Total pages in book: 47
Estimated words: 43456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 217(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 43456 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 217(@200wpm)___ 174(@250wpm)___ 145(@300wpm)
Fallon shook his head with a laugh. “That’s the last thing you gotta worry about.”
“Monk would’ve been a better name if it were based on his sex life before he met you,” Wizard added with a rare grin.
I laughed too, stunned to find humor in such a dark situation. Meeting Keegan hadn’t just brought me protection and a man I was quickly falling for…I was surrounded by people who acted more like family than friends.
13
TOMCAT
Once Wizard managed to crack open the corrupted black box contents, it had taken less time than I’d anticipated for Wizard, Linden, Fallon, and me to analyze the data from Carson Holbrook’s crash. It confirmed what we’d all expected. The pilot error narrative was bullshit. Carson had not made a mistake.
The four of us had spent long hours poring over every line of code, every snippet of flight telemetry, and every anomaly in the system logs. Linden had amazed us all with her eye for detail and uncanny ability to recognize patterns in the chaos. Fallon, with his experience as a pilot, had been invaluable, double-checking flight dynamics against Wizard’s data extractions. Wizard himself, as expected, had managed to expose layers of tampering buried beneath subtle, sophisticated alterations.
The truth was worse than just an error or malfunction—Carson’s crash had been caused by an override command deliberately inputted from somewhere outside the cockpit. The cold precision of it twisted my gut, the implications stark and unsettling. Someone had intentionally sent a military test jet down, costing a skilled pilot his life. And then they’d tried to fucking bury it.
The confirmation was sobering, but it was also fuel. I could see it in Linden’s eyes when Wizard compiled all the information and laid the facts out, cold and irrefutable. Her green eyes darkened, a shadow of pain and anger flickering behind the glassy surface. She sat silently, absorbing the details, her jaw set with quiet determination. She deserved answers—and justice for Carson. I was gonna make damn fucking sure she got both.
The days blurred together, fueled by coffee, determination, and simmering anger. Early on, we’d discovered a disturbing pattern as we dug deeper into any crashes linked to Aegis and their classified military aircraft programs.
Wizard painstakingly unraveled each set of data, reconstructing files with the kind of skill only he possessed. Each time he uncovered another crash, he brought us a new dossier, and the four of us would dissect every line, specifically noting any trace signals for remote tampering after we figured out what happened with Carson.
We kept meticulous records, marking inconsistencies and noting signs of interference. I was constantly impressed by Linden. Her meticulous gaze never wavered, spotting some discrepancies we might’ve missed without her.
When we’d gone back through several years of failed flights, we looked at them all collectively, piecing together the fragmented evidence to find the thread that connected them.
The chilling picture became clear. These were all intentional takedowns, and the perpetrators had hidden their tracks behind layers of sophisticated digital interference.
After that realization, we started digging deeper into Aegis. With every layer we peeled back, I felt increasingly uneasy. We were untangling something darker and more dangerous than any of us had anticipated. The kind of corruption that led to cover-ups, to silenced voices, and to men they’d sworn to defend dying in the skies.
I didn’t know how far down this rot went, but I intended to find out.
At the end of the week, Wizard and I were ready to take what we’d found to King. Once we laid it all out, he would decide if they had enough actionable intel to start planning our next move. One that would likely involve violence and dead bodies, but in the end, the cancer would be cut out, and the wound would be cauterized.
I stepped into King's office, shutting the door behind me. A wall of familiar faces greeted me—each one a brother, a man I trusted with my life. A familiar tension hung in the air, but it wasn’t oppressive. Just another day with men who knew how to handle shit most people ran from.
King sat behind his desk, his elbows resting casually on the polished surface, wearing his perpetual scowl like armor. Blaze lounged beside the bar, staring intensely into amber liquid in a tumbler. The pyrologist and demolitions expert was probably contemplating the nature of fire itself.
Wizard had beaten me there and was sprawled at the conference table, laptop open, his fingers flying across keys at warp speed. Ace was on the couch, flicking through pages on his tablet between belly rubs for the giant hellhound turned pussy cat, stretched out over his lap.
Echo leaned against the wall near the window, his eyes scanning the room with quiet intensity—always observing, cataloging details most people missed. The road captain was a surveillance specialist, so he would be vital to whatever plan we came up with. Kevlar, our sergeant at arms, stood beside him, his arms crossed, a faintly amused smirk forming on his lips as he eyed me, clearly anticipating whatever chaos I'd brought to their doorstep.