Chapter 16 Brenna
brENNA
My hands shook as I fumbled with the key card. It slipped from my fingers and hit the stone path with a soft click that might as well have been a gunshot in the silence.
“I’ve got it.” Atticus retrieved the card and unlocked our cottage door. Though his hands were steady, I could see the tension in his shoulders and the way his jaw clenched.
Inside, I started rationalizing. “Access codes could mean anything. Demo codes, API codes for their software…”
“System architecture is standard investor terminology,” Atticus agreed, though his voice was strained. “I’ve heard it in a hundred pitches.”
“But Liu said, ‘Your country thanks you for your service.’ The way he said it…” My voice trailed off.
“Like it was a joke.” Atticus’ jaw tightened further.
“The ten million could be a legitimate investment,” I said, grasping for explanations. “Series B funding is often in that range.”
“It is,” he agreed, but doubt crept into his voice. “The timing, though, that Liu called him an asset, the location, the secrecy…”
He pulled out his phone and texted someone while I paced, still trying to find innocent explanations.
“Kodiak and Emma are on their way here now,” he said, pocketing his phone. I wanted him to say something—anything—to tell me we’d been mistaken, that the man we’d seen wasn’t my brother or that there was a reasonable explanation.
But we both knew what we’d seen. Who we’d seen. And what we’d heard.
The knock came sharp and quick. Atticus checked the peephole before opening the door. Emma and Kodiak entered, both breathing hard from running.
“What’s the situation?” Kodiak’s sharp gaze swept between us, immediately reading the tension and the barely controlled panic radiating from me.
“We were on our way to our cottage when we saw Luke coming out of Liu’s.” I hesitated, then added, “And we heard them talking.”
“Talking about what?” Emma asked.
“Access codes. System architecture. A ten-million-dollar transfer.” The words felt like glass in my throat.
“Could be legitimate business—” Kodiak started.
“That’s what we’re hoping,” Atticus said, but he provided the exact quotes we’d heard.
Emma’s expression grew serious. “In context, that sounds...”
“Bad,” I finished. “But it’s Luke. There has to be an explanation.”
Kodiak carefully asked, “You’re certain it was him?”
“The path lighting was clear. We were maybe twenty feet away,” I said. “It was him. No question.”
“I’ll check the resort’s parking records, see if he’s still on the property or if he’s already left,” Emma offered. Seconds later, something appeared on her screen and she scrolled through the data. “Silver Audi sedan, rental plates. He left through the main gate fifteen minutes ago.”
The floor seemed to tilt beneath my feet.
The leather felt cool under my fingers when I gripped the arm of a chair to steady myself.
Luke had been here, at this resort where intelligence brokers—Morrison, Liu, and Castellano—recruited people to betray their country for money.
Luke, who had a security clearance from his Air Force days that he’d maintained through his company’s government contracts.
Luke, whose company, Redpoint Technologies, worked with federal data management systems that interfaced with classified networks.
My phone buzzed with a text from him. Great seeing you this week, Bug. Hope you and Atticus are having fun. Love you.
God, why now?
The casual normalcy of it made me more desperate to find an innocent explanation.
While I’d been sitting through dinner with Morrison and his associates, listening to their veiled recruitment pitches about “alternative revenue streams” and “international partnerships,” Luke was twenty yards away, meeting with Liu in private.
The same Luke who’d hugged me three nights ago at our dinner, who’d been so genuinely happy about Atticus and me finally being together, who’d teased me about Mom already planning the wedding.
“We need to set up a briefing with the team,” said Atticus, walking over to me.
Emma was already opening her laptop on the cottage’s dining table.
Kodiak was establishing the encrypted connection.
The resort’s expensive furniture and artwork blurred into the background as they transformed the space into an impromptu command center.
Within moments, the screen split into familiar faces—Admiral’s stern expression already showing concern, Alice with her characteristic intensity, Tank and Dragon at their stations looking grim, Tex joining from his home office, his usually calm demeanor replaced with sharp attention.
“What’s the emergency?” Admiral asked, leaning forward in his chair. The late hour and the urgent summons had clearly caught everyone’s attention.
“We saw Luke at the resort. There’s probably an explanation, but—” I started.
Atticus interrupted, more clinical. “We observed Luke Austen at Valley Ridge Resort tonight. He was leaving Liu’s cottage at approximately twenty-one thirty hours. We overheard their conversation.”
The silence that followed stretched across the connection like a held breath. I watched their faces change—surprise, concern, then the grim acceptance of professionals who’d seen too much to be truly shocked anymore.
“Are you both certain of what you heard?” Admiral asked.
“Yes, but the context—” I started to say more, but stopped myself. Who was I trying to convince?
“We heard what we heard,” Atticus said, though he added, “But Luke’s too smart to be that careless if he was really…”
“I’m sorry, Brenna, but we need to investigate regardless. This is too serious to ignore,” said Admiral in a tempered voice.
“I’ll start pulling data immediately,” Alice said, her voice carefully neutral but urgent. “Phone records, financials, system access logs—everything that leaves a digital footprint.”
“Please look for explanations that aren’t…that don’t mean…”
“Understood, Brenna,” she said in a tone as gentle as Admiral’s had been.
“We’ll coordinate from here, starting with deep searches in DoD contractor databases,” Dragon added, already pulling up screens I couldn’t see.
“Look, this is your call, Brenna,” Admiral began. “But this feels serious enough that I should be there. K19’s plane can have me in San Francisco by zero three hundred. It’s your decision whether I come now or wait.”
“Now,” I managed to eke out.
“Roger that,” he said, then added. “Tank, you’re with me.”
“We’ll compile everything while you’re in transit,” Alice promised, her expression focused and determined. “If there’s something to find, we’ll find it.”
I looked toward the window, and when I turned back, I saw the screen had gone dark.
“We should go,” Kodiak said. “The sooner we get back to the safe house, the sooner we can figure out what’s really happening here.”
My eyes met Atticus’, and he nodded. “We should.”
“You don’t really think Luke would do this,” I said as we packed.
“I don’t know what to think,” Atticus replied. “That conversation…”
“Could be innocent. We both said so.”
“Could be.” But his tone suggested growing doubt.
I moved mechanically, grabbing my overnight bag and shoving my essentials in—laptop, chargers, the encrypted drives I’d brought, the files we’d been reviewing just hours ago when our biggest concern was getting Morrison to trust us.
My hands moved without conscious thought while my mind reeled.
The beautiful midnight-blue dress I’d worn to dinner lay forgotten on the bed, a relic from a different lifetime when I cared about impressing intelligence brokers instead of worrying that my brother might be one of their assets.
Within five minutes, we were loading the BMW and Emma’s rental. The resort’s security guard at the gate noted our departure with polite disinterest, probably assuming we were just another couple leaving early from a weekend that hadn’t met our expectations.
If only he knew how catastrophically our expectations had been shattered.
The drive north stretched before us like a tunnel with no end.
Nearly three hours on Highway 101 at night, the road winding through darkness broken only by the occasional lights from small towns, the distant glow of San Francisco ahead like a false dawn.
Atticus drove with both hands on the wheel, knuckles white against the leather.
We made intermittent attempts at conversation.
“Remember when Luke stood up for you with Colonel Richards?” I said.
“I remember,” Atticus replied quietly.
“He risked his own standing to help you.”
“I know, Brenna.”
Long silences stretched between these exchanges.
I stared out the passenger window at the dark California landscape rushing past—hills and valleys I couldn’t see, exits for towns I’d never visit, a world continuing normally while mine collapsed.
I alternated between “there must be an explanation” and “but what if…” The conversation we’d overheard kept replaying in my mind.
Luke, who’d taught me to ride a bike in our driveway, running alongside me for hours, never showing frustration when I fell for the twentieth time. His voice echoed in my memory. “You’ve got this, Bug. I won’t let you fall. And if you do, I’ll catch you.”
Who’d carried me home on his back when I twisted my ankle during a family hike in Shenandoah, making up stories about the trees and rocks to distract me from the pain. It was over three miles, and he’d never once complained about my weight or suggested I try to walk.
My big brother who’d driven through a blizzard to be at my college graduation when flights were canceled, arriving just as they called my name. The pride on his face when I’d walked across that stage had meant more than the diploma itself.