Splintered Wood and Gunsmoke

Sarah Rhodes honestly did not remember a single detail of the Uber ride home. She vaguely remembered the confused driver politely asking whether she preferred the busy expressway or the scenic lakeshore, and she remembered definitively saying neither word. The absolute rest of the miserable trip was a blank, terrifying stretch of gray window and the dull, unreasonable, deafening sound of her own frantic pulse hammering in her ears.

Somewhere just past the busy loop, she desperately tried Rebecca Ortiz’s number. It rang directly through to a sterile voicemail. She frantically tried again five minutes later. Voicemail again. She did not leave a message.

The Lake View apartment was incredibly small and meticulously kept clean. This was primarily because Sarah had been strictly raised not to ever let the inside of a physical home go entirely loose just because the outside of her life had violently fallen apart. Lily came flying off the worn couch in a dead run the exact second the front door opened.

She wrapped her small, fragile arms aggressively around her older sister’s waist. Nora Hail slowly stood up from the rickety kitchen chair with the careful, agonizing slowness of a woman well into her sixties. She took exactly one look at Sarah’s devastated, pale face and did not ask a single question.

“There is hot soup in the fridge, honey,” Nora said gently. “I will come back to check on you at six.”

Sarah thanked her profusely. Once alone, she stood in the shower for twenty minutes without ever bothering to turn the water hot. Afterward, she sat heavily on the very edge of the sagging sofa to put her throbbing head down for just one minute. Lily quietly climbed up directly beside her and meticulously arranged a knitted blanket across her sister’s shaking legs with the solemnity of a priest performing a highly important ritual.

Exactly forty minutes later, the doorbell aggressively rang.

Sarah came violently up through the last, heavy membrane of sleep, half convinced it was simply Nora coming back for a forgotten item. She cautiously crossed the small living room with Lily’s blanket still trailing lazily from one shoulder and put her bloodshot eye to the brass peephole. Two massive men in heavy dark coats stood in the hallway.

The one standing in front was incredibly broad-shouldered, somewhere in his mid-forties, and his chilling smile was already perfectly arranged for the exact moment the door would open. She cautiously opened it exactly one chain width.

“Miss Rhodes,” the man said smoothly.

His accent was incredibly heavy, landing somewhere between Romanian and something significantly further east. “I am Victor Peters. I represent a highly private investment fund. We intimately know you were treated incredibly unfairly this morning. For a brilliant specialist of your immense caliber, it absolutely should not have happened that disrespectful way.”

Sarah tried to aggressively slam the door shut. Victor’s heavy steel-toed boot shot forward, forcefully jamming against the wooden frame.

“A very small, lucrative offer,” Victor smiled, his eyes completely dead. “Five hundred thousand dollars in untraceable cash. You simply answer a few basic questions about the exact digital architecture you have just been working on for three weeks. Nothing complicated at all.”

“I signed a legally binding NDA,” Sarah snapped, her heart hammering. “Get the hell off my property.”

“An NDA with a known criminal organization is absolutely not a real NDA, Miss Rhodes,” Victor chuckled darkly. “Please be highly realistic.”

From the narrow hallway directly behind her, Lily’s voice drifted out, incredibly thin and highly curious. “Savvy? Who exactly is at the door?”

Victor’s brow violently tightened for half a second at the sound of the child. He murmured something incredibly low to his massive partner in a guttural language Sarah instantly recognized from her bureau days as Romani. “There is a child inside.”

She aggressively used the half-second distraction he had foolishly given her. She violently slammed the heavy door, throwing both solid deadbolts into place, forcefully grabbed Lily by her tiny hand, and moved with terrifying speed. The small bathroom was the absolute only interior room in the entire apartment with a heavy locking door, a tiny window positioned far too high for a grown man to fit through, and a solid, reinforced steel frame.

She had obsessively, quietly installed the reinforcements herself exactly six months after her parents’ tragic funeral. It was an old, paranoid bureau habit. She had absolutely never told Lily what the heavy locks were truly for. Lily had never once asked.

Outside in the hall, the heavy knocking came again. It was polite at first, then incredibly violent. The partner’s muffled voice carried ominously through the splintering wood. “A quick phone call. She completely refused. Go immediately to Option Two.”

Sarah heard the soft, terrifying, precise sound of a lock pick rapidly working the deadbolts. She violently pulled Lily completely against her chest, sitting in the dry bathtub. The little girl was shaking violently, but she was absolutely not crying.

After a terrifying moment, Lily whispered directly into Sarah’s collarbone. “Savvy, exactly where is Mr. Biscuit?”

Sarah’s frantic mind went entirely past the terrifying question and immediately found the heavy laptop bag. It was the exact bag she had mindlessly dropped on the living room sofa when she came in. The heavy front door violently splintered inward with a deafening crash.

Two deafening gunshots ripped through the air—clean, explosive, and incredibly close together. Then there was absolutely nothing. Complete, suffocating silence.

Then came footsteps. They were significantly heavier and infinitely more deliberate than the ones that had come before. A low, commanding voice called out through the dusty apartment. “Miss Rhodes. It is Cross.”

Sarah unlocked the bathroom door incredibly slowly, her hands slick with cold sweat. David stood exactly in the center of her small living room. His expensive black coat was heavily marked with bright, arterial blood that absolutely did not belong to him.

A heavy Sig Sauer pistol with a long, black suppressor was still gripped loosely in his right hand. The two massive assassins lay crumpled near the splintered entryway. One of them was still making a horrifying, wet, gurgling sound in the back of his ruined throat.

David aggressively kicked the dropped weapon far away from the dying man’s twitching reach without ever bothering to look down. His dark eyes instantly found Sarah. Then they slowly dropped to Lily, who had cautiously stepped out from directly behind her sister and was holding fiercely onto the back of Sarah’s thigh with both tiny hands.

Something profound and indescribable violently moved across David’s harsh face. It was incredibly brief. He did not possess a name for the emotion, so he aggressively pushed it away.

“Did you violently come here for the stolen money?” Sarah demanded, her voice shaking but defiant. “Or did you come for me?”

“You desperately need to come with me right now,” David stated flatly. “It absolutely isn’t about the money anymore.”

Somewhere in the freezing distance over the dark lake, a police siren began to rapidly rise in pitch. Lily took a brave step out from behind her protective sister. She looked fearlessly up at the towering, terrifying man in the bloody coat and tugged exactly once at the hem of his ruined sleeve.

“Mister,” Lily asked innocently, her wide eyes unblinking. “Are you a good person or a very bad person?”

David did not answer her. He honestly did not know how.

The Glass Fortress

The escape vehicle patiently waiting in the dark alley directly behind the apartment building was a massive, unmarked black armored SUV. It had heavy, fake plates that had absolutely never been registered to any living human being. Aaron was already sitting tensely in the driver’s seat.

Aaron was David’s most loyal man for fifteen years, a highly lethal former Army Ranger who only ever spoke exactly when he needed to, and absolutely never when he didn’t. He took exactly one sharp glance at the fresh blood soaking David’s heavy coat, nodded exactly once, and aggressively put the armored car in gear. Lily sat perfectly still in the absolute middle of the plush back seat, clutching Mr. Biscuit fiercely against her chest.

Sarah had thankfully possessed the presence of mind to frantically grab the heavy laptop bag on their violent way out the door. One heavy strap was hooked securely over her shoulder in the exact same fluid motion she had used to lift her trembling sister off the bathroom floor. Lily had miraculously retrieved the stuffed rabbit from the canvas depths without even being asked.

Sarah absolutely did not look at David when she finally spoke. Her voice was incredibly flat. Her pale hands, resting heavily on her knees, had begun to violently shake now that there was absolutely nothing left to do with them.

“You brutally fired me this morning without letting me speak,” she whispered. “Why exactly are you here saving my life now?”

“Because you were completely right,” David replied smoothly, his eyes locked on the dark road ahead. “And I was completely, terribly wrong.” He did not turn toward her when he confessed it. “The entire system has been massively compromised. Fourteen million dollars bled out. The number is actively climbing.”

She closed her burning eyes. She drew one full, shaking breath deep into her lungs, forcefully held it, and slowly let it go. When she opened her eyes again, her trembling hands had entirely steadied.

“Get me directly to a secure machine with full root access,” she commanded with absolute authority. “Right now.”

From exactly between them in the dark backseat, Lily tilted her small head up. “Savvy, is this your mean boss?”

“My old boss, Bean,” Sarah corrected softly.

Lily slowly turned to face David fully. She studied his harsh, bloody profile the exact way a small, incredibly serious person meticulously studies a dangerous animal that may or may not be exactly what it claims to be. Then she asked, completely without any trace of childish cruelty, and absolutely without any softening either.

“Mister, are you going to be nice to my sister now?”

David Cross had been aggressively interrogated about a great many things in his violent life by men far more terrifying and dangerous than a six-year-old girl in mismatched socks, and he had absolutely always known exactly how to lethally answer. He honestly did not know how to answer this innocent child.

“I am actively trying,” he said incredibly carefully.

Lily considered his honest answer. Her final verdict was delivered with the absolute, crushing finality of a Supreme Court judge who absolutely does not require a second opinion. “Trying is absolutely not enough. You actually have to do it.”

Sarah made a strange, choked sound that was almost a laugh and almost a sob. David looked back at the small child a fraction of a second longer than he had originally meant to.

The secure penthouse was located on the thirty-eighth floor of a massive, glittering Gold Coast tower. It was entirely owned by a dark shell company exactly three removes from absolutely anything that legally bore his name. It featured massive floor-to-ceiling glass and a breathtaking, long view of the freezing lake.

David gently showed Lily to the lavish guest bedroom situated furthest from the main entry doors. She walked a incredibly slow, highly considered loop of the massive room, stopped abruptly at the window, and delivered her second firm ruling of the chaotic evening. “I really like it here, but I am still incredibly mad at you for being mean and firing my sister. You have absolutely every right to be mad at me,” David conceded. “I am going to stay mad until you actually say sorry properly,” Lily stated. “All right.”

In the adjoining, massive office, David efficiently set a highly customized, high-spec workstation directly in front of Sarah. He rapidly authenticated it to securely route directly against the full Cross network. She sat down heavily in the leather chair. She aggressively opened a command terminal. Her fingers began to fly.

“Exactly who gave the fatal restart order?” she demanded.

“Supervisor Hutchkins,” David replied flatly. “Mark Veil was actively present and entirely agreed with the decision.”

She stopped typing for exactly one fraction of a breath. Then she furiously began again. She did not say anything aloud. Inside her brilliant head, a small, terrifying notation permanently attached itself to a name. Mark was there. Mark let the virus through. It was the very first time the dark suspicion had assumed any real, physical shape at all. And she was absolutely not willing to give it any more dangerous shape than that without concrete, irrefutable evidence. She had been rigorously trained years ago at the bureau not to ever name the wrong man. She was absolutely not going to name the wrong man now.

“What exactly are you thinking?” David asked, watching her hands.

“I desperately need to stop the massive bleeding first. Absolutely everything else comes after,” she stated.

“Do it.”

She glanced up at him exactly once. “Do not trust absolutely anyone until I explicitly tell you who to trust, including exactly whoever you think you currently trust the most.”

He hesitated. It was exactly one second, maybe slightly less. Then he nodded sharply. “All right.”

He slowly crossed the room to the doorway of the guest room and stood silently looking through the thick glass. Lily had meticulously arranged Mr. Biscuit on the massive down pillow and was speaking to him incredibly earnestly in the exact hushed tone children reserve for best friends who are infinitely older and wiser than they are. Something incredibly small and entirely unfamiliar violently moved in David’s chest.

It was a soft, warm feeling he had absolutely not allowed himself to feel since Evan died, and it settled heavily there without asking his permission.

For three grueling hours, Sarah did not speak a single word except to bark highly technical instructions. She did not eat. At some exhausted point, David silently placed a steaming espresso cup directly beside her right hand without a single comment. She registered the heat in her peripheral vision and did not look up. Only after her cramped fingers blindly found the ceramic handle on their own did she notice the incredible details.

It had been pulled absolutely correctly. The crema was incredibly thick and entirely unbroken. The ceramic cup had been carefully warmed before the boiling water ever went through it. She had absolutely not expected a terrifying man in a heavy black coat with someone else’s fresh blood on the sleeve to know exactly how to pull a perfect espresso. She honestly did not know what to do with the surprising fact that he did, so she did absolutely nothing with it, and eagerly drank.

David had rapidly assembled a small, elite remote team over a highly encrypted channel. She had forcefully given him exactly three names. Two she did not personally know and did not trust yet. The third name was Ethan Park, the absolute only person from the entire control floor who had desperately tried to say the right thing at the exact right time. She handed the young man the massive coordination role.

She aggressively worked down her mental list in strict order. First, isolate the highly anomalous outbound connections. Second, securely route them into a heavily controlled observation sink rather than violently severing them outright, ensuring the attacker would absolutely not know the active watching had begun. Third, meticulously build a mirrored pathway to frantically trace exactly where the fourteen million dollars had gone.

Then came exactly twenty-three highly specific configuration changes to the core authentication layer. It was a digital, door-by-door rekeying of the entire massive floor. It was during the seventeenth of those grueling twenty-three changes that she noticed something horrifying that she absolutely did not mention aloud.

The hidden back door, when she finally aggressively cornered it in the code, carried a highly specific digital fingerprint. It was the undeniable signature of an internal SSH key. She quickly, silently copied the fingerprint into a highly private file on her secure workstation. She did not compare it to anything yet. It was raw, dangerous data, nothing more.

David stood completely still behind her for most of the three hours. He did not speak. He did not intervene. At one tense point, she felt him take a hushed phone call in the next room in a voice entirely too low to follow. He came back and absolutely did not tell her what the call had been about.

When the digital bleeding completely, finally stopped, she leaned back heavily in the leather chair and physically felt, for the very first time since dawn, the crushing, agonizing shape of her own bone-deep exhaustion. David gently set a crystal glass of cold water directly in front of her. “Drink.”

She drank greedily. “Why exactly did you come straight to my home?” she asked, wiping her mouth, “instead of resting securely somewhere else?”

“Because I absolutely didn’t trust you not to send someone heavily armed after me,” she replied honestly. “I desperately needed to be near Lily before you violently got there.”

A heavy silence followed. He absolutely did not look offended. He looked exactly as if he had entirely expected the brutal answer. “I would absolutely never have done that to you.”

“You brutally fired me before I could even finish a single sentence,” she shot back. “I had absolutely no reason to blindly believe anything you told me.”

He slowly sat down in the plush chair directly across from her. The soft lamplight caught the incredibly sharp line of his jaw. “You are completely right. But I can honestly tell you exactly why I violently reacted the way I did this morning, if you are willing to hear it.”

She nodded slowly.

He told her the tragic story about Evan. He was twenty-four years old. He should have been a brilliant architect. He told her about the bloody warehouse in Gary, Indiana. He told her about a foolish man named Briggs who had lethally fallen asleep at a critical monitoring post for exactly four minutes. And the four minutes that had been exactly enough time for the police to enter.

He told her about his own brutal rule made at the freezing funeral and absolutely never yet bent. “I fiercely promised myself after Evan died: anyone asleep at a post, absolutely no discussion, entirely no explanation. That was exactly how I kept my sacred word to my brother.”

Sarah sat heavily with the terrifying confession. She completely understood suddenly that what she had violently taken for sheer cruelty in the freezing control room that morning had actually been profound grief wearing the rigid shape of extreme discipline. It absolutely did not absolve his brutal actions. It merely explained him, and the dark explanation was certainly not nothing.

“So what exactly do you mean to do with me now?” she asked.

He turned his body fully toward her. “I fiercely want to aggressively ask you to stay. Formally. Not through the broker Rebecca. Not through absolutely anyone. Directly to me.”

“You intimately know I can refuse.”

“I know. I have a little sister to protect. I absolutely cannot live as a hunted criminal. Lily doesn’t deserve that violent life.”

“I absolutely will not put you on the dangerous front line,” he promised softly. “You will work entirely remotely. You will have elite security. Lily will have twenty-four-hour, invisible protection. And exactly when the massive system is stable again, I will personally help you actively build a completely legitimate security company with my financial stake held entirely silently. You can walk away from me whenever you want.”

She did not answer him right away. She looked thoughtfully through the glass panel toward the dim guest room where Lily had fallen deeply asleep with Mr. Biscuit tucked safely beneath her tiny chin. The absolute reason she would say yes was not the exorbitant money, and it was absolutely not David.

It was the two dead, bleeding men lying in her tiny living room. It was the terrifying, intercepted phrase, “Execute Plan B.” It was the completely clean, brutal arithmetic of the violent situation. Blackwood would absolutely not stop coming for them. If David fell, Blackwood would ruthlessly follow her and Lily to the absolute end of the line. She was entirely only safe as long as David was still standing between them and the monsters.

“I will stay,” she whispered. “But strictly on my own conditions.”

David’s voice was incredibly quiet. “Tell me.”

Sarah pulled a yellow legal pad from the neat stack on the corner of the heavy desk. She meticulously wrote out three specific lines, evenly spaced. She turned the yellow pad and confidently slid it across the smooth wood to him.

“One. Lily absolutely never learns what the Cross Syndicate actually does in the dark. As far as she explicitly knows, you are merely a wealthy hotel developer. Nothing else. Two. Absolutely no violence ever occurs in front of me or in front of her. If a bloody situation has to be violently handled, you aggressively handle it somewhere I will absolutely never see it. Three. I can permanently leave at absolutely any time with one single week’s notice. No lethal consequences, no creepy surveillance, not even from a distant distance.”

David meticulously read each line twice. He absolutely did not try to negotiate a single word. He took the black pen directly from her hand, smoothly uncapped it, and aggressively signed at the bottom. His dark signature was incredibly small and perfectly clean. It looked significantly more like a corporate lawyer’s elegant script than a brutal man whose other hand had just held a smoking suppressor six hours ago. She noticed it. She did not mention it aloud.

“I have exactly one strict condition of my own,” David stated.

“Name it.”

“When you discover absolutely anything in the code that could possibly put you or Lily at risk, you immediately come to me. You absolutely do not attempt to handle it yourself. You absolutely do not stay silent.”

She looked at his intense eyes for a very long moment. It was the desperate condition of a broken man who had violently lost his brother because absolutely no one had bravely spoken to him in time.

“Agreed,” she whispered.