Fox made it back to his motel in record time, but Axel wasn’t there yet, so he let himself in and settled down to dink around with his laptop while he waited.

He briefly turned the TV on to provide background noise, but almost every channel was news or old sitcoms, so he switched it off and focused on pictures of surfing cats while he tried to work out what exactly he should say to Axel. Would it be weird to start quizzing him over gyros in a motel room? He figured at least it was his motel room, so if Axel wanted to he could just up and leave at any time. And should he ask before they ate, or after? Would it lead to a meal of uncomfortable silence if he opened with it?

God, how was it he could dish out innuendo all day long, but suddenly this made him nervous?

Something flashed on his screen and he glanced to it. A notification nagged at him, and it took a second to figure out why.

It was a new email to an old inbox. A very old inbox.

A secret inbox.

He’d almost forgotten his mail client even connected to that account. He’d given up his hacker days soon after he joined the CIA. Those skills had got him the job, but they were frowned on nowadays unless he was specifically doing it for his country. It wasn’t a hard line to remember, but sometimes he kind of missed Anonymous. He’d been with them right from the start, ironically only leaving for Langley once Anonymous really started getting out of the trolling business and into the kind of hacktivism he’d argued in favor of.

And now there was a brand new email to an account that had lain dormant for almost ten years.

Fox glanced toward the door. He didn’t know why. Then he opened his client and brought up the email.

Tenko,

I know it’s you behind all this. I know you’re the only one smart enough to chase me all over the USA. So let me give you this for free.

Back off.

I know you made it out today.

Next time you won’t be so lucky.

~Spike.

A fist pounded on the door in time with the hammering of his heart, and he let out a choked scream. He almost dropped the laptop in his scramble to get off the bed and grab his gun.

“Fox? Are you okay in there?”

Fox had his Glock out of the holster and his thumb on the safety before he recognized the voice. “Axel?”

“Yeah, buddy. It’s me. These gyros are gonna get cold, man.”

Fox’s hands shook as he eased the gun back where it belonged. His chest heaved for breath. He crossed the room and fumbled with the locks, and backed away the moment the door was open.

Axel blinked at him as he came inside. “You sure you’re okay?”

“Never said I was.”

“True.” Axel kicked the door shut and put the takeout bag down on the bed, then stepped in and gripped Fox’s shoulders. “What’s wrong?”

“I don’t… It just…” He waved toward his laptop but seemed to encompass the entire room. “And I didn’t… Like, it’s not supposed to be…”

Words wouldn’t come. He tried so hard to squeeze all his fear, all the information, every scrap of data down into an answer for Axel, but it wasn’t happening. How could it? How could he condense years of rivalry with other hackers that should have been left in the past down to a single sentence? How did he explain just how disturbing it was to get a death threat off someone who knew him, both back then and now to be able to connect his old Anonymous handle to the CIA investigator he was today?

Somehow I got an email that scared me didn’t do it justice.

Axel leaned closer.

Fox had the most surreal thought right then. He thought that Axel might be about to kiss him, which just went to show how screwed up he’d gotten over one dumb email. He began to draw breath, to laugh maybe, or to apologize.

Axel kissed him.

Whatever Fox had been about to do died in his throat, stolen away by Axel’s lips. The kiss was ice cream on a summer’s day, water on a wildfire. It swept through him from head to toe, soothing and comforting, until there was no fear, no doubt left behind. His heart raced, but the reason had shifted.

Axel’s lips left his so slowly, so gradually, that Fox couldn’t pinpoint the exact moment it happened. Axel’s breath was warm across his still-damp lips.

Fox didn’t want to open his eyes, in case reality didn’t match what he might just have dreamed, but like a missing tooth his tongue couldn’t help but probe, he had to know. His eyes drifted open like they had their own minds made up about it.

Axel was there. So close. His dark eyes creased with concern. His lips pink from the kiss.

“Better?”

Fox let out a slow breath. “The best,” he laughed.

Axel snorted at that and took two steps back. “I somehow doubt it,” he mumbled. A touch of color hit his cheeks as he spoke. “Oh, hey.”

Fox could have scowled as Axel’s cellphone buzzed, but he did his best not to. Whoever was responsible had no way of knowing what they’d interrupted.

Hell, Fox couldn’t even name it.

Axel swiped his phone’s screen and frowned as his eyes skimmed back and forth. His thumb tapped and swiped some more, and then he nodded. “Funny story,” he said. “We have a suspect in custody who let out a name, and that name was a partial match for an employee at Hidden Creek Insurance, so I went to interview him.”

Fox blinked as Axel switched gears like nothing had happened. “I’ve spoken to everyone there,” he offered. “Who was it?”

“Clive Marsters. He’s their IT guy. You spoke to him today?”

Fox shook his head. “No. Okay, almost everyone. I had to avoid IT or my cover would’ve been blown.”

“He claims he wasn’t in the office today, but I noticed he gave off a little smoke smell when we got close, so I had my team put some surveillance on him. They’ve just sent some snapshots over, that’s all. Looks like he decided to go out for dinner.”

Fox ran a hand through his hair. “He goes to the office, lies to the FBI when they ask him where he was, then goes out to dinner, and… that’s it?” He hesitated as his own phone beeped, and he pulled it out.

Peter had sent him an email, so he tapped at the screen to open it.

Clive Marsters. Head of IT. Suspicious lack of porn in his files. Very disappointed. Suggest you quiz him about it.

Fox smirked as he typed a response.

FBI already talked to him. Definite suspect. See if you can find out who he’s been in contact with outside the business? Owe you a box of donuts.

He eyed the time and felt a pang of guilt at asking Peter to work even later into the night, but if the guy wanted to say no Fox wouldn’t blame him. Thankfully Peter’s answer was Make them Krispy Kreme and you’re on, and Fox put his phone in his pocket.

“My guy reached the same conclusion as your guy,” he said as he returned his attention to Axel. “I’ve asked him to find out who Marsters has been in contact with. Can I see your surveillance shots? Let’s see who we’re tailing here.”

“Sure.” Axel handed his phone over.

Fox stared at the screen until his eyes felt so dry that it forced him to blink.

It couldn’t be.

He zoomed in on one of the images, taken after dark and with the smudge of a passing vehicle blocking half of the frame. The face looked impossibly familiar, even after all these years, but it couldn’t be.

Except the email he’d got earlier…

Fox sat heavily, and it was by pure chance that he managed to do so onto the edge of the bed and not straight onto the floor.

The mattress shifted as Axel sat beside him. “You know him?”

“I wanna say no,” Fox whispered. “You know how you see someone in the street and you’re like ‘hey, remember me from school?’ and you realize it isn’t them at all, it’s just another guy who looks weirdly like that crush you had ten years ago.”

“But,” Axel prompted.

“Too much of a coincidence.” Fox tore his eyes from the screen and frowned up at Axel. “His name’s Taylor Kennedy. At least, if he’s who I think he is.” He scrolled through the pictures again, zooming in on the face in all the angles it had been snapped from. “It has to be him.”

“So Clive Marsters is either a stolen identity or a fake one altogether?”

Fox nodded. “Probably stolen.”

“He owns a house.” Axel’s lips pursed. “Would he have killed the real Marsters for that?”

“I can’t say. Last I heard of Spike—of Kennedy—he wasn’t a killer, but if he’s my guy he sure as hell is now.”

“Yeah, I’ve got no doubt about that.” Axel reached for his phone, and began typing once Fox handed it to him. “I’ll get Dane on pulling what we can about Kennedy.”

Fox eyed the bag of untouched gyros, but he wasn’t remotely hungry any more. “I’ll tell you this. Spike is smart, but he slips up from time to time when he gets obsessive. He can laser focus and forget everything about the world outside his head. And when he wants something…” He sighed.

“You call him Spike. Was that a nickname?”

Fox looked back to Axel. “It was his handle back when we were with Anonymous. It was a Magic: The Gathering thing. The symbol for Planeswalkers has these spikes on, so tournament-level players call themselves Spikes. He was a damn good player, so he called himself Spike online.” He pushed hair back from his forehead. “We hung out a lot online. While a lot of other people were just trolling or hacking private websites, we were really getting into ethical hacking, hacktivism, that kind of thing. He wanted to show people how corrupt their governments were.”

Axel’s eyebrows raised. “And now you work for the government.”

“The irony, right?” Fox smirked a moment, but it soon wiped itself from his face. “He emailed me earlier on my old Anonymous account. He says he knows it’s me chasing him down, and that if I don’t back off I won’t get out the next time he blows something up.”

Axel’s eyes narrowed slowly. “That suggests he knows who you are.”

“Yeah. It’s why I was so freaked out when you got here. But if Marsters is Taylor…”

“Then he emailed you after I left him.” Axel rose to his feet. “And if he’s sent you a threatening email…”

“Then we’ve got him nailed,” Fox finished as he jumped up. “Told you. He loses focus when he’s obsessed. He’s slipped up at last.”

He felt a glow suffuse him, warming him from within until he couldn’t help but grin like an idiot. His chase was over at last. The man he’d been chasing all these months, the person he’d been just one step behind, was Taylor Kennedy, and now they knew who they were chasing, there was no way this could go on any longer. Spike would have to leave the damn country to escape him now, and even then he better pray he didn’t leave any footprints behind.

“So, hey.” Axel absently checked his firearm and made sure it was secure in its holster. “If he was called Spike, what was your handle?”

Fox planted his fists on his hips and raised his head. “Tenko.”

Axel shook his head faintly.

“Oh don’t, you’re going to love this.” He relaxed from his pose and crossed to fetch his holster, slipping his arms into it and clipping it into place. “It’s a creature from Japanese folklore. Foxes—kitsune—were mythical creatures which grew wiser and more powerful with age, and you could tell the age and wisdom of a fox by how many tails it had. The Tenko was the most powerful form a kitsune could reach, once it had nine tails and was a thousand years old.”

He glanced over just in time to catch Axel eyeing him.

“So you’re a wise and powerful fox, huh?”

“Shut up, I was still in school when I came up with it.” He grabbed his jacket and pulled it on as he made for the door. “I’ll drive.”

Axel laughed easily as he fell into step at Fox’s back. “Sure. If you think that somehow makes up for everything.”

Fox huffed and hurried to his car. The sooner they arrested Kennedy the sooner he could find out whether or not Axel would kiss him again.

Or what the hell the last one had even meant.