Chapter 9
Skylar woke abruptly, her senses immediately alert. The bed was familiar, but an unusual noise caused her to awaken. Turning her head, she spied the origin of the sound… Jeb snored as he lay on the floor in his makeshift bed. A smile tugged at her lips, and she held her hand over her mouth to stifle a chuckle. Rolling to the edge, she stared at him sleeping. She couldn’t believe that he was here. That he had come and stayed.
It didn’t matter that he’d arrived expecting a confrontation, ready to defend against an unknown hacker. When he discovered it was her, his demeanor shifted, enveloping her in the familiar cloak of his protection.
Rolling onto her back, she stared at the ceiling as she had done countless times. But this time, the gentle snores from the floor created a completely different environment. One that she’d hoped for but hadn’t dared believe would happen. Something was so strange about having someone else here… yet with tinges of familiarity.
Her mind wandered to the past, remembering that when sitting in the warm attic, Jeb and she would pull out an old blanket and take a nap. She would usually drift off first but then wake up to see Jeb, his mouth slightly open with a soft snore escaping his lips.
Never thinking she’d have that sight again, she was determined to commit it to memory. His coworkers didn’t give an estimate of when they thought they could help her escape, but she had a feeling it wouldn’t be long. And while she was desperate to escape Alastair Montague”s clutches, she was determined to commit being with Jeb again to memory. And that included savoring each second.
Suddenly, the vibration of Jeb’s phone shattered the quiet. She flinched, and he was instantly alert, answering his device. She marveled at his ability to quickly transition from sleep to complete readiness.
“Jeb here. What have you got?”
He’d answered the call with a focused intensity, keeping his responses brief and to the point. His gaze cut over to her, and his brows lowered as he stared. She battled the urge to squirm, knowing she must be the topic of conversation, hating the scrutiny. Yet she couldn’t help but feel an emotion coming from him. Uncertainty. Disappointment. Disbelief.
Nerves coursed through her, but she refused to leave the warmth of her bed and hide in the bathroom or upstairs. Whatever his coworkers were discussing, she was determined to meet his questions head-on. Perhaps she wouldn’t be in the current situation if she had done that to begin with.
Jeb disconnected the call and scrubbed his hand over his face as he sat on the floor facing her. She waited, not speaking, determined to have him ask whatever questions raced through his mind.
“How did you sleep?” he asked.
That was not the question she expected from him. If he wanted to play it cool, that was fine with her. “Okay. And you?”
“Surprisingly good.” He glanced toward the kitchen. “I thought I’d get some food going this morning since you probably have to get upstairs.”
“I’m an early riser, so they expect me to log in soon. But there’s not much for breakfast. Powdered eggs and toast.”
He laughed as he stood and stretched. “Powdered eggs and toast were a staple when I was a SEAL.”
His calm and casual demeanor was the same as last night. Perhaps she’d only imagined the questions she thought ran through his mind when he was on the phone. And maybe I’m just paranoid from being away from people for so long. She watched as he snagged the blankets off the floor, his muscles bunching and stretching underneath his smooth skin. He flicked his wrists, snapping the linen before folding them carefully. Dragging herself out of her Jeb-drooling stupor, she climbed from the bed and quickly made it, tucking the covers in.
“You always did like things to be neat,” he said.
Looking over her shoulder to find him smiling gently toward her, she nodded, then turned back to the bed. Her hands glided lightly over the already taut quilt. “I guess it gives me a little control in a chaotic world.”
“Nothing wrong with that.” He laid his blankets and pillow neatly at the foot of her bed. He jerked his head to the side, and she took his silent invitation to use the bathroom first. Grabbing her clothes, she hastened into the small bathroom, used the toilet, washed her face, then quickly dressed.
Once out, she fixed a pot of coffee while Jeb was in the bathroom. When he came out, she smiled. “Coffee is already made, so I’ll head upstairs. I can just grab breakfast later. I don’t want you to feel like you have to cook for me.”
His eyes narrowed on her as he shook his head. “You better believe I’m going to fix food for you. You look like you’ve skipped too many meals as it is.”
She jerked slightly, his words hitting her insecurity. She had always been petite, but having lost her appetite a month ago, she knew she’d dropped a few more pounds. She turned to go up the stairs when her progress was halted when he reached out and wrapped his fingers around her arm.
Gently turning her back toward him, he bent so that his face was right in front of hers. “I’m sorry, Skylar. I didn’t mean anything by that. You look perfect. It’s just that you seem a little pale.”
She forced her lips to curve upward and nodded even though it felt like her head was simply jerking up and down randomly. “I don’t get outside as much as I used to.” She glanced at the small kitchenette behind him. “But I promise that whatever you fix, I’ll eat.”
He let go of her arm, and she ascended the stairs with her coffee cup firmly held in her hands. She logged into her computers, checking each one to see the new daily password they required. It was one of her employer”s precautions to ensure she was still in front of the bank of computers in the lighthouse each day.
Sighing, she worked for several minutes, checking to make sure that all programs were functioning correctly. From downstairs, she could hear the noise coming from the hot plate and smiled at the thought of Jeb fixing her breakfast. Even though the food would be the same as what she had every day, having it fixed by him seemed special.
A few minutes later, he walked upstairs, carrying two plates. He handed one to her and set the other down on one of the tables. Then he went back down the stairs, and a few seconds later, she could hear him coming back up. Her heart squeezed at the sight of him with a coffee cup in one hand and the kitchen chair in the other.
He placed the chair close to hers, and they ate in companionable silence. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a nicer breakfast, and that included the time before she had been brought out to the lighthouse. It’s all because he’s here.
Once he was finished eating, he moved his gaze over the bank of computers. “My people are working on ways to read the login passwords without you actually being here. Anything you can do to help us would be appreciated.”
She nodded her agreement. “I hadn’t worried about it before because I had nowhere to go. No way to get off the island by myself. But I have already looked at the kind of program I would need to write and then embed to make this work.”
She turned toward her computers and, for a while, worked silently, aware that his intelligent and analytical gaze watched over her shoulder. As soon as he understood the coding she created, he pulled out his phone and began sending the information to his coworkers. They continued this way for several hours while she maintained an eye on the programs she monitored.
“I know there was more to the story than you were able to give yesterday,” he said, breaking their silence. “Skylar, for the life of me, I can’t understand how you agreed to come out here alone.”
She turned in her chair and looked at Jeb. His face appeared closed off and hardened, yet she swore she could still see the young boy she had known many years ago. She understood he had learned to be wary… always waiting for the other shoe to drop. Once he confided how his parents had been killed, she realized that it wasn’t as though he couldn’t trust other people. He just couldn’t trust that life would always make him happy.
“I understand how difficult this is for you to grasp, but you have to think of the situations from my perspective. I had been working at offices, one cubicle after another. I finally worked up to where I was given my own office. It might seem silly to you, but I took that as a sign of acceptance. They valued my work, and they valued me as an employee. And like a child starved for attention, I ate it up.”
She grimaced. “I should be embarrassed that I was so naive. But I was the most adept computer programmer they had. My supervisors realized I did not have supervisory talents, and I did not want other people working under me. I worked best alone. That worked for me, and it obviously began to work well for them. I was given tasks and projects no one else was working on.”
“Did you ever suspect what was really happening back then?”
“What the Montague Industries were up to? I assume that’s what you’re asking.”
He nodded, and she set her empty coffee mug to the side. “Not at first. You see, I was hired by one of his subsidiary companies… I had no idea Montague owned it.” She shrugged and sighed. “Not that it would matter. You know that he’s involved in multinational, multibillionaire corporations. He has legitimate businesses all over the world. And I’m sure that law enforcement knew he had many nefarious business dealings, but I certainly didn’t. Maybe I am naive, but even when I realized who I was truly employed by, I just worked diligently, sure that I had a dream job.”
“And by the time you realized what they had you working on wasn’t legitimate…?” His question hung between them.
“By then, the threat was over my head that my programming had allowed things to happen. Political donations could be traced back to the sites I had created. Even then, I kept telling myself that he wasn’t all bad. And what I was doing couldn’t possibly be all bad either.”
He was quiet for a moment, and she felt unasked questions hanging heavy between them. Finally, he tilted his head to the side and speared her with an intense gaze before he spoke. “You didn’t mention all of the programs he had you working on yesterday when talking to me and my coworkers.”
She wasn’t surprised. She knew she hadn’t mistaken the feeling that as he talked to his coworkers this morning, more information was coming in. She hadn’t planned on keeping any secrets, but somehow, the shock of seeing him yesterday and trying to confess everything she’d been roped into working on had been too overwhelming. And now, Jeb would know the worst. The fear that he wouldn’t want to help her now since shivers throughout her body. But the fear that he wouldn’t want to know her anymore sent ice through her veins.
“They didn’t anticipate how much digging into the dark web I would learn, even about Alastair Montague. I knew I had stepped into a different world when I uncovered his arms deals, even selling to both sides of a conflict. It was one thing to kid myself that his disinformation on the political front would change elections. Suppose I pretend that was how politics have been running for a long time. But when I discovered he was in the black market sales of our own weapons using some of his military contacts, I knew the world I’d been forced into wasn’t one I wanted to have anything to do with.”
Jeb sucked in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. Rubbing his hand over his jaw, he never dropped his gaze from her. “Were you scared? Were you threatened?”
“Yes, to both. The instant I made those discoveries, I knew my life would be in danger.”
“Why do you think they didn’t… um…”
“Kill me immediately?”
He jerked, a wince distorting his face. “Yeah,” he growled. “I hate like fuck to even think this, and I sure as hell am glad that they didn’t, but it makes me wonder why, considering you could be a liability.”
“There’s no way Alister Montague deals in the black market by himself. He has his own army of trusted minions to do his bidding. In all honesty, I was nothing more than one of those. Plus, threats go a long way. In my case, I think what saved my life was that I had a commodity they needed. No one else was coding and programming the way I could or as fast as I could. This gave me a certain value. I think it was worth more for them to threaten me to keep me in line and keep me alive than for me to have a fatal accident.”
“And you being brought out here?”
She barked out a rueful laugh. “I was told I needed to work in isolation so no one else would find out what I had. I was told it was too dangerous for me to work in an office with a lot of other people around. In my naivety, I believed them. I was told that there was a remote location where I would be safe, have the computers needed to do my job, and my needs would be taken care of. When I asked about the location, I was told it would be on an island, and I would have room and board, and supplies would be brought to me, but that I would have the isolation required to do the job without distraction. When I asked how long this would last, I was told no more than two months.”
“And they brought you out here.” Jeb’s voice held incredulity.
Dropping her chin to her chest, she stared at her hands clasped in her lap. Slowly shaking her head side to side, she said, “I was so fucking stupid. I was brought by boat and showed to the lighthouse. I was mortified that it was as rough as it was. It seemed that all the work and upgrades were to keep the computers functioning at their best ability. Everything for me was an afterthought. Money was deposited into my account, and it was four times my regular salary. So I thought I could do this for two months and then return to an office.”
“Six months ago.”
She nodded. Slowly, the sting of tears hit her eyes. “Yes. Six lonely, fucking, miserable months ago.”
“And you never thought of escaping?”
She jerked as though slapped. “Seriously, Jeb? You think I’ve just been sitting here in my rustic AirBnb, enjoying my escape from society”s solitude?”
He winced and shook his head. “Sorry! That’s not what I meant.”
Snorting, she looked down at her clasped hands again. Sighing heavily, she said, “I understand how crazy all this is. Believe me, I didn’t come to the full understanding until I was here almost two months.” He remained quiet but attentive, so she continued. “Someone monitors everything I do on the computers here. To be honest, I was curious whether I was being watched, but I couldn’t find any evidence.”
“We searched. Or rather, Chris did when he was here. There are no bugs or cameras on you. So it appears that it’s just the computers that keep track of what you’re doing as far as the programming.”
Nodding, she agreed. “It wasn’t until the second month, when a helicopter dropped a supply box, that I realized no one was coming to check on me or take me away. I tried to contact a supervisor but was given the runaround. My work was too important to risk anyone finding out what I did. I needed to ensure that the websites were undetectable. National security depended on what I was doing. Believe me, Jeb, it soon became evident that whatever they had me working on, I needed to be hidden away. But what I couldn’t understand was why out here? Why couldn’t I just be in a basement office by myself somewhere?”
“And did you figure out why?”
“Any signal from the mainland could be traced. But out here? Even though this island is part of Canada, if anyone discovered the signal, it wouldn’t be traced back to Montague Industries. It would just look like I was a crazy hermit doing my own thing. You see, I realized they could change the programs at any time to blame me. I was their fall girl. They hijacked my programming, kept me out of the way in a place where I couldn”t escape, and ensured I kept working for them.”
“Then you started digging into more of what you could find?”
“I figured the only way I could have any leverage was to gain more information. And what I discovered was the arms deals. Then I realized that just made me more expendable. If they knew that I was discovering more and more about what Alistair Montague was into, I’d be killed and never have a chance to escape. I kept writing code that they couldn”t trace to try to figure out how to get out of here.”
“About that… tell me what made you try to get my attention?”
She sucked in a ragged breath, her gaze holding his before dropping down to her hands again. If ever there was a defining moment in her life, she felt this was it. She hesitated, uncertain what to say. The air in the room seemed to still which only echoed her inner turmoil. She was surprised her childhood traumas had a way of continually rearing their ugly heads, creating painful new memories besides the old ones they left behind. Her past now resurfaced with a sharpness, intertwining with her current reality.