I had worked half that time remotely from my apartment. I continued to help the Hive’s data by coding stronger firewalls. When I wasn’t doing that, I was running configurations to attempt to find who was sending Badger strange texts and letters with cryptic messages.
Chief had me on a tight leash after speaking with Kade about my safety. Trying to come to some sort of compromise with Chief was like trying to argue with cement. His decision was firm and unmoving. Today I had one of our new recruits from the Bureau, Tyler Monte, to escortme to RSS.
“You know you don’t have to follow me, right?” I asked Monte.
He had dark eyes, a trimmed beard, and shoulder-length chocolate-brown hair that was tied up in a man-bun. In another time, I would think he was attractive, but my heart and head were so fucked-up that I couldn’t even think about looking at another man.
He gave me a smirk. “I am under strict orders, you know that, Phantom.” Monte got a kick out of our nicknames. He was the first team member that was part of our squad who had no relation or previous experience with Ricci or Ricci Enterprises.
I rolled my eyes. “I feel like I've gone back in time and I am getting escorted by my big brother to school.”
Monte chuckled. “As soon as Chief tells me it’s safe, I promise you we can throw a party and let you go buck-wild.”
I looked up at the large man and gave him a small smile. “Fine.”
The Hive was buzzing with intense energy when we entered. I placed my enormous coffee cup, a bag of marshmallows, and saltines on my desk. “What’s going on?” I asked as I slid a pair of duck-themed Snoozie slippers onto my feet and chucked my heels under my desk.
Ollie looked up from her computer. “I think I finally figured out who tried to take down our system. The person who was responsible for the discrepancies you found when you first started here.” She went back to looking at her screen and typing away.
I leaned on the edge of my desk and took a sip of coffee. I must have used some bad milk, because my stomach churned as soon as the liquid hit my stomach. I brought my hand up to my lips and rushed out of the room and into theclosest bathroom where I heaved up what little I had in my stomach. “Looks like I need to go down the street to get a coffee,” I grumbled to myself as I got cleaned up.
Thankfully the team didn’t ask any questions when I got back into the office. “So what did you find?”
Jax looked up at me, along with Ollie and Lennie. “So we don’t have an ID on the person. That’s where we need your hacking help to cross-reference the facial recognition software we have compared to other sources.”
I smirked, knowing she meant federal databases.
“After recovering some of our lost surveillance and cross-referencing the employee logs, I was able to find a clip in the video surveillance that I think has our culprit placing a thumb drive into a machine that caused all hell to break loose.” Ollie moved her screen to face me.
My face blanched. “Um…” I stammered.
The team looked at me with concern. “What’s the matter?” Jax asked with a worried expression.
I gulped, trying to hold down the bile that was rising up for a completely different reason. In the paused frame there was a tall, broad-shouldered man. I would recognize that face anywhere. “We don’t need facial recognition.”
“How come?” Lennie asked.
“That’s my brother.”
SIXTY-THREE
KADE
I was greeted with the sounds of something breakable crashing on the penthouse floor and Lucy barking her head off outside of Evan's bedroom door.
I rushed over and petted Lucy’s head. “Shhh, girl. It’s okay,” I soothed, fully knowing I was full of shit.
Machine was in one of his episodes. I heard him grunt and growl as the sound of multiple things breaking echoed in the room. I slammed my fist to the closed door, knowing that he wouldn’t hear me if I wasn’t forceful.
It had been a while since he’d had one of these manic down spells. I’d known it was coming as soon as he woke up in the hospital. His trauma from multiple deployments was enough to drive anyone crazy. So if Machine was having a bad moment, then I knew he had to be internally hurting.
The doctor was confident that Machine would have a full recovery, physically anyway, but two weeks after being released from the hospital, he was still in a mental spiral.
He had fallen so far into a depression, I was worried that my best friend would do something he couldn’t take back. Between the overwhelming grief about my failedrelationship with Evelyn accompanied by the stress of Stefanos, and now Machine’s depression, I felt as though the walls were caving in on me.
I slowly opened the door. “Evan! Machine! It’s me!” No answer. “I’m comin’ in buddy.” I pushed the door open and found Machine on the floor of the guest room rocking back and forth, his dog tags on a thin chain hanging between his fingers.
This was bad. Really fucking bad. A mirror above a charcoal-colored dresser was shattered along with everything that had been breakable. Shards of glass and crystal lay scattered all over the floor. A half-empty bottle of cheap whiskey sat next to him on the floor. I knelt down in front of him, feeling helpless. The strongest man I had ever known sat before me, broken and scared. His black t-shirt was cut in several places, most likely from glass that ricocheted. A small spot on his shirt over his lower abdomen was saturated with blood.
