Rose served six months, getting out just before her eighteenth birthday. On the way to pick their daughter up from the detention center, Josephine and Zane Benson’s car was involved in a multi-vehicle accident. Zane was killed instantly, while Josephine passed on the operating table. Footage Keys found from the hospital that fateful day showed a distraught Poison in her police uniform being told the devastating news by a doctor in scrubs.
Poison picked her sister up from juvie a day late and was forced to tell Rose the news of what happened to their parents. Rose packed up her things from her childhood home, and left. She was still several months shy of her eighteenth birthday.
Over the next eight months or so, Keys found traces of Rose’s code mixed in with several transactions involving the 3Ts gang. Formed in Miami, the 3Ts were slowly expanding their way north, hitting several major cities like Atlanta. Prior to juvie, Rose didn’t have a connection with them. Her scam against the pharmaceutical and insurance companies did not involve the 3Ts from what Keys could find.
Then he discovered that the daughter of a 3Ts lieutenant had served a stint in the same juvenile detention center as Rose. It was a thin connection, but the only one that Keys could discover, so he followed it.
Then Keys found her name in a heavily redacted FBI file that was dated several weeks before Rose’s reported death by overdose. It took some doing—including tapping into a federal database while Starbucks and Ranger were corrupting evidence that was planted to frame Steel for murder last October—but Keys was able to find the unredacted version.
Rose was an informant for the FBI. He did not believe she’d gone to the 3Ts with the intent to spy on them. Based on what he could uncover, it looked like Rose discovered a political partner the 3Ts had, which helped them cross borders in exchange for funding his campaign. A fucking United States Congressman was a fucking drug kingpin. It was so clichéd that Keys wasn’t even surprised by it.
What Keys was unclear on was whether Rose’s overdose was intentional on the FBI’s part to protect her before she could testify or if she was attacked by the 3Ts, who wanted to make her murder look like an OD but Rose survived. Either way, Rose was declared dead and placed into WITSEC.
Rose was not an amateur hacker by any measure. Most likely, after she entered WITSEC, she was not supposed to be on a computer again. Keys didn’t know how she got herself back online, but within months of Rose’s death, she’d contacted Poison anonymously to give her sister the information needed to take down the 3Ts faction in Atlanta.
Rose was dead and “MV” was born. Why not tell her sister who she was? Keys completely understood not getting along with a sibling. There was only four years between him and Keller, but it might as well be four hundred. Poison was ten years older than Rose, and Keys could find no evidence to indicate they’d ever been close.
But they were stillsisters. Rose had reached out to Poison for a reason, even before Poison hadbecomePoison and started her motorcycle club.
At the end of the day, Rose’s secrets weren’t Keys’ to tell. Rose was still in WITSEC, which also meant she was violating the rules by even being in contact with her sister. Keys didn’t want to get her into trouble, even if that meant carrying her secrets for her.
The scary truth about his world was that even one careless post from years agocould tie an anonymous hacker to a realidentity, and he’d been working for months to wipe any trace of Rose Benson’s past from being discovered as he had done. At the end of the day, regardless of what feelings he may or may not have for her, he was her friend, and he would do everything in his power to protect her.
WiseWave620: I’m sorry today was trying. I understand needing space, but I’m here if you want to talk.
Keys just barely sent the message when there was a rapid knock on his door before Ranger came barging inside his apartment. “Ollie and Aaron have been in a car accident. Grab what you need. We’re headed to the hospital.”
* * *
Gl!tch.OS: I’m so sorry for your loss.
* * *
Tears dottedthe white porcelain of the bathroom sink. He felt woozy, like he might pass out or throw up. In truth, he’d take either right now. Anything to make the pain stop. The agony swirling around in his chest was immeasurable; he couldn’t imagine what Jenna and Steel were feeling after burying their only daughter that afternoon.
He’d failed. Again and again… He kept failing.
His new code was supposed to keep his familysafe, but he hadn’t seen this coming. It didn’t matter that he didn’t know Melanie all that well. She’d been the closest with Bree, Angel and Cage’s daughter, and Cassie, Bulldog and Abby’s oldest daughter. It didn’t matter that Steel was no longer the club’s president. Jenna and Steel were stillclub, which meant their children were,too. It didn’t matter that Melanie was an adult and in college. She would always be a club kid.
And she’d been gunned down in the streets of her campus like her life hadn’t mattered.
Keys had failed. Why did he think he was smart enough, strong enough, to keep his family safe? He wasn’t. He never would be. Glancing up into the mirror, Keys waited to see something that would change the truth of that statement.
His cheeks and dirty-blonde beard were shiny with tears; his gray-blue eyes were bloodshot, the lids red and puffy behind his black-framed glasses; and his hair was now grown out to around his ears. He still wore his white dress shirt under his worn leather cut declaring him an officer, a position he no longer deserved. The black band on his left upper arm stretched over newly formed muscle. He’d never shaved his chest before in his life, but recently he’d noticed the hair there was becoming darker, more defined.
He’d been working so hard to improve himself. Every day he ran with Jigsaw, Chip—who’d officially become a prospect in November—Angel, and/or Cage. Sometimes all of them. Angel had announced her pregnancy over Christmas, and while she no longer got in the ring with him, she never backed down from his training, which included his daily run. If she wasn’t giving up while growinga humaninside of her, Keys certainly wasn’t.
And he fuckinghatedrunning. It was the most boring, tedious task he could possibly imagine. But he did it.
Every day.
Without fail.
He’d even cut back to only four energy drinks a day! His sugar intake was… Well, he could probably eat fewer gummy bears, but he needed some sort of incentive to run fuckingmilesevery day.
Keys thought he was doing so well. Thorne and Goose were moving into their new home, and Tom had offered to personally arrange their parents’ belongings to be moved as well once thesale was closed. Master Key Security Solutions was officially open—and they had clients! So much so that Tom was booked out for months, and was already joking that Keys was going to have to buy him a private jet soon because he was sick of getting felt up at airports.
Maybe things were too good. He should have been looking for the other shoe to drop, but how could he possibly have predicted that it would drop on Melanie? Sweet, innocent Melanie. She’d been fucking nineteen years old!
