress radiated off him, more toxic than gas fumes. “What is it?”
A heavy weariness had settled over him that she longed to banish. She set the laptop on the footwell under her legs and turned to him, but he still didn’t look at her.
“Tell me,” she insisted and punched his leg, hard enough to get his full attention but without hurting her fingers.
Castle scrubbed a hand over his head, gaze lowered to his lap. “Sanborn is like a father to me.” He paused, her heartbeats bleeding together for so long she wondered if he’d continue. “Calls me son. I know it’s just a figure of speech, but it’s one he doesn’t use with anyone else. Not even Knox. And I deceived him for the first time, trying to hide whatever this is we have going on.” He hissed an expletive and took a deep breath. “But he knows. Sanborn knows about us.”
A slimy ball of panic rolled through her stomach. “How?” She choked on the question. “Are you sure?”
“Positive.” His fingers tightened around the steering wheel. “I gave it away somehow. Inadvertently.”
“Maybe you’re wrong and—”
He finally looked up and the shadows swimming in his eyes stole her voice. “I failed his test by not agreeing to take another assignment and let Cutter protect you. Sanborn gave me twenty-fours to report in with you and let Cutter take over.”
An achy tightness clenched her heart.
“To be honest, Kit, I feel lost. Before you blew into my life, I would’ve thought the things I’ve done over the last few days, the choices I’ve made, to be unimaginable.”
The conflict etched on his face made her long to erase the deep lines of worry.
Her future, possibly her life itself, rested on this moment. This fork in the road would determine what path they’d take, either together or separately.
Whatever happened, she wasn’t going to hold him to an obligation to protect her. He was a good man, the best man she’d ever known. This sacrifice was too much to ask. She cared about Castle, wanted to share herself with him, but the last thing she wanted was to hurt him.
“You have to let Cutter take over and step aside,” she said.
His eyes snapped to hers. “No way in hell. You won’t survive if I do.”
Always the consummate commando. Surprisingly, it was one of the things she realized she loved about him. He approached everything in his life the same way, as a warrior with conviction. Willing to put his life on the line if necessary.
But she was responsible for too many deaths already.
“If you don’t walk away from me, Sanborn is going to punish you.”
His brow furrowed in confusion. “What are you talking about?”
“The parent–child dynamic you’ve mentioned between you two, the mentor–mentee relationship. What does any good parent do when their child gets caught disobeying?”
It seemed to dawn on him that she was right as he squeezed his eyes shut. “Shit.”
The ten-million-dollar question was, what would that punishment be? “Would he demote you for insubordination? Put you at a desk or something?”
“No. Nothing that straightforward for Sanborn. If he punishes me for not following orders, it’ll be something I won’t expect. Something that’ll hurt, so I’ll learn my lesson.”
Nauseating dread twisted through her.
Maybe it was her turn to protect him. “The smart thing for you to do is walk away. Accept your next assignment. I’m afraid of what Sanborn might do to you.”
“That’s because you don’t know him. Some good parents spank, but that doesn’t mean they crush their children into oblivion. Sanborn had a son and lost him in a bad CIA mission. One that never should’ve been sanctioned. That demon chases him. It’s the reason he cares so deeply about his people. I dare even say he loves us, in his own way.” He rubbed his forehead. “But I can’t bear breaking my word and handing over your safety to someone else.”
Her perspective on the kind of powerful men who ran secret government agencies was skewed for certain, but none of what he said calmed her nerves. “You have the drives. Move on and cut your losses. You don’t owe me anything. I don’t matter anymore, Castle.”
“You matter to me.” He clutched her hand and threaded their fingers together, pulling her against him, and kissed her.
She fought his devastating proximity, resisted the sublime seduction of his mouth for as long as she could. Three seconds flat until she was dragging him closer instead of pushing him away.
Once she loosened and yielded to him, he said, again, “You. Matter. To me.”
She believed him. “But I’m screwing up your life. You feel lost because of me, and everyone I care about dies. I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. I’m not worth it.”
“Bravo is screwing up both of our lives. Not you. I know you think you’re only worth what your money can buy for someone, but that’s a lie you believe based on every guy who has done you wrong.” He cupped her face in both his big hands. “Heel to toe, I’ve walked the line from one grueling mission to the next. I’ve always used the job as my compass, steering me the right way. But when I touch you, Kit, you feel like my true north.” He stared into her eyes, cradled her in his gaze. “Nothing worth having is free. I’m willing to pay the price to see what we could be together, but that means keeping you alive.”
Holy hell. She melted.
The odds of forging this bond, with the world falling to pieces around them, must’ve been a million to one. She felt like a damn lottery winner.
“Why did you pick this life?” she asked. “Join the military? The Gray Box?”
“I joined the navy to get out of my father’s house. It was the fastest, easiest, all-expense-paid, one-way ticket from under his thumb. I turned out to be a natural fit for the SEALs, and once you become a special mission unit operator, it gets in your blood. When Sanborn recruited me after I was discharged for PTSD, it was a second chance to do the only thing I’m good at, but this life wears on your soul. I can’t do it forever.
“Sometimes I look at my soon-to-be brother-in-law.” He gritted his teeth and rolled his eyes. “Cole. He’s making three times what I bring home for doing a different version of the same job. Maybe he’s cracked the code on how to be an operator and still sleep at night.”
She caressed his cheek, her heart overflowing with gratitude for his presence in her life, despite the shitty circumstances responsible.
“This life picked me,” Castle said. “The same as with you. No sane person seeks out death and violence, but it has a way of finding some of us.”
“I keep wondering why the Outliers? With the other hacker groups out there, why did Bravo pick us?”
“Maybe you weren’t his first choice. Maybe he tested other groups and they failed. If you can figure out who else he might’ve contacted, determine the common denominators, you’ll have your answer. Your group was good, right?”
“One of the best. We played by our own rules, but…” Ever Shield.
“What?”
“We did something shady that our small community apparently knew about. Perhaps Ever Shield painted us as a group open to black-hat work.”
“Do you know anyone else like that, someone who might be willing to talk to you?”
Two groups sprang to mind, but only one might talk to her. “As a matter of fact, I do. I can reach out, see if they’ll meet. I can tell you right now, they’ll only talk face-to-face after verifying my identity. And if you think I’m paranoid, then you haven’t seen anything yet.”