Bulldog gave a noncommittal shrug. “He’s been sleeping better. Dr. Rutenberg encourages him to stay in bed with Tally to keep him calm when he can’t sleep. But knowing Scar, he hasn’t stopped completely.”
Steel nodded, more to himself than to Bulldog. “I hate to worry him, especially after everything he’s been through, but there’s no one better at going unseen. Let’s see if we can get him to increase his patrols without causing him to mentally decline.”
Bulldog didn’t look happy about it, but he nodded. He had kids and a wife to protect on property too.
“I want Keys to do a sweep of all our businesses. We’re not to the point of doing check-ins yet, but I want us to be prepared to.”
Lucky watched Steel for a moment before saying, “We’re also going to need a list of people with motive from you.”
“As far as I know, the only people with a motive are the ones you know about,” Steel said honestly. “I’m retired and have been for over a decade. Who would come after me now?”
“That’s the million dollar question,” Bulldog said, his attention still on his phone. “On another note, Keys has finished analyzing the shell casing.”
Last night, Ranger and Starbucks broke into the lab in Harrisburg where the evidence for Dixie Gilbert’s murder was being held. While Steel was still in jail, Keys received information that a shell casing was among that evidence. No respectable sniper wouldn’t check his brass, so it was a reasonable assumption that it had been left there intentionally. Believing that Steel would be arrested again if that shell casing was processed, Lucky had ordered Ranger and Starbucks to retrieve it.
Steel raised an eyebrow, but his gut already knew what Bulldog was going to say.
“We were right,” his SAA said in a grave voice, “your fingerprints were on it.”
Steel had morequestions than answers as Lucky and Bulldog left. Pocketing his phone, Steel headed out of his office. He’d been telling them the truth when he said he didn’t know who was targeting him. And that unknown was frustrating beyond belief. He wasn’t used to not having the answers.
While he’d never played chess, he liked the concept of it. The fact that you were playing yourself as much as you were your opponent. Always calculating both moves with the single goal of taking the other king. If Steel had any downtime, he thought it would be a game he would like to spend time learning.
Maybe after he turned in his cut, he’d buy a board. Jenna would laugh if he asked her to learn with him, but maybe Ollie would like to. Steel wasn’t used to down time. He didn’t like to just sit. Jenna’s mind was not affected by her MS. As her body gave out, her mind would still be her own, and she would need stimulation. He wasn’t exactly known for being a conversationalist either. He was going to need to work on that for her.
Steel did not knock on the apartment door. He walked in, knowing the kid would be up. It was sometimes difficult to remember that there was pure genius behind Keys’ young face and naiveté. He truly was like a kid in many ways, but that mainly had to do with people and what others would consider to be common sense.
In the past year, Steel had seen a big improvement in Keys. He was working out with Angel, building his own security business, had finally gotten himself glasses—when he remembered to wear them—and was growing his hair out. He was getting better at talking to people too, making himself go into town with his club brothers to interact with others.
Didn’t change the fact that he was still fucking young. When Keys had been a teenager, he’d hacked into the Pentagon on a dare, and he’d done so successfully. Steel’s contacts when he’d inquired about the incident had said that if Keys’ idiot friend who had done the daring hadn’t posted on social media what Keys had done, they likely never would have caught him. Rather than punish Keys, though, they recruited him. He enlisted and became an emancipated minor. Still a teenager, he worked for Navy Intelligence for years.
Until he’d been asked to do the unthinkable and participate in a drone strike that would have resulted in a lot of civilian deaths. Keys hadn’t just refused; he’d sabotaged the operation and prevented others from carrying out the strike. Many wanted to court-martial him. Based on what Steel knew of the situation, it was a minor miracle that they hadn’t. That miracle came in the form of Keys basically blackmailing his way out of the military. He couldn’t support a government that could so easily disregard innocent lives.
At barely nineteen, Keys received an Other than Honorable discharge.
Ghost, a former SEAL, had heard about the incident. He’d known Keys from his time in the Navy, and knew the kid had a good heart. Not wanting him to end up on the streets or in some cyber terrorist group, Ghost had tracked Keys down and brought him to Mount Grove. At the time, no one other than Ghost and the Officers knew that Keys had received anything other than an honorable discharge. It was in the VDMC bylaws that onlyveterans with an honorable discharge could prospect for them, but they couldn’t punish Keys for doing the honorable thing, even if the government didn’t see it that way.
Now Keys ran the club’s tech and security. Steel had no doubt he was doing other things on his computers, but he also knew that there were likely three or four people in the United States who could catch the kid. If they knew what to look for.
In this case, Steel honestly didn’t want to know. All he cared about was that nothing Keys did would ever come back on the club, which Keys had promised on multiple occasions that it wouldn’t. That was another reason Keys was starting his own security firm that would branch out from being just cyber security. He needed boots on the ground, and he didn’t want to use the club to do it.
“Steel!” Keys jumped to his feet. The kid was wearing some weird cloak, reminding Steel of wizard robes. He also had a Twizzler rope sticking out of his mouth, his glasses were halfway down his nose, and his desk was covered in Red Bull cans.
“Dare I ask?” Steel closed the door behind himself.
Due to the pointed hood on the cloak, Steel didn’t see the headset with a microphone on Keys’ head until he put a hand to the mic and said, “Krelios Everstar is AFK. IRL sitch, BBL.” Then he clicked something on one of his many keyboards, pulled the headset off, and stripped out of the cloak to reveal Kermit the Frog pajamas.
Steel looked down at his watch, noting that it was nearly lunchtime. No doubt Lilly and Jenna were in the kitchen getting it ready and he’d receive a text soon telling him to come join them.
“What’s up?” Keys asked, blowing his long, dirty blonde hair out of his eyes. His glasses were askew but he didn’t seem to notice. Steel opened his mouth to answer but Keys once more jumped to his feet. “Oh shit. Cut, cut, where’s my cut…?” Hestarted shuffling through the room, throwing items and clothing while looking for his cut.
Steel looked to his left and noticed the black leather on the coat peg on the wall. But he just stood there as Keys ripped apart his apartment looking for his cut. The kid was never going to learn if Steel solved all his problems for him. Tidiness was clearlynota skill Keys had kept with him after leaving the Navy.
It was nearly ten minutes later and a text from Jenna saying lunch was ready that Keys finally found his cut. Cheeks red, Keys pulled it from the peg on the wall, slipped it on, and then slid back into his computer chair, using the excessive amount of monitors between him and Steel to hide his face.
“Um, what can I do for you?”
“You’ve done extensive backgrounds on everyone in the club,” Steel said, completely ignoring what just happened.
