Locke and Key (Titan Book 12)

by Cristin Harber

  “Just sayin’—”

  “I was there! I held their bodies. Watched them die! I saw her. Heard her. Knew who she was with and what she was saying! I knew!”

  “Not enough to get your facts straight, bro,” Jax said.

  “Enough,” Bishop snapped. “Both of you, give it a break already.”

  Jax threw both hands in the air. “Just saying. If this is what has you all moody-blues-brothers, silent-goddamn-night all the time, and it’s been this long? Educate yourself. Don’t live in fear and the past.”

  Locke blinked, stupid and dumbfounded for the second time that morning. “What the fuck ever.” He needed to clear his head and get far away from Jax.

  Jax chuckled, antagonizing the hell out of him. “Then Google her sweet ass if you’re so interested in disagreeing.”

  “When did you become the voice of reason?” Bishop dropped into a chair and eyed Jax, who had his phone out.

  Jax lifted his middle finger, not looking in Bishop’s direction. “What’s her name again?”

  “Cassidy Noble,” Locke spat out, disgusted that he had to repeat it.

  “That’s right. Noble.” Jax thumbed her name into his phone, and Locke waited for his teammate to agree. After a couple of seconds, Jax tapped the screen and read. He scrolled, tapped, read, and repeated the whole damn process over again.

  “Did we save a traitor or not, Jax?” Bishop asked, stretching, seemingly not in the least bit concerned that they’d braved an arctic hurricane for a traitorous, murderous bitch.

  “Not,” Jax announced.

  “What the fuck, man?” Locke rolled his shoulders, needing to get out of the conversation. “You didn’t look up the right lady, or you didn’t read her shit right.”

  “I’m reading about an embedded journalist who almost died right alongside you.”

  “Yeah.” His lips drew in disgust. “And?”

  “And she wouldn’t release her sources.”

  “Of course she fucking wouldn’t. What else?”

  Jax shrugged and scrolled. “Some bullshit here, a little bullshit there—”

  “Out of every fucking thing that has been written on her, those are the two things you choose to define her as? Jesus Christ. I’m out of here.” Locke didn’t want to end up in jail for knocking off a teammate.

  “Stand your ground, Lone Ranger,” Cash said from where he stood by the door.

  Fucking hell. Locke hadn’t realized Cash had reappeared. Damn snipers and their ability to sneak into places. “I didn’t realize we had a babysitter. Or that you were a spy.”

  “Locke, my man, you are on thin ice. You read me?” Cash strolled into the room and clapped and held out his hands.

  Jax tossed the phone. Cash caught it one-handed. After an eternity of the same tap-and-scroll bullshit Jax had danced through, Cash nodded his shaggy blond head. Locke thought he and Cash must have some camaraderie, maybe because neither kept his hair clipped, but Cash wasn’t on Locke’s side any more than these jerks were.

  Cash tossed the phone back to Jax. “All this says is—”

  “She’s to blame.” Locke would stand by that to the end of his days.

  Two lines formed on the bridge of Cash’s nose. “Damn, you’re a headache. It says that she listened and stood by her man. Which is more than I can say about you at the moment.”

  “You think I didn’t stand by the men who died?” Locke growled, stepping toward Cash.

  Cash eyeballed him, ready for any challenge that would quickly go to blows. “You need to get yourself in check before Rocco or Boss Man benches your ass.”

  Locke recalibrated. “I’ve never wavered in my support for anyone in Sadr City. None of the men in that unit. No one that she claimed she was protecting.”

  “Well,” Cash snapped, “you’re wavering in support for this team now, asshat. Try that thought on for size. When Jax is Mr. Calm and Courtesy, you have a problem.”

  “Dick,” Jax mumbled.

  “Denying it?” Cash turned his head slightly.

  Jax shook his head. “Nope.”

  “Didn’t think so.” His eyes narrowed in assessment. “All right, then. We’re in agreement?”

  “But I don’t get it.” Bishop pushed out of his chair. “Why did anyone say she was to blame when enemy combatants killed Americans?”

  Locke pivoted, seething. Maybe they needed to Google. “She was a distraction. A leaker. A writer of bullshit. And a reporter of crap.”

  “Who leaked to her?” Jax asked. “Was it true? Why aren’t you giving her any credit when there are pages of hits calling her a damn hero for what she exposed?”

  Locke’s stomach churned. “Would you shut the fuck up? Even if she was, even if she did, they knew our weakest link. It was a precision hit.”

  “It was an awful day. Has anyone ever denied that?” Cash asked quietly. He shook his head. “No one.”

  “Goddamn it!” Locke seethed. “She reported where we needed more men. That the front lines weren’t covered. That the combatants we were training weren’t up to snuff and the resources were lacking.”

  “It was true,” Bishop mumbled.

  “So fucking what? You don’t say it! You don’t! You don’t talk to civilians; you don’t tell reporters.”

  “Someone did.” Bishop took a deep breath, knowing firsthand what they were lacking overseas.

  A vein pulsed in Locke’s temple. “My unit became a political lesson learned, which is a clean way to say mass casualties and loss of life. Because of politicians and their deals, and reporters and their guesses and leaks.” His tight chest ached. “She’s the reason we were hit. She killed them.”

  They fell silent.

  “I get it,” Bishop said, shaking his head. “She did her thing. People died.”

  “They would’ve died anyway.” Jax rubbed a hand over his face as if even he didn’t want to say that. “Insurgents saw what you saw. Why are you fighting this so hard?”

  Locke dropped his head. “Fucking hell… I don’t want to make peace with it.”

  “Cassidy Noble probably feels a lot of pain too,” Jax said. “She got nothing for what she did.”

  “Nothing but a fall from grace and a target on her back for people that needed a scapegoat.” Cash gestured toward Jax’s phone. “Brother, make peace.”

  No. Locke took a page out of Jax’s book and lifted a middle finger. “Sit and spin.”

  ***

  Alexander Gaev leaned back in his faux-leather chair that creaked when it moved. It looked nicer than it was and fit in with the rich décor at St. Andrew’s High School. His classroom was just as he’d left it, and the substitute teacher had followed his exact instructions for the weeks he’d been abroad.

  The program had been a success, not including the dramatics at the end that he would have to explain to the governing board. But academically, the Russian students learned American English, and he “learned” Russian. They traded stories and talked about culture. It was good, after all, for each culture to learn about the other. The school had its choice of reporters tagging along, which would make St. Andrew’s more prestigious, bringing in more donations.

  Alexander checked the clock as the bell rang. The familiar sound of high school students flooded the halls. The booming roar of laughter and gossip rolled down the expensive, exclusive floors until his polished-wood door flew open.

  “Welcome back, Mr. G!” Justine beamed. She was always the first one in the classroom for homeroom. The routine hadn’t changed. Students would be predictable, and that was what he counted on.

  Alexander pushed back from his wood desk, and the next kid behind Justine slapped him five. One by one, the children of Washington’s most elite and influential took their seats in his class. Their phones were out, their fingers going as fast as their mouths. So many conversations were happening at once.

  He gave a quick head count, submitted the information to the office, and took their questions for the next four minutes.
r />   Ring. Ring. Ring.

  “All right, guys. If you’re not in my AP English, out of here!” He threw his thumb over his shoulder and then caught a football tossed from the side. “Oh, you think I lost my touch?”

  Half the class laughed.

  “Sorry, Mr. G.”

  He tossed the football back to the second-string quarterback. “Not as sorry as you’ll be if Coach hears you lost your ball today. In the locker before first period. Now.”

  New students filed in. Everyone hit their seats, and the same questions about Russia came out all over again.

  Was it cold?

  Was there really a rescue?

  Were there mail-order brides?

  Only high school kids would ask that.

  Alexander walked in front of the classroom, uncapped a marker, and scrawled out the homework assignment for that evening. “Five-hundred-word essay on this.” He punctuated the topic then drew a line under it.

  Low word count, but their homework would require research. No one was typing this out on a tablet. “And changing things up, instead of emailing everything, I’ll send you a link to download an app.”

  That drew some eyes to him. Good, because he had just worked out a deal with Ivan Mikhailov. After the bastard tried to kill me. Information in exchange for access.

  “What’s the app do, Mr. G?”

  “You can just upload your homework to that baby.” Alexander paced the front row of desks, knowing that at least one of his students was on some app at the moment. “No more emails if you want to redo, resend, re-whatever. Just re-upload as many times as you want until I pull the assignment in the morning. At which time, it will say ‘assignment: closed’.”

  A few faces nodded. A couple of students didn’t seem to realize he’d spoken. All in all, that had been a success. “Questions?” Like any of them would ask him about installing or using an app. “All right, then. Books open. Page 202.”

  A hand shot up.

  “Yeah, Laney?” He should’ve seen that coming.

  “When will you send out the link?”

  “After I’ve talked to each class. Sometime after lunch.” Alexander glanced across the sea of faces. Not a single kid was fazed.

  How many of them downloaded links without question? Every one of them. They grabbed pictures online without question, downloaded apps, and sent their personal information to anonymous sources on the Internet. Of course they would do it for him. He never worried that this wouldn’t work. But he hadn’t thought that it would work with a one hundred percent completion rate until… that moment.

  ***

  Locke refused to get a headache, but this never-ending day could suck it. It wasn’t very often that anyone was ordered to report to Parker’s IT room—not that Locke had worked at Titan Group more than a few months. But Rocco made that more than clear.

  The techy-gadget part of Titan wasn’t Locke’s comfort zone. If someone would hand him an assault rifle, a grenade, or even a tablet full of schematics, he’d do just fine, and by the end of his day, the job would be done. Whatever that job was. There’d be no questions, just mission accomplished.

  But walking into Parker’s ice-cold office, the quiet hum of electronics buzzing with a wall of flat screens straight ahead that served as the nerve center for all operations? No thank you. Locke was miles out of his comfort zone.

  Parker Black, IT rock star and the eyes and ears of their operations, remained in the corner at his desk, seated on the edge of a black leather chair, inspecting several screens at once. To Locke’s untrained eye, it looked like multiple points of view on two separate operations. Probably not something he should disturb. But he’d been summoned. So… he tapped on a table and hoped to hell that he didn’t distract Parker from a life-and-death situation.

  “One second.” Parker lifted his hand up, his finger pointing, without turning Locke’s way. Locke remained mum in the silence that was his comfort zone. Plus, Parker was interesting to watch, a genius in his natural habitat.

  Finally, Parker pushed away from the screens and stood. “Hey.”

  Locke nodded but didn’t show any bullshit enthusiasm for a directive he wasn’t entirely sure he understood.

  “Know why you’re here?”

  “Rocco said get to your lair.” Locke tilted his head toward the wall of wonders, accouterment, and gadgets. “And here I am.”

  Parker gave his office a once-over, checking the screens that had gone dark when he stood, the many keyboards, and other things that Locke wouldn’t have been able to name with a gun put to his temple.

  “Here’s the deal,” Parker said. “You’re not focused, and it’s throwing the team off.”

  “I’m throwing the team off?” Locke furrowed his brow and bit his tongue, thinking of the countless ways that he, and probably Bishop, wanted to punch Jax in the face.

  “And apparently, you have half a story about Sadr City—and maybe the reporter.”

  “I don’t,” Locke said.

  “You do. Boss Man wants you to make peace with whatever’s throwing you off.”

  There was that phrase again. Make peace. “It isn’t her.”

  “The fact that you said her and not Sadr City…” Parker’s eyebrows lifted. “The shitshow in the war room says otherwise.”

  “Misunderstanding is all,” he grumbled.

  “Here’s the deal.”

  Locke steeled himself.

  “When the guy who’s most likely to hold open a door for a woman nearly jumps her shit rescuing her, it’s going to raise a few eyebrows.”

  Locke bit his tongue.

  “And when the same guy who doesn’t have much to say unless it’s the right thing suddenly starts spewing a metric ton of bull crap? Problematic again.”

  “I’m that guy, huh?” He ground his molars.

  Parker gave a placating smirk. “I don’t know what you know about Cassidy Noble, and what you think about the Night of Fire, but you’re going to learn what’s real and what’s fake.”

  His stomach bottomed out. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re going to deal with it and function as a healthy extension of this team.”

  Locke’s mouth parted, but nothing came out. “Why?”

  Parker shrugged. “This is Titan’s version of therapy. We deal in intel.”

  Well, no shit. But he didn’t need more intel than what he’d lived through.

  “You think you know. I get it, man. I do.” Parker crossed his arms. “But maybe you’re just too damn close. Listen. Watch. Process, and move the hell on. Do you understand me?”

  The words were like a sucker punch, and the intent was downright evil. “I’m not moving on from that night.”

  Near pity surfaced on Parker’s face. “Then you’ll never cut it here.”

  Locke gnashed his molars. If he lost his job at Titan over Cassidy Noble, he would never forgive her destructive abilities.

  Parked nudged a chair to him. “Sit your ass down and watch tapes I pulled together. Get your intel-therapy done and processed before Jared decides your weak link isn’t worth rehabbing.”

  Locke gave a flat smile. Not a lot of a choice, was there? “Right. I’m here, ready to listen and watch.” He’d watch whatever and then never bring up Sadr City, the Night of Fire, or Cassidy Noble again. Easy.

  “Good. If you didn’t do this today, Rocco probably would’ve benched you. And if you’re benched and still can’t get it together? Then you’re out of a job. Who the fuck wants to get fired from Titan? Nobody.”

  Fucking hell. “No one understands—”

  “Everyone understands. We’ve lost people in combat. At home. People we’ve been married to, related to, and loved. You’re not the only one.”

  Locke scowled. “Right…”

  “Dude, you are too levelheaded, too good, and too right for Titan to mess this up. Grab some water. Some beef jerky. Some coffee. Settle in, and get some perspective.”

  ***

  Three hours later, Loc
ke had finished watching every C-Span-recorded congressional hearing, each subcommittee discussion that never made its way onto the twenty-four-hour news-cycle highlights that were boiled down even further by the time they’d reached him in Iraq.

  Locke had reviewed—skimmed, to be honest—every article, report, and questionably classified document that Parker had forced down his throat. The stack of papers had been thick but intense.

  Nothing on his opinion of Cassidy Noble had changed. She still shouldn’t have been an embedded reporter. She shouldn’t have been assigned to interview his commanding officer, Michael Draven, as if their elite Special Forces unit were some spectacle for the viewing public at home. Locke distrusted her from the get-go, and Cassidy still had reported on things that should never have been reported in public.

  But… that crazy redhead was feisty as all hell. He’d forgotten about that. There were downtimes on base when they had nothing to do and she dicked around with them. The first couple of weeks she was there, he saw her walking around with a red spray paint can. He never asked her why. The place sucked, and maybe she was getting high off the fumes. He didn’t know, didn’t care. But he started to notice the occasional red paint marks in the shitters. The bright-red marks stood out against the wood walls of the permanent dividers and in the green ones of the port-o-potties.

  He wasn’t the only one who had noticed the attractive redhead show up—but some decided to broadcast their thoughts in vulgarities on the bathroom wall. She calmly covered them up in true Cassidy fashion, in bright-red spray paint, in a style that said, Fuck you; I see you, but I am taking you down. She made her point without saying a word.

  Though, damn—she had a way with words, and watching her battle politicians during hearings was fierce, just like the way she took on other reporters when she appeared on news panels. Those times reminded him of when she had gone head-to-head with soldiers. Locke rubbed his face and leaned back in his chair. That was probably why she was sent to Iraq—to bust people’s balls.

  His phone buzzed with a text message.

  BISHOP: Where you at? Gym, range, or beers later? Your pick.