Total pages in book: 75
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 77051 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 385(@200wpm)___ 308(@250wpm)___ 257(@300wpm)
River’s eyes widen as she smiles.
“Dean’s got connections. Owner of Misfits is a client. Enjoy.” He tosses a few more packs onto the table before stepping away from the table.
River and I both swipe a pack before we follow Sawyer.
“You’ll both have dual stations,” Sawyer continues. “On-site and remote capabilities. You’ll report to me and Dean for now, then loop into Rae for fieldwork support when it makes sense.”
He walks us over to a glass-walled bullpen adjacent to Rae’s comms room. Two sleek setups—multi-monitor arrays, silent keyboards, retinal scan security. There’s already a sticky note on one screen.
In what must be Rae’s handwriting: Welcome to the Shark Tank. Bite back. R
River snorts. “I’m going to love her.”
We get settled—logins, systems, protocols—and Sawyer briefs us on upcoming threats BRAVO’s tracking: a biotech leak in Prague, a cartel contact gone dark in Tijuana, and something weird brewing with a data breach tied to a company named Cathedral. That last one makes River go still for a second.
Sawyer doesn’t miss it. “We’ll talk more soon. For now, ease in. Decompression first. You earned it.”
As he walks away, River swivels in her chair and grins at me. “You realize we’re like… hacker vigilantes now?”
I lean over and kiss her. “We’ve always been vigilantes, baby. Now we’ve got funding.”
Later in the evening, at Gage and Arrow’s apartment, the smell of pepperoni and garlic knots hits me first.
Arrow’s already tearing into a slice on the couch, one foot propped up on the coffee table like he owns the place. Which—technically—he still does.
“You’re late,” he says without looking up.
“We were working,” I reply, kicking the door shut behind me.
“Working?” Juno echoes from the beanbag chair, her legs tucked under her. “It’s been one day.”
“We had to read like four dossiers and sign seventeen NDAs,” River says, flopping down beside her. “And we got retina scanned. Twice.”
“That’s just Rae showing off,” says Arrow from the couch, sipping on a soda.
“How exciting,” Lark says, a big smile crossing her features.
Knight leans against the wall with a brooding smirk, arms crossed, always in observation mode. The guy’s quieter than a locked database, but when he talks, you listen.
Poe and Ozzy show up a few minutes later, Poe juggling a six-pack and a bag of cookies like it’s an Olympic sport.
“Guess who finally tracked the Cathedral shell IP through the Balkan network?” Poe announces.
“Not tonight,” Arrow groans. “No work talk. Just pizza and bad TV.”
River and I exchange a look.
We like this. The chaos. The comfort. The family.
Later, after the third episode of some awful reality dating show and a full dozen jokes about me and River being the new golden couple of BRAVO, I catch Lark slipping away toward the balcony. Knight follows after her.
Arrow notices too. “Those two are next.”
“Yeah?” I say.
Juno nods. “You can see it, right? The way they look at each other?”
River snuggles against my side, warm and familiar. “Sounds like the perfect story.”
And for once… I agree.
Because this? This isn’t just a happy ending.
It’s our beginning.