Carolina Moon

Mapping the Enemy: K.C.

Grady sounded like he was speaking through gritted teeth. “Whitlock’s people aren’t just calling, K.C. They’re faxing over ‘Emergency Injunctions.’ They want the water treatment plant declared a crime scene under their private jurisdiction. Starling is the only thing standing in their way right now. He’s demanding a federal hand-off, but my deputies are looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.”

I gripped the edge of the walnut counter until my knuckles turned white. I was positive that Graham Whitlock was either one of Stroud’s men, or Stroud himself working under an alias. Either way, he was trying to play the victim, manipulating the very legal system Grady was sworn to protect.

“Hold the line, Grady,” I instructed. “If Starling is who I think he is, he’ll provide the cover you need. Don’t let Whitlock’s people near those servers. If they get the hardware back, the evidence vanishes.”

The moment the call ended with Grady, I punched in the number for Leon’s secure line. I needed to know for sure if he had deployed ‘Agent Starling’ or if Stroud was playing a double-blind.

Leon answered on the first ring. “It’s me, K.C.,” he confirmed automatically. “I came in with a team with DOJ credentials. We’re in a motel on the edge of town.”

I immediately let out a sigh of relief I didn’t realize I’d been holding onto.

“Right now, we’ve bought Grady about twelve hours before the real Feds realize the paperwork is a ghost,” he continued. “Use that time.”

“What do you know about Whitlock?” Tess asked. “This guy is claiming he owns the facility.”

“From what my men have found, it looks like Graham Whitlock is an alias used by Stroud for his domestic acquisitions,” Leon confirmed. “It’s a clean paper trail though. There’s no ties to his military tech branch. He’s sloppy when he’s angry though, and you making that plant go dark made him very, very angry.”

I looked at Tess as the call ended. She was still looking at the “Stress Thresholds” on her screen. The reality that the Kingsport mission and Darian’s kidnapping had been a plot to harvest more information on me was a bitter pill to swallow.

“They aren’t just coming for me,” I commented absently. My mind was still on Darian though. “They’re trying to build a cage made of sound that no wolf can ever break. If Grady loses control of that plant to ‘Whitlock,’ the narrative becomes that I attacked a citizen’s private property.”

I knew we couldn’t stay on the defensive. If Leon had bought us twelve hours, we needed to find where Stroud was operating the “brain” of the regional grid from.

I watched Tess move through pages of data, clicking between folders and files. Eventually, she found a cross-reference between the “Whitlock” alias and a series of “land improvements” near an old textile mill way out in the countryside. “He didn’t just buy the water treatment facility,” she observed. “The old mill was bought through a shell company called Whitlock Holdings.”

It wasn’t just a factory though. It was an industrial fortress built on a granite shelf that was the perfect natural resonator for the frequencies they were testing.

I walked to the window and looked out at the creek. Grant, Holden, Finn, and Gabe were still out there, silent sentries in the pines. The peace of the cabin was starting to feel thin, like a cord being stretched.

I turned back to Tess, my voice low and steady. “Grady’s holding the door, and Leon’s playing the Feds. That leaves us with the mill.”

Tess pulled up a topographical map of the county. “Should we coordinate with Marcus and the others back at the bungalow?” she asked.

I nodded, sitting down next to her again. “There’s just one thing I can’t shake though.” I paused, trying to fully gather my thoughts into a coherent sentence. “When we rescued Darian… he looked up and grinned… like he was looking at someone, or something. I didn’t really have time to think about it as being anything more than relief though.”

She was silent for a long while, but I saw the way her throat worked as she swallowed down the discomfort and bad memories that his name brought up. “So… what are you thinking?”

“I’m not fully sure yet,” I admitted. “If I was being monitored… it would make sense that he was too. If there was a camera, the grin could’ve been spiteful, you know? Like a ‘f**k you’ to the Grid-Keepers and Stroud. But… what if it wasn’t? What if he knew we’d come? That you’re too good of a person to just let him sit there being tortured? What if that grin was because everything had went exactly according to his plan?”

Mentioning Darian made the air in the cabin feel colder. There was a weight that settled on my shoulders that accompanied the memory of how he had looked at Tess before. Like she was a prize to be won rather than her own person. He had been defeated before, but thinking about that chilling grin that had spread across his face, I felt like we might’ve played right into his hands.

“Darian isn’t just a victim,” I growled, the Alpha surfacing at the mention of his name. “The Whitmores built the grid. If Stroud needed someone to refine it and turn it into a static that could be used as a tether that could hold an Alpha, Darian is the only one with a motive and the twisted brilliance to do it. He didn’t just survive the smelting plant, he was a consultant.”

Tess went pale, her fingers still on the keyboard. I could see the memory of her kidnapping flickering behind her eyes. “K.C.,” she whispered. “If he knew we were coming… if he wanted to be rescued… then we didn’t bring him back for safety. We brought the architect of the cage right into the heart of the pack.”

“And if Leon’s come here with a DOJ group… the pack in Kingsport is even more vulnerable now…”

The realization brought a cold chill that caused my wolf’s hackles to rise. None of this was Stroud’s work. It had Darian’s fingerprints all over it. The grin wasn’t relief. It was the look of a man watching his Trojan horse pass through the gates.

We looked back at the “Whitlock” alias. Whitlock. Whitmore. It was too close to be a coincidence. Whether Stroud was using a variation of Darian’s name as a taunt or they were more deeply entwined, the message was clear. The old war never ended.

I contacted Marcus immediately. “Change of plans,” I told him, my voice sounding like snapping bone. “Darian Whitmore is the key. We need to know where Darian is now. If he’s with the pack, he’s a ticking bomb.”

We looked at the map where the textile mill was, and I pointed to the old sluice gates. “If the tether is being ran from there, the signal is probably originating from the sub-basement.”

I looked at Tess and the terror that formed in her eyes now. There was still a cold, hard flame though. The same look that had been in her eye when she shut down the first grid. Darian had tried to own her once. She wouldn’t let it happen again.

I moved into the hallway. There was a gun case in the closet. I unlocked it and started pulling out firearms. “Let’s go find out if he’s still smiling when we tear his tether out by the roots.”