Page 92 of Peak’s Code

A tear slipped down Wren's cheek. “Thanks to you." Maeve wrapped an arm around her little sister. Across the yard, Peak helped Warden hang a new security camera over the clubhouse entrance. Captain stood nearby, pretending to supervise while mostly getting in everyone's way. Peak laughed at something Warden said, and the sound carried across the yard. Captain caught Maeve watching him, and he looked from Peak to Maeve and smiled knowingly.

"You picked a good one,” Lily said.

Maeve smiled to herself. "I think—” She watched Peak glance toward the porch until his eyes found hers. The moment he smiled, everything inside her settled. "I think that he found me.” And for the first time since she'd begun searching for her sister, Maeve realized she wasn't leaving the Grave Prowlers behind. Somewhere between the gunfire, the motel room, the coded messages, and the man who refused to stop believing in her, she'd found something she'd never expected. A home. The nightmare was finally over, and her future was waiting just across the yard.

Epilogue

Six Months Later

The Chesapeake Bay was calm that evening. The last rays of sunlight stretched across the water behind Peak's house, turning the bay into molten gold while the old dock creaked softly beneath his boots. For the first time in years, his house didn't feel empty. Laughter drifted through the open kitchen windows. Wren was inside arguing with Warden over whether pineapple belonged on pizza, and Warden insisted it was a crime. Wren insisted his beard made him incapable of making good decisions.

Maeve was laughing so hard she could barely breathe, and Peak smiled to himself. He was home. It still felt strange calling it that. For years it had simply been a house with too many bedrooms, too many memories, and too much silence. Now, one bedroom remained filled because Wren refused to move out until she found a place of her own. She claimed she was "house-sitting." Maeve called it freeloading. Peak secretly hoped she would stay longer.

The library had become a workspace where he and Wren spent hours rebuilding the crawler—not as spyware, but as software that helped federal investigators locate trafficking victims faster than ever before.

The garage was usually full of Grave Prowler motorcycles, but the club was keeping him busier than usual. Captain would stop in and claim that he was "checking on the progress." Peak was fairly certain his Prez simply liked stealing Maeve's coffee. Life had become wonderfully inconvenient, and he wouldn't have traded it for anything.

His phone buzzed, and Captain's name popped up on the screen. Peak answered immediately. "Everything okay?"

Captain laughed. "You answer your phone faster than anyone I know.”

"You only call when something's broken,” Peak said.

"Exactly,” Captain grumbled.

Peak leaned against the dock railing. "What broke?"

"Nothing."

That made him suspicious. "Then why are you calling?"

There was a long pause. "You still planning on telling that girl you love her?"

Peak closed his eyes. "I've told her."

"No." Captain chuckled. "You told her you loved her."

"You ain't told her you're planning on keeping her." Peak rubbed the back of his neck.

"You spying on me now? I don’t see how my love life is club business,” Peak said.

"I'm just trying to help,” Captain insisted.

Peak laughed. "What do you want, Captain?"

"I want my damn hacker to stop overthinking everything."

"I don't overthink things,” Peak insisted.

Captain laughed so hard that Peak had to hold the phone away from his ear. "Boy, you built a custom operating system because you don't trust commercially available software." Peak couldn't argue, and Captain lowered his voice. "Quit waiting and make the girl yours."

“We’re heading your way, so do it before we get there,” Captain ordered. He and a bunch of the guys were coming over for a cookout, and he knew that if he didn’t tell Maeve that he wanted forever with her, the guys would give him a lot of shit. The line went dead, and Peak stared at the phone for a moment before slipping it back into his pocket. Captain wasn’t wrong, and he hated when his Prez made sense.

The back door opened, and Maeve stepped onto the porch carrying two mugs. She'd changed since the spring, not physically, although the worry that had lived in her eyes for nearly two years had finally disappeared. No, it was something quieter. She smiled more, and she slept through the night. Sometimes she laughed so hard she snorted, then denied doing it. Peak had wisely learned never to mention it again.

She walked barefoot across the dock toward him. "Did Captain call you?" Peak nodded. "He checking on his favorite mechanic?"

"He says I'm his favorite hacker,” he said.