Page 26 of Peak’s Code

She looked directly at him. "Like them." The way she answered him made a shiver run down his spine. Her answer bothered him, not because it wasn't true, but because it probably was. He knew that when you spent a year and a half studying monsters, eventually, you start understanding how monsters think.

Peak plugged the bypass cable into the control panel, and the laptop screen flickered.

ACCESS DENIED

He wasn't surprised. He tried again using a different protocol, and still got nothing. His third attempt yielded nothing once more.

Maeve watched the code scrolling across the screen. Then quietly said, "You're brute-forcing it."

Peak looked up. "So what?" She was right, but he was feeling defensive. He usually didn’t have someone looking over his shoulder, telling him what to do.

"Stop doing that,” she whispered. He shot her a look, and she sighed. "They'll log failed attempts."

His fingers froze. "You know this system?"

"No, but I know the people who installed it." She knelt beside him. "Move." He hesitated. "Peak." She held out her hand. "Trust me." For reasons he couldn't explain, he slid the laptop toward her.

Her fingers danced across the keyboard, not fast but precise. Every command was deliberate. She wasn't trying passwords, and she wasn't attacking the system—she was talking to it.

Peak leaned closer. "What are you doing?"

"I’m listening,” she said.

"Listening for what?" he asked.

"Every system tells you what it expects." He watched her reroute communications through an offline diagnostic channel. There were no alerts, no failed login attempts, and no security warnings—just silence, and then a blinking cursor.

Peak's eyebrows shot up. "No way."

Maeve smiled without looking up. "They left maintenance mode enabled."

"They—” He laughed quietly. “They actually did."

She shrugged. "Professionals make mistakes too." The lock emitted a soft metallic click, and Peak stared at the now-green indicator light.

"You just bypassed military-grade security in under two minutes." He was pretty damn impressed by her.

Maeve closed the laptop. "No." She stood. "I bypassed lazy programmers—there’s a difference.”

Peak couldn't stop staring at her. She'd been impressive before, but now, she was terrifyingly sexy. "If Captain sees that you can do that, he’ll never let you leave." She reached for the door handle, and Peak caught her wrist. "Wait."

She looked at him. "Why?" He listened and heard nothing—no footsteps or voices. There was only silence, making his instincts scream at him.

He slowly released her wrist. "Something's wrong."

Maeve nodded. "I know."

"How?" he asked. She pointed toward the bottom of the steel door. A thin line of light shone beneath it—yellow, but not fluorescent.

Peak frowned. "You think it might be a generator?"

"No." She swallowed. "I smell—” Her voice faded, and Peak inhaled deeply. At first, all he could smell was damp earth, rust, and a hint of oil. But then, he smelled something sickeningly sweet. He knew the smell. Hell, every biker did. It was fresh gasoline.

Maeve's eyes widened. "They're going to burn it down."

Peak's pulse slammed into overdrive. "Burn what down?"

She looked him dead in the eye. "Whatever's behind this door." As if answering her, a muffled explosion echoed from somewhere beyond the steel barrier, followed immediately by desperate pounding and the unmistakable sound of someone screaming for help.