The Honeymoon Hack (Reynolds Recoveries #5)

Chapter 1

Brie

I drummed my fingers against my empty coffee mug, staring at the confusing email I’d received from our head of security. I’d already read it ten times, run it through three of my steganographic programs, a translator, and even printed it out to see if I could find a visual pattern.

The right choice would have been to walk away and let it process in my subconscious.

But beating my head against this wall was better than staring at the workspace next to mine in my big open office—Will’s old desk, where Ashley had been stationed for the past two months. She was clearing out because he was coming home.

Today.

Ashley’s voice came from the top of the stairs. “You realize that’s your fourth cup today, right?”

“Fifth,” I corrected without turning around. “But who’s counting?”

“Apparently, I am.” She dropped into the chair beside me, resting her tablet on my desk. “Still haven’t figured out the email?”

“No.” I pinched the bridge of my nose, pushing my glasses up in the process. “Either he coded something in here about the data center, or it’s a deliberate misdirection because he couldn’t code something into it.”

Two months of searching for the Mnemis Digital Preservation Facility, then two months of preparing to break in. But still, every day felt like solving a puzzle with half the pieces missing.

Rav had gone undercover with their security team two days ago. His job was to identify any risks we weren’t aware of yet and pull the plug if needed. This email had to be a message about their security. It was a warning of some sort.

But what?

Nothing drastic enough to warrant an abort—otherwise he would have left the facility already.

Instead, he’d sent the email to one of our fake addresses, the one set up to appear as if it were his mother’s.

Sending it to that address meant he couldn’t communicate openly.

In the body, he’d said he was settling in to his new job, the facility was impressive, and his cell phone coverage was spotty. That was it.

“Maybe it just means they have security on the outgoing email.”

“Possible.” Ashley tapped her tablet. “Not to change the subject, but… can I confess I’m a little nervous about going in?”

“Nervous?” I closed the email and leaned back in my chair. Let your subconscious do its thing. “The cover itself is tech support, and you can do that blindfolded.”

Her gaze cut to the floor.

“Or is this about going in with Will?”

“Little bit of column A, little bit of column B?” Ashley had left the FBI to be with our team’s tactical driver.

Her hacking and surveillance skills were strong, and she’d made an excellent addition to my team over the past six months.

But she’d started months after Will had left and hadn’t met him in person. “Mostly column B.”

“You’ll like him. He’s easy to work with.”

“Easy to work with is very different from going undercover as his wife.” She chuckled and stood, crossing to her temporary desk. Hands on her hips, she let out a long sigh. “I should have cleared my stuff out last week. When’s he getting in?”

“The jet touched down four hours ago.” I joined her, crawling under the desk to unplug her power supply. “He said he’d get his mother settled, then come straight here.”

“How’s she doing?” She stepped over me, closing her laptop and shuffling papers.

“Overall, not good.” I dumped the power supply into a bin next to the desk, which she’d brought up for moving day.

A tiny drone sat under the desk—must have knocked that off at some point over the past year.

I grabbed it and sat up. “But Mum swears the memory care facility is perfect for her, which will take a load off his shoulders.”

“Family first.” Ashley offered me a hand, but I waved it off. “It would have been nice if he’d come back earlier, so we could have gotten comfortable around each other.”

The drone was four inches across, one of the many he’d built during his I can make it smaller phase.

The first one had been a foot wide, carrying a camera far too large for stealth recon.

It had taken twenty prototypes to arrive at his precious two-incher.

Then he’d blown two of them up in Monaco.

“He smiles a lot. Makes dumb jokes. He’ll put you at ease right away. ”

“At ease is one thing.” Ashley raised an eyebrow. “He and I are going to be sharing a room.”

I placed the drone on the desk above me and accepted a stack of binders from her, adding them to the bin. “It’s just a cover story.”

“And you’re not even a tiny bit jealous?”

“Why would I be jealous?” I took her offered hand this time and stood. “Will and I are friends. Nothing more.”

Her eyebrow rose higher, but she didn’t say anything else.

The accusation was obvious. She wasn’t the first to ask if Will and I were something more than besties. She wouldn’t have even been the twentieth.

Ten years ago, it might have been a valid question—

Don’t think about that, Brie.

Will and I had grown up together. He’d been there for me through every hard time, every sad day, every curveball life threw me since my family moved to Halifax. He was my best friend, the most important person in my life.

The past year was rough, with him living in London, but his mother had needed him.

Now he was finally coming home.

Ash hummed something aloud, something my older sister did all the time. She wasn’t buying it. Not that it mattered. She hefted the bin and said, “I’m going to take this downstairs.”

I nodded and moved out of her way. She still had a couple more trips to do. We’d made a minor mess while prepping for the Mnemis job.

My cave was quiet after she left. The large open space had belonged to Will and me since Mum had leased the office.

Room for our computers and an array of monitors, shelves for his printers and tools, worktables where we’d spent countless hours assembling his tech.

A half-wall separated our mezzanine from the office below.

Twenty desks sat in the main area, and beyond them, the glass walls at the front surrounded the main door.

He’d come through that door eventually, and I’d… what?

Excited butterflies fluttered around inside my stomach. Life would return to normal once he was back at that desk again.

So get Ash’s stuff out of the way.

She’d been respectful of Will’s space, keeping his potted plant alive and leaving his framed photos alone on their little shelf, but her laptop and notebooks were spread across the surface.

I turned back to my screen, pulling up the latest satellite imagery of the Mnemis facility.

At least, the imagery of the resort above the facility.

It was a clever deception. Most of the chatter on the dark web said the data center was in the Arctic, so I’d been looking in the wrong area for months.

The chatter had also included guesses about its name. The owner had confirmed Mnemosyne, the Greek goddess of memory, inspired it.

“Nem-iss,” I murmured, letting the final letter hiss out. “How does the dark web have so little information about you?”

Staff would have signed nondisclosure agreements, and the pay was phenomenal, but still, why was it so mysterious?

I’d read about the island paradise above the facility while I was researching, including about the massive effort to construct it.

The owner must have launched a serious disinformation campaign to misdirect people who wanted more info.

In two short days, Will and Ash would walk into one of the world’s most secure buildings, posing as newly hired support staff on a two-week rotation. And I still wasn’t happy with how blind they were going in.

At least the mission objectives were clear.

The shadowy organization that had been haunting us for six months had a server inside the data center.

Once Ashley found it, she’d extract intel about Fenix’s operations, destroy the blackmail photos they had of Scarlett, and find any evidence to prove they’d framed my father.

The first two objectives were simple—the sort of thing we did daily, other than the part about breaching an unbreachable data center.

But the third? If my father had been wrongfully imprisoned twenty years ago, it would change everything.

The butterflies gained speed, trying to upset my stomach.

Change was never good.

But after a year of working remotely on hardware designs while I built the software counterparts, at least Will and I could finally get back to our normal routine.

Would it be normal? Would it be weird? The last time I’d seen him, both of my siblings had been single, and I’d been the only one in a relationship.

Now my sister was engaged, my brother was living with someone, and my ex had decided all of my video calls at odd hours with Will were more than he could handle.

Focus, Brie. I nestled into my big ergonomic chair and woke my computer, returning to Rav’s email. Focus on the mission; worry about the rest later.

I forwarded the email to my sister. Maybe she’d pick up on something, since Rav was one of her closest friends.

Someone laughed below, saying something about the London weather.

My heart leaped, and I bounced up from my chair. Darted to the mezzanine’s half-wall.

And there he was.

Will stood in the front lobby, backpack slung over one shoulder as he chatted with my brother, Emmett. His hair was longer than when he’d left, curling slightly at the edges of his collar. He looked tired but solid, real in a way video calls never quite captured.

For a second—okay, maybe a few minutes—I just stared, trying to reconcile the Will on my screen with the physical presence below.

He’d filled out, broader across the chest than when he’d left.

Working out helped ease the stress over his mother, he’d said.

The stubble along his jaw was new. But even from this distance, I could see his eyes were the same—warm and familiar, crinkling at the corners as he smiled at whatever Emmett was saying.

Unable to contain myself any longer, I called out, “Will!”

He looked around, eyes searching until they found me at the railing. His face broke into a wide smile that made the past year disappear. “Hey, stranger!”

Some part of my body decided to move. One moment I was upstairs, the next I was rushing down the staircase, taking the steps two at a time.

He met me halfway across the office, catching me in a hug that lifted me off the ground. I breathed in the scent of him—the same clean and fresh cologne he’d worn for years, washing over me. Spicy notes of black pepper and neroli, with a touch of cardamom hiding underneath it all.

I’d missed that smell.

“You’re back,” I mumbled against his neck.

His voice rumbled against my ear, his light British accent more pronounced after a year in England. “Indeed, I am.”

We pulled apart, and I couldn’t stop smiling up at him.

A year of video calls and text messages was nothing compared to having my best friend standing in front of me again.

Will had been my constant, my rock, since we were kids.

The one who didn’t just finish my sentences, but my thoughts.

Who built things for me to code. Who never made me feel strange for being exactly who I was.

This was how life was meant to be—Will and I, side by side.

“I missed you.” I’d said it before, but it was different now. He was here. I threw my arms around his neck again and pulled him close. “It hasn’t been the same without you.”

“Missed you too, Bug.” His arms tightened around me, calming every one of the butterflies left in my stomach. “More than you know.”