Rio (Redcars Book 3), page 18
“You ever made cookies before?” he asked.
“Not really.” I paused. “Rainbow and Cedar Moonbeam weren’t the cookie-making type,” I added with a shrug. “I don’t think they ever quite got over creating a son who was more into building firewalls than building protest signs. Saving the planet one march at a time didn’t click for me.”
Robbie chuckled. “You don’t call them Mom and Dad?”
I shook my head. “They said it put a label on the relationship that implied ownership. Wanted me to have agency and self-direction or some shit. We didn’t do boundaries or rules. Just… vibes.”
He gave me a look I couldn’t quite read, and I laughed. “Don’t give me that pitying face. I had a good life. Weird, yeah, but good.”
“Not pity,” Robbie said. “Envy. I never knew what it was like to have parents at all.” Something shifted in the air between us, quieter, weightier. I felt as if I should apologize or something. But Robbie forged ahead with more questions. “That’s where Lyric comes from?”
“Nah,” I said, rolling another dough ball between my palms. “I chose Lyric. The name they gave me was—get this—Sunshine Nova Starseed. No joke.”
Robbie blinked. “Holy shit.”
“Yeah,” I said, laughing. “I think Rainbow was tripping on something when they filled out the birth certificate. I changed it as soon as I could access the systems I needed to hack, a practice run for all the other tasks I completed around the time I was talking to Jamie online.”
“And you chose Lyric yourself.”
“Yeah, I wanted to honor the vibe but make it less likely I’d get my ass kicked when I went to college.”
Robbie grinned. “Honestly? It suits you.”
“Thank you.”
“Where are your parents now?” Robbie asked.
I hesitated. “Gone. Cedar passed when I was fourteen—pancreatic cancer. Rainbow hung around a few years longer, but she died in a biking accident on a commune in Oregon the winter before I started college. No drama. Just… gone.
Robbie didn’t say he was sorry. Didn’t offer any hollow condolences. He just bumped my elbow with his, then went right back to rolling dough as if he hadn’t missed a beat.
Then—noise.
A door slammed somewhere below us. The mechanical thunk of shutters crashing over the windows made the air thicken in an instant.
I’d never seen Robbie move so fast.
“Move,” Enzo shouted, and Robbie was already shoving me ahead of him toward the hallway.
“What the—?”
“Now.”
He pushed me into his and Enzo’s side room, which I’d never stepped inside, and slammed the door behind us. A mechanical bolt shot across with a metallic clack under a box with a code entry.
“Intruder alarm,” he snapped. “We’ve drilled this. We lock down.”
“What the fuck, Robbie?” I pulled my knife out and flicked it open. “Let me out.”
He blocked the door with one arm, steady and firm, eyes never leaving mine. “Not yet.”
Then he reached above the desk, flipped a panel I hadn’t noticed, and revealed a screen embedded behind a pinboard. A live feed flickered into view—the same surveillance setup I’d seen Jamie and me running on my laptop.
Yard camera. North wall.
A subtle movement, almost nothing—just a shift in shadow, a ripple of motion where there shouldn’t be any.
“There,” Robbie murmured, pointing. “Top left corner. Someone’s here.”
I tensed, hand tightening around the knife. “Let me out. I can take whoever it is.”
Robbie shook his head and stepped between me and the door. “We’re safe in here. That’s the whole point.”
Safe.
I didn’t want to be safe. I didn’t want to hide behind locked doors and security feeds. I wanted to do something. To fight. To move. To matter.
“I don’t want to be locked up as if I’m a fragile piece of glass,” I yelled into his face, chest heaving. “I’m not helpless.”
“You’re not,” Robbie said quietly. “But this is how we do this. And you’re not alone.”
That made it worse somehow. I hated how much sense it made. I turned away from the monitor, heart hammering, trying to breathe through fury and fear and something close to shame. “I keep myself alive.”
Robbie gripped my arm. “They’re here,” he said, and gestured to the screen. I saw Enzo. I saw Rio. One man from inside, the other circling the back. Our intruder was trapped between them.
A flurry of motion burst across the grainy screen—blurry, chaotic. I could just make out Enzo lunging, grabbing hold. Rio swung, a brutal punch landing square. The attacker staggered, then fought back, arms jerking, struggling for something—something in his waistband, maybe a weapon. It was too fast, too muddled to make out.
“No,” I breathed, fingers white-knuckled around the knife. Fuck! Rio! “I need to help him.”
Robbie turned to block me again. “You’ll get in the way.”
“Give me the fucking code to the lock.”
“No.”
I raised the knife—not to threaten, not really—but Robbie still flinched. I saw it in his eyes, that flicker of fear, and guilt twisted sharp in my gut.
“Fuck, I won’t… Shit, Robbie… I wouldn’t hurt you,” I said roughly, and instead of pushing past him, I turned to the door and stood there, every muscle coiled.
“I know.”
The lock disengaged with a solid thunk, and I yanked the door open hard enough to slam it into the wall. I bolted out into the garage—every door locked, every window covered with thick steel shutters. I knew the system, I knew what it could do, but to see it in action was something I couldn’t get my head around when in the middle of the engine bay, Rio had a man on his knees, one arm twisted behind his back. The guy was bloodied, panting, face turned toward the floor. Enzo stood to the side, a gun raised, steady, aimed at the man’s head.
“Jesus,” I breathed, slowing a little as I approached. My heart thudded as if it was trying to punch through my ribs. Rio glanced up for the briefest second, his eyes wild and dark and locked on me. Then back to the intruder.
“Stay back,” Enzo ordered, not even glancing at me.
I didn’t listen. I moved in closer, close enough to see the trembling in the guy’s shoulders, the broken skin across Rio’s knuckles, the pressure in every tense line of his body.
“What the fuck!”
The man lifted his face, blood smeared across his mouth, one eye already swelling. He stared straight at me and pointed. “Him! They want him! Millions! I’ll split it with you.” Enzo crouched slowly, his gun never wavering. “I’ll split the money, man,” the guy stammered. “Fuck, I don’t want trouble. I was just—”
“How did you find us?” Rio growled.
“We tracked him.” The intruder jerked his chin toward me.
“‘We’?”
“Just me now.”
“How did you track him?”
The man sneered. “He’s not all that. I’ve been following his patterns for a week.”
Rio kicked him—hard, brutal. The man folded with a grunt.
Something shifted in Enzo. I saw the edge in him—the fear masked behind calm, the calculation happening in real time.
He turned to me suddenly, gripped my arm, and raised an eyebrow—just the tiniest flick, but I caught it. Then he shoved me hard, forcing me down to my knees beside the guy, his hand twisted in my hair, baring my throat. I struggled, but Enzo held me tight.
Rio startled. “Enzo, what the fuck?”
“You want this man?” Enzo asked the intruder, knife pressed to my temple. “You said millions, right?”
“Yes! Yes!” the guy gasped. “We’ll split it, just let me go, man!”
Enzo’s voice went ice-cold, and he gestured at Rio and Robbie. “Four ways, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, yeah, we’ll make a deal.”
“Who else are we splitting the money with?”
“No one,” he panted. “I’m not sharing with anyone else.”
“Bullshit,” Enzo snarled. “You said ‘we’, so you sure as hell didn’t find him alone.”
“I followed the leads! Been tracking him for weeks! My partner—he died in a crash this asshole escaped from—he—”
“No one else?” Enzo pressed.
“No, I swear—no one else knows I found him—just us four, man, just us—”
“Shut the fuck up,” Enzo snapped, and then—his eyes never leaving the guy—he nodded at Rio.
Everything in me stilled.
Enzo moved first, yanking Robbie back into his side, shielding him with one arm. The second his hand tightened on Robbie’s shoulder, Rio shifted.
No hesitation.
He placed both hands around the stranger’s neck—callused, brutal, sure—and squeezed. The body bucked, legs kicking wild and uncoordinated as Rio’s grip locked hard. He thrashed, gasping, eyes bulging with panic and disbelief.
Rio’s jaw was clenched, his face a mask of fury and purpose. He didn’t speak. He didn’t shout. He just held on, fingers digging deep, until sounds went from choking to wet gurgles.
A sharp crack echoed in the silence as Rio shoved the dead guy to the floor, following through with a final jerk that cracked his neck.
The body crumpled.
Still. Empty.
No one said a word. Not right away. The only sound was the rush of blood in my ears and the ragged breathing of the men still standing.
At last, Rio looked at me.
And I had no idea what he saw on my face.
Enzo stepped forward, his expression hard but focused. “We need to strip the body, bag it, and wipe the cameras that picked this up. Robbie, lockdown override, clear this zone only.”
Robbie pulled out his phone and tapping in the command, his hands shaking.
Enzo turned to Rio. “You okay?”
Rio pushed to his feet. “Yeah.”
Enzo glanced at me. “You?”
I swallowed. My throat burned.
Enzo’s gaze flicked to the body, and I blinked in shock, and then Enzo called my name, bringing me back.
“Lyric? What now?”
I thought on my feet. “No calls. No chatter. We burn this guy and every digital footprint he left behind. Tonight.” I paused, my chest tight, focusing on Rio’s set expression. “And then we get the fuck out of Dodge.”
TWENTY-TWO
Rio
“What the fuck!” Jamie snapped from behind us, stomping into the room like a thundercloud, Killian on his heels.
“They found him,” Enzo said. “I’m taking Robbie somewhere safe. You know where.” He bro-hugged Rio, who nodded, and all too soon Enzo was gone, Robbie in tow.
Jamie didn’t even glance at us as he opened a tablet, the screen displaying lines and lines of symbols and commands—technical information I couldn’t ever hope to understand. Lyric exchanged glances with me.
He’d seen me kill a man with my bare hands—and he wasn’t turning away. He wasn’t in shock. He wasn’t disgusted. He watched me as if he understood or even approved. There wasn’t fear in his eyes, just brutal knowing, as if we were made from the same kind of violence.
Then he focused on whatever Jamie was showing him and gasped. Whatever he was staring at was bad.
“This shouldn’t exist,” Jamie said, and scrolled with one finger. “It wasn’t in the mirrored architecture we built.”
“Fuck,” Lyric cursed, and I stepped over the dead guy to stand at his side, ready to be there if he needed me. “Either the sandbox pulled it in through a buried hook… or something reached in.”
Buried hooks? Sandboxes? My brow furrowed. I might not understand the words, but the imperative was clear—everyone was in danger.
“It’s not the system, but fuck, if something in the original code is still active. This isn’t just a bot or a ghost signal, it’s intelligent routing.”
Jamie swore under his breath. “Which means the Cave could be compromised.”
“Caleb is already looped in,” Killian murmured. “We should leave.”
“What’s happening?” I asked, but everyone was focused on that screen.
Lyric grabbed it, and his fingers flew so fast it was a blur. “I’ve got it. Isolating now. Cutting off every outbound signal.” I couldn’t follow every word, but the tension crawling up my spine didn’t need a translation. I understood the killing and the dead man here, but all of this was frustrating as fuck to listen to. I watched the lines of code flash by. I must have had a thing for competence, because watching him move like that—focused and in control—was doing things to me I didn’t want to think too hard about. So fucking sexy it almost made me forget something shitty was going down.
“What’s wrong?” I asked again, shaking my head to get back in focus.
“We need to—”
“Jesus Christ! Will someone answer me?” I shouted, and Jamie blinked at me. “Enzo’s gone with Robbie—we have a body to get rid of, and we need to be out of here. Now.” I wanted my family to be safe.
“It’s okay, Rio,” Jamie reassured, even though it was clear that it wasn’t freaking okay.
Lyric hadn’t stopped tapping keys, talking under his breath. “This is my fault. My fault.”
I didn’t have an answer. Just a building knot of helpless rage. Because I didn’t get it. Because they were speaking in riddles. Because whatever this was—it was back, and I didn’t know how to stop it.
“Okay,” Lyric said eventually, exhaling hard. “I’ve shut it down.”
“So, now we go, right?” I asked, and my voice cracked with temper. “Are you safe, Lyric?” I motioned around me to my family. “Are any of us safe here?”
Jamie touched my arm. “There’s no contract out on us, Rio; it’s on Lyric.”
That didn’t make it better! I rounded on Jamie, gripped him, and shook him a little. “Is Lyric fucking safe?”
Lyric moved between us, easing my hands away from Jamie. “How this guy found me, and whatever this glitch in the code is, we can handle it. The clock is pushed forward. I don’t have time to be pretty with this—I need to get inside and direct to Kessler.” He pulled a small memory stick out of his pocket as if he was checking it, then slipped it back in. “I’ll leave now, and no one will know I was here.”
Not on my watch. I grabbed Lyric. “You’re not fucking leaving on your own!”
He shook me off. “I can’t do this from the outside, I need root access. I won’t stay here and put any of you in danger if someone or something is tracking me down.”
“You’re not going anywhere!” I snapped, my voice louder than I meant it to be. “You think you can just walk out of here and fix this alone? After everything? No fucking way.”
Jamie stepped forward, chin lifted. “It’s the only way, Rio. You know it. If we don’t give Lyric a way in, he’ll never get close to the core—never bring the system down.”
I rounded on him, fury boiling over. “I don’t fucking understand any of that, so don’t give me that shit.”
Jamie tried for calm. “Rio, listen, Kessler is in an impenetrable fortress protected by a rogue AI that will do anything to protect him. Once Lyric’s inside, he opens the real doors, and we get in and kill Kessler.”
I was apoplectic. My fists were clenched so tight they ached, nails biting into skin. I could feel the burn of my pulse in my jaw, my ears, my fucking teeth. “You want to set him up as bait and hope he survives? That’s your grand plan?”
“It’s the only way,” Lyric said.
“No.” I shoved a hand through my hair, pacing, feeling as if I was going to explode. My heart was racing so hard it hurt. “Fuck, Jamie. You think this is easy for him? For any of us? I want to hit something—I want to hit you.”
“Then do it!” Jamie shouted back. “Maybe if you stop pretending you can protect everyone all the damn time, we’d actually get somewhere.”
“You don’t get it—”
“No, you don’t get it! This isn’t about what you want. It’s about ending this thing before it ends Lyric and whoever else the fuck it wants off the planet!”
“Stop!”
Lyric’s voice cut through the chaos.
He was between us before I could blink, his hand pressing flat to my chest. Not pushing. Just there. Steady. Warm.
“Breathe, Rio,” he said, fierce and quiet. “I need you calm, not tearing this place apart.”
I looked down at him, my chest heaving. His eyes met mine without flinching. And for a second, all the noise in my head dulled to a low thrum.
“I can get to Kessler somehow,” Lyric added. “Hand myself over, and I’ll do it because it’s the only way.”
“You’re not going in alone—”
“He won’t be going in alone,” Jamie interrupted. “Caleb came up with the idea that I take the contract on Lyric and walk him in the front door.”
My vision snapped to him, rage detonating as if a switch had been thrown. “What the fuck did you just say?”
Jamie held up both hands, calm but firm. “Fake it, Rio. Someone takes the contract, gets close, plays it out. You pretend. Head out of your ass, please.”
I was still seething, but part of my brain snagged on the idea. Not because I liked it—but because it was the kind of desperate move that might work and a plan I could be part of.
Lyric watched me, his expression unreadable. But he didn’t say no. I exhaled hard. My pulse still thundered in my ears.
Then Lyric spoke again. “He’s got a point. A fulfilled contract would stop the AI from assessing me as a risk and bringing all of this here. I just thought I had more time. I have to go in sooner than I planned—get closer, take the risk, pull it apart from the inside before he figures out I’m still in the game.”
I blinked at him. “Inside where?”
He couldn’t meet my gaze. “Inside his data core. The one place he’d built to be untouchable—physically off-grid, air-gapped, and buried under layers of deception and hardware. It’s where the AI lives now, where it thinks. Learns. Evolves.”
