Up in the Cave, right and wrong stopped meaning anything. As a small team, we learned to live in the gray, where the rules were bent and breaking them was part of the job. There were four of us to start—Killian, Sonya, Caleb, and me: a lawyer, an analyst, a hacker, and a cop. Once, we’d all had clean starts and bright futures, meeting at Ivy League schools and realizing we’d lost faith in the system for different reasons. I wasn’t sure who’d come up with the idea of the Cave, but as a group, we wanted to right wrongs in our own way.
Killian had built the team from the ground up. His law firm was the front, his brain the weapon. Ruthless, unshakable, and loyal to the handful of people he trusted, he gave us purpose and a target for our anger. Sonya ran intel—cold, brilliant, and patient, the one who could track anyone, anywhere, and dismantle them without leaving a trace. Caleb was the ghost in every machine, the hacker who’d once taken down a major bank from the inside after they’d destroyed his family.
Then there was Jamie, now Killian’s partner, a fire starter—unregulated, unpredictable, with a temper that burned quick and bright. Beneath the volatility lay brilliance: he was an extraordinary hacker, capable of breaking into anything, just like Caleb. He could switch from easy grin to sharp-edged menace in a heartbeat.
Finally, Lyric was the newest member of our team. I think. He’d come in through Redcars, the same as Jamie, but he hadn’t actually committed to working with the Cave yet. He was still fixing the mess the billionaire Kessler had left behind with his self-serving AI, who’d spent years trying to rule the fucking world.
And then there was me. The cop. Pretending to color inside the lines while feeding intel through back channels. On paper, I was a detective chasing leads. Sometimes I wondered who I was fooling. Maybe I’d stopped being a cop a long time ago, and this was the mask I kept wearing because no one had ripped it off yet. Every hour, I walked the line between duty and deceit, and yeah, sometimes I couldn’t tell which side I was on, but it worked until the day it didn’t.
I was on the side of justice, and hell, I owned that vigilante shit.
As soon as I stepped into the Cave, I headed to Killian’s fancy coffee machine and made myself the best coffee of the day, exchanging a nod with Caleb, who was hunched over three monitors glowing in the low light, the only person in the Cave.
“You want coffee?” I asked.
Caleb pointed at the four empty mugs on his desk—that was my answer. He might’ve lived off caffeine and Twinkies, but he knew when to stop. The hum of servers filled the silence, a steady rhythm under theclackof his keyboard, and I settled at the desk Killian usually used, straightening the photo of the fourof us Cave originals at college, back when we were devising the Cave. We looked so young there. Young and angry.
“So,” Caleb began, not looking up when he spoke. “Kyle Rourke is our dead guy—goes by Red. Iron Bulls MC. Prospect. His tattoo was done at Dead End Ink in Lincoln Heights. Not long out of an eight-stretch in Snake River Correctional, which means the coroner will ID him quick enough on DNA.”
At least the cops, aka the Cave, anonymously advising them, wouldn’t need tohappento find an ID. “What was he in for?”
“Beating a store owner almost to death during a robbery.”
“That tracks,” I muttered. “Anything else?”
“Until the coroner files his findings and I crack the records, I won’t know more on IDing the old bones in the burial ground.” He tapped the desk again, gaze flicking up, holding mine for a beat too long. “You sure you want to be the one on this?” he asked.
“Why wouldn’t I?”
Caleb gave a humorless snort. “Because anytime an MC gets involved in shit, your dad’s name will appear in background chatter. You know that.
My teeth sank into the inside of my cheek. “I know. Do we have any new intel on the MC?”
“Not on our watch list, more because of room than anything else,” Caleb said, gesturing at our wall of people we were working on exposing to the world, before leaning back slightly, eyes on one screen while his fingers danced across the keyboard. “Rudimentary search shows they’re running product for the Águilas Cartel out of Mexico—drugs, guns, people, and rumors of organ trafficking.” He paused to let that sink in. MC prospect dead with missing organs. MC running organs for a cartel. “MC has a few arrests, a couple of short stints inside. Still the kind of outfit that keeps its mouth shut and its business airtight.” He flicked through a few files, his tone detached but precise.
“Organ trafficking…”
“Yep.”
“Yet they haven’t reported this Red guy missing.”
“Nope.”
“Tell me more about the cartel?”
Caleb sat back in his chair, the glow from the monitors cutting hard lines across his face. “We’re on the second iteration of the Águilas Cartel down in Sinaloa,” he said, “First iteration built their route through Oregon, California, Nevada, until there was a massacre that wiped out the entire leadership. Labeled by the federales as a full-blown territorial war between rival factions, the kind that redraws borders in blood.” He tapped the edge of the desk, eyes flicking to me. “There’s been a rebuild,someonedrags the name Águilas back from the grave, and before you ask, I don’t know who yet.”
“Okay.”
“There’s something else; I got a hit on facial rec to video we’re trawling on another case. Our MC victim with missing organs was in a fight at the Pit two weeks ago. Rio has footage from running surveillance on the guy behind the Pit itself. He said it went bad fast. Red got his ass handed to him, and this guy they’ve used at Redcars—Doc—medic, patched him up behind the cage when everyone left.”
“Doc.”
“Underground medic for hire who works for whoever can pay, regardless of morals. Cash, no questions asked, has a cleaning crew.”
“So, this Doc patches our victim up, then what? Do we have footage of the victim leaving? Did Rio see anything?”
“Nope. Footage of Doc tending to Rourke AKA Red, two cleaning crew standing by, but nothing about what happened to RedafterDoc patched him up.”
