“What does that mean?” Lucky demanded.
“He avoids the cameras as well as Scar.” Keys typed on his tablet and the television monitor showed several clips of the outside properties. There was nothing specific on the frames but the occasional twitch of a shadow at the very edge.
“I thought you adjusted the blind spots,” Ghost said, clear accusation in his voice.
Keys’ expression tightened. “I did! I even used many of you as test subjects. Scar was theonlyone able to pass through undetected, and I figured, you know, it was Scar and it was good enough.” The kid’s cheeks flamed as he admitted to his error.
Though Ghost’s eyes screamedyou were wrong, he kept his mouth shut. Steel silently commended him for that. Keys clearly already knew he’d messed up, and Ghost berating him in front of all his brothers would not change that.
“We need to clear the woods,” Ghost announced. “We took away his sniper’s perches but clearly he has another nest.”
Angel’s head snapped to her President. “You think it’s the same person? The one who framed Steel?”
“The MO is very different,” Ranger pointed out, not arguing with Ghost but playing devil’s advocate.
Ghost, though, ignored the two comments and turned to Keys. “How long has he been watching us?” His voice was calm.Toocalm, Steel noted.
“I can’t be positive, and there’s a lot of footage I still have to go through, but I recalibrated a program to help me with it and I found little discrepancies like this going back to August.” His babbling revealed how nervous Keys was by his admission.
Six months.
The angry grumbling between the brothers was like a low hum in the room. Last August, Pumpkin had still been in rehab and Dixie Gilbert hadn’t yet returned to Mount Grove, nor had she been murdered.
Steel had been right. This man was a trained sniper, one with extreme patience. Dixie Gilbert hadn’t been planned, but likelyamurder had been. It was only through his surveillance of Steel and the club that the opportunity had presented itself, and even then, he still had moved slowly. Dixie Gilbert had returned at the end of September but wasn’t murdered until the end of October.
The chances were beyond slim that there weretwomen after the club. Two skilled, patient, resourceful men.
The heavy snowfall had been the perfect cover, and he’d likely watched the adults and kids on the frozen pond countless times over the winter. But he wouldn’t have just had the amount of salt Keys was saying he’d needed in his back pocket. Another plan executed after weeks of surveillance and an opportunity presented itself.
“The break-in at Little Shoes,” Steel said, speaking up for the first time. “It doesn’t fit the pattern.”
Keys swallowed hard. “Actually, it does. I’ve been working on so many things and getting things ready for Tom and me to officially bring people on in the spring, and I…” Shame crossed his face as he looked away, wiping under his glasses. “I missed it.”
“Missed what?”
Keys typed into his tablet once more. “This.”
The image on the television screen switched again to the club’sHarley-Davidsondealership. The timestamp in the top corner showed this was surveillance from last July. Everyone watched as one of the night janitors walked into the showroom with a mop and a bucket. His face wasn’t covered, and Steel immediately recognized Brendon, the middle-aged man who had worked for the previous owners too. The club had kept him as one of the few non-member employees they had outside the service department.
For several minutes, it looked like Brendon was doing his normal routine. Taking out the trash, cleaning the windows, wiping down the countertops… But the closer he got to the sales counter and the register, the morejumpyhe appeared, his eyes flicking to the cameras and continuously looking over his shoulder like he was checking if someone was watching him even though he was alone in the building.
As he took a cloth to wipe down the desk, he knocked over one of the monitors. His paranoia got the best of him because he continued to check his surroundings as he picked it up and placed it back on the counter.
In a way, the whole thing could be taken innocently. Maybe there was a noise outside that kept spooking him, or he’d recently been mugged or had broken up with a crazy ex. ButSteel knew it was none of those things, otherwise Keys wouldn’t be showing them the footage.
Keys paused and zoomed in on the computer monitor. “There’s a thumb drive in one of the ports that shouldn’t be.” He reached into his pocket and pulled, Steel assumed, the same device out. He tossed it on Steel’s coffee table. “It was there for weeks before I implemented my new security system. There’s no way he could have known when I was going to do that, but luck was on his side because he never removed it. Even though the device had done what it was meant to do, he never retrieved it, which meant when I launched my new software and synced our entire network, it read the device as one of ours.”
Ghost straightened, standing off the wall he’d been leaning against. “Are you saying that you linked our networktothis bastard?”
Keys’ chin wobbled as he nodded. “My system is impenetrable. No one could get into it from the outside. But,” he indicated the thumb drive, “he was already in, and unknowingly I gave him access.”
Ghost’s fists clenched at his sides, but he did not rage or tear Keys a new asshole. Instead, in a very controlled voice, he turned to Ranger. “Bring me Brendon.”
Ranger nodded once and left Steel’s house.
“Explain what this has to do with the break-in at the consignment store,” Ghost demanded, none too gently, of Keys.
“I think he was testing the system,” Keys said, his voice low. Christ, he looked so fucking young and small. “It also explains how he knew about the panic buttons.”
