Chapter 19 #2
“Can they hear you now? Oh, my God! Could they hear us last night?”
“Perfectly. But I did mute you last night. Thought you might need some privacy.” Reece rolled his eyes at Max’s words.
“How about you stop for a while?” Reece sighed.
“Did he say something? Who is it? Is it my DM Dude?”
“Okay, okay, you answer the questions, I’ve got work to do,” Max said with a chuckle. “Don’t leave that room.”
Reece pulled her down and wrapped his arms around her. “Yes, that was your ‘DM Dude,’ yes, he can hear you and me, and yes, he’s been talking to me. No, the frequency was muted last night.”
“Frequency? How’s he doing that? Darkwater can detect any unauthorized frequencies in use. We have every nation’s frequency charted.”
“This frequency isn’t traceable.”
Maggie frowned. “How is that possible? Every frequency in the registry is traceable.” Her eyes popped open. “No. Don’t tell me Guardian has access to frequencies that haven’t been registered.”
“I’d be lying if I told you I understood what you were talking about.” Reece smiled at her. “But things here are starting to break apart. The executive level is escalating. Searching for you. Trying to confirm your location without going through security."
"Why not go through security?"
"They did, early this morning. They sent a security team to your room.” He wasn’t going to tell her it was to send her on a trip she’d never come back from. She didn’t need that bit of information.
“And the spoof for you and me of the monitoring systems?”
“Mine is still playing. Yours? He had to cut it so no one knew you had help.”
“So, they’ll be searching for me now.”
“Yeah, but it won’t be fast or effective.”
“Why?”
“Because security is asking questions now. Real ones. About how you were lured to maintenance. About the message that disappeared. They're investigating, and if you were missing, they’d ask harder questions. Questions Voss and Pike can’t answer."
Something resembling relief flickered across Maggie's face. "They believe me. Security and others, I mean. Most of the people I worked with yesterday said they did."
"They do, and I agree, it isn’t just security," Reece confirmed. "The platform is turning against the executives, and they want answers. People know you, and they trust you. They're acting like a community instead of isolated workers. That's breaking the control structure the executives built."
Maggie processed that. "That's good."
"It is." Reece sat up, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. "But it's also making the executives panic."
"How bad?"
He turned to look at her. He promised that he wouldn’t keep anything from her, and damn it …
Well, he had to tell her even if he wanted to avoid it earlier.
"The CEO wants you dead, Maggie. He wants you dumped in the water and wants to tell everyone you requested emergency leave and left in the middle of the night. "
The color drained from her face.
"But the plan has holes," Reece continued quickly. "Your things are still in your quarters. Security has your statement. Pike and Voss are scrambling and making mistakes."
Maggie wrapped the sheet around herself. "If they're panicking, they'll make more mistakes."
"Exactly."
"What does Guardian want us to do?"
"Stay here," Reece said. "Don't leave this room until your DM Dude confirms Guardian's plan of action. Leadership has been briefed. My father knows. They're aligning resources."
"Your father," Maggie repeated softly. "
"Yeah."
She was quiet for a moment. "This is really happening."
"Yeah," Reece said again. "It is."
Maggie stood, still wrapped in the sheet, and moved to the chair.
"I knew something was wrong," she said quietly. "Before Florida. Before everything. I knew Darkwater wasn't what it claimed to be. But I never thought …"
"That someone would try to kill you for asking questions," Reece finished.
"Yeah."
He crossed to her, standing close but not touching. "You're not alone in this. You know that, right?"
She looked up at him. "I know."
"Guardian is coming," Reece said. "This is about to get loud."
"Good." Her voice hardened. "Let it get loud."
Reece smiled faintly. There she was. The woman who'd spent days digging into systems she knew were dangerous. The woman didn’t break, not even when someone had tried to erase her.
"We need to stay sharp," he said. "Stay ready. When Guardian moves, I move with them."
Maggie nodded. "What do we do until then?"
"Wait," Reece said. "And trust that your DM Dude has eyes on everything."
* * *
Hours passed.
They talked quietly. Maggie sat on the floor cross-legged and played a solitaire game on her tablet. Reece sat on the chair above her and pointed to a move she missed, and she chuckled as she moved the card.
“When did you discover you liked to work with computers?” he asked, wanting to hear her voice.
She looked up at him and drew a deep breath. “Wow, that’s a long story.”
“I’ve got the time.” Reece smiled at her.
She rolled her eyes and groaned, “Well, I’ve always been different.
My mom says ‘special,’ but different is the word that fits best. When other kids my age were learning to count to ten, I was doing my brother’s math homework for him.
He was in the sixth grade. We both got in some serious trouble for that.
” She stretched and turned around to look at him.
“IQ testing wasn’t and probably still isn’t a thing in rural Nebraska.
It wasn’t until I was in middle school that the school counselor suggested I test. Mom said it was okay, so I spent a day traveling with the counselor, Ms. Pickett, to Omaha to take the test. It came back off the charts.
Then I was able to test out of high school, but Mom and Dad didn’t want me to miss my childhood.
So, I spent four years taking advanced college-level classes, but I got to stay with my friends.
I never flaunted my brains. My mom and dad told me people didn’t like it when others acted smarter than them.
So, I had a normal school experience. I tried out for cheerleading and made the squad.
My brothers Mason and Caleb were on the football team.
Tyler was older. After Mom had Tyler, the doctors told her she wouldn’t be able to have any more kids, and then ten years later, boom, we were born one after the other.
Dad decided doctors were quacks and got himself snipped after me.
” She laughed. “I applied to a bunch of colleges because I like filling out the essays, and each college had a different one. They kept me busy after I finished my classwork.”
“How many acceptance letters did you get?” Reece asked.
“Each one I applied to.” She made a face.
“My mom and dad sat me down and told me I should choose the best one for what I was interested in. Which was computers. I’d built three by that time, and I’d taught myself how to code.
I didn’t want to leave home. My brothers all went to the community college.
They were studying things for the farm. Business, animal husbandry, and sustainable agriculture. None of that interested me.”
“What made you leave and go to school?”
“My dad sat me down and asked me if, when I looked back on my life, I would wonder what if … what if I’d gone to school?
What if I’d taken the chance? He promised me I could always come home, but taking that chance could open a new world for me, and all he wanted was for me to be happy and not to waste the mind that God had given me. ”
“So, you took that chance.”
“I did, and Adrian Kestrel recruited me straight out of school. A professor of mine recommended me. I started writing programs for Darkwater, and along with a few others, we began to design systems. It was in an old office building in Atlanta. Two years later, I was transferred to Darkwater. No one else wanted to go offshore. I was part of the skeleton crew that started the platform. I used to love it out here. Then when the staffing started and everything became segmented, I worked to ensure the people in my section were properly trained and proficient at their jobs. It was good, once. What we were doing, what we envisioned. Or should I say, what I envisioned. It hurts to see what it has become.” She glanced around the room.
“Now, it feels more like a prison than an opportunity to do what Kestrel promised.”
“Which was?”
“To make the world a better place.” She shrugged and glanced up at him. “What about you? What made you join Guardian?”
“Oh, man … that was a given. My cousins, my brothers, and almost all of my family work for Guardian. Talon and I joined at the same time. We wanted to be on the same team, but smarter brains prevailed, and they separated us.”
“Talon? Is he a brother or a cousin?”
“Cousin. My brothers and I have a considerable age gap between us. Talon and I grew up together. After … well, we grew up fast.”
“What were you going to say?” She got up and moved over to sit on his lap.
He leaned back against the chair and looked at her for a moment. “Do you remember when the Guardian building in D.C. was bombed?”
“Yeah. That was ten, maybe twelve years ago?”
“Close enough.” His smile was weak, but he continued.
“My dad was buried under the rubble of the building with my Uncle Jacob and a bunch of other people. Fortunately, everyone in my family made it out alive, although my dad was touch-and-go for a while. My mom had taken us all over to my Aunt Tori and Uncle Jacob’s that day to hang out with Talon, and the younger kids would play together.
The house was attacked. Mom and Aunt Tori made Talon and me go down to the safe room with all the kids.
They were abducted by the maniac who orchestrated the bombing. ”
“What happened?” Her eyes were wide, and her hand raised to her lips.