CHAPTER 4
Callum
She is lying.
I can see it in the slight tightening of the muscles around her eyes, and the way her teeth scrape against the inside of her cheek. She said the word crystal , agreeing to my terms, but her posture is entirely defiant. She has no intention of being a compliant hostage or a silent partner.
Gemma Hayes is a variable that refuses to be contained.
"Finish your coffee," I tell her, sliding my Zippo back into my pocket. "The server room is downstairs."
She takes one last, long drink from the ceramic mug, her throat working as she swallows the overly sweetened espresso.
She sets the mug down on the marble island with a dull clink, wiping a stray drop from her lower lip with the back of her hand.
The ink smudges on her knuckles stand out starkly against her pale skin.
"Lead the way, warden," she says.
I don't react to the provocation. I turn and walk toward the hallway that leads to the basement stairs.
Normally, the silence of this house is something I rely on. It’s a diagnostic tool. If I can hear the hum of the refrigerator, the faint rush of air through the vents, and my own steady heartbeat, it means the perimeter is secure.
But right now, the silence is being systematically dismantled by the sound of her heavy combat boots hitting the polished concrete floor. She doesn't walk; she stomps. Every step she takes is a loud, chaotic broadcast of her presence.
I open the heavy steel door at the end of the hall and flip the switch. Harsh, fluorescent strip lighting flickers to life, illuminating a steep flight of wooden stairs.
"Watch your step," I say, heading down first.
"I know how stairs work," she mutters behind me.
The basement of the safe house wasn't designed for comfort. It was built for endurance and secure communications. The air down here is noticeably colder, heavily filtered, and smells faintly of ozone and cooling fans.
I step off the last stair and walk over to the main rig.
It’s a custom-built terminal—three high-resolution monitors, a mechanical keyboard, and a tower with enough processing power to run a small intelligence agency.
It is hardwired directly into a subterranean fiber-optic line, completely isolated from the house’s wireless network.
"Sit," I say, gesturing to the ergonomic mesh chair in front of the screens.
Gemma walks past me, her arms wrapped tightly around her waist. The temperature drop in the basement is significant, and her thin, vintage band t-shirt offers absolutely zero insulation. I watch a shiver ripple down her spine as she drops into the chair.
She spins slightly, taking in the setup. Her eyes, which have been wide and frantic for the last few hours, suddenly narrow with professional appraisal.
"Liquid cooling," she notes, leaning forward to inspect the tower. "Dual graphics cards. Sixty-four gigs of RAM. This isn't just a secure terminal. This is a gaming rig." She looks up at me, a genuine, confused frown on her face. "Do you play Call of Duty between assassinations?"
"The hardware was chosen for processing speed, not entertainment," I reply, pulling out the secondary chair and positioning it near the corner of the room. It gives me a clear line of sight to the monitors, the stairs, and her. "Boot it up."
She turns back to the desk and hits the power button. The fans whir to life with a low, steady hum.
"It’s freezing down here," she says, her voice tight. She rubs her hands together, blowing warm air into her cupped palms.
"The ambient temperature is kept at sixty-two degrees to prevent the servers from overheating."
"That’s great for the machines," she says, her teeth actually starting to chatter. "But my fingers are currently turning blue. If you want me to bypass military-grade encryption, I need blood flow to my extremities. I can't type at a hundred and twenty words per minute if I have frostbite."
I look at her hands. She isn't exaggerating. The skin around her nail beds is taking on a pale, bluish tint.
I press my tongue against the roof of my mouth. A compromised asset is a useless asset. It’s a simple logistical problem. I need her to work; therefore, I need her to be functional.
"Don't touch anything," I order, standing up.
"Where are you going?" The sudden spike of panic in her voice is immediate. She spins the chair around to face me, her bravado cracking for a fraction of a second. She doesn't want to be left alone in the windowless basement.
"I am getting you a sweater," I say evenly. "Stay in the chair."
I walk up the stairs before she can argue.
The master bedroom is on the second floor. I bypass it and go straight to the secondary closet in the hallway, pulling out a heavy, dark gray cashmere hoodie I keep for the winter months. It’s clean, functional, and warm.
When I return to the basement, Gemma is exactly where I left her, though she has pulled her knees up to her chest, trying to conserve body heat.
I walk over and hold the hoodie out to her.
She stares at it for a second, then looks at me. "Cashmere? Really? You couldn't just have a normal cotton sweatshirt like a regular human being?"
"Put it on, Gemma, or freeze. The choice is yours."
She snatches it from my hand.
I step back, returning to my chair in the corner, and watch as she pulls the heavy fabric over her head.
The hoodie is meant for my frame. On her, it’s massive.
The hem drops halfway down her thighs, and the sleeves completely swallow her hands.
She has to push the thick cuffs up past her wrists just to free her fingers.
She buries her nose in the collar for a brief second. Her eyes close.
I know exactly what the fabric smells like. It smells like the detergent I use, mixed with the cedarwood soap from the upstairs shower.
A strange, uncomfortable tightness grips the center of my chest. It’s an entirely involuntary physical reaction to seeing her wearing my clothing. It feels too domestic. Too intimate. It blurs the sharp, necessary line between captor and target, between professional and civilian.
I force my breathing to slow, burying the reaction behind a wall of calculated indifference.
"Better?" I ask.
She clears her throat, dropping her hands to the keyboard. "Yeah. Thanks. It’s... fine."
She reaches into the front pocket of her jeans, pulls out the encrypted drive, and plugs it into the secure port on the desk. The primary monitor blinks, throwing a harsh white light across her face.
The chaotic, loud, terrified woman vanishes.
The shift is immediate and fascinating. Her posture straightens. Her eyes lock onto the screen with a terrifying intensity. Her fingers hover over the mechanical keys for exactly two seconds before they descend, moving with a speed and precision that is almost difficult to track.
The loud, rhythmic clacking of the keyboard fills the basement.
I sit in the corner, my arms crossed over my chest, watching the lines of code scroll rapidly down the monitor. I don't understand the syntax she is using, but I understand competence. She isn't guessing. She is systematically dismantling the digital locks Marcus Thorne paid millions to install.
We sit in silence for twenty minutes. The only sound is the aggressive typing and the hum of the cooling fans.
Then, she stops.
She lets out a frustrated breath, leaning back in the chair and dragging both hands through her messy hair.
"Problem?" I ask.
"It’s a cascading algorithm," she says, staring at the screen. "Every time I bypass one firewall, it generates two more with randomized encryption keys. It’s designed to trap brute-force attacks in an infinite loop."
"Can you break it?"
"Yes," she says, her tone completely devoid of her usual sarcasm. It’s pure confidence. "But I have to build a custom script to predict the randomization pattern before it generates. It’s going to take time."
"How much time?"
"Hours," she replies, turning the chair slightly to look at me. The oversized sleeves of my hoodie bunch around her elbows. "Maybe a day. Depends on how many layers they buried the communication logs under."
A day.
We don't have a day. The bounty is already live. Every hour we stay in one place increases the probability of a breach. But moving without the decrypted files is suicide. We need the proof that Marcus lied, or the syndicate will never call off the hunt.
"Do it," I say.
She nods, but she doesn't immediately turn back to the keyboard. She looks at me, her eyes dropping to the black holster strapped across my chest, then back up to my face.
"How long have you been doing this?" she asks.
The question catches me off guard. It’s too casual. "Doing what?"
"Fixing things. Shooting people. Wearing suits in inappropriate situations." She pulls her knees up to her chest again, resting her chin on them. "You don't strike me as a guy who grew up wanting to be a corporate hitman."
"Focus on the drive, Gemma."
"I am focusing," she counters, gesturing vaguely at the screen. "The script is compiling. It takes three minutes. I’m making conversation so I don't have a panic attack about the five-million-dollar price tag on my head. Humor me."
I look at her. She is using the oversized hoodie as a shield, burying herself in the fabric.
"I have been in this line of work for eight years," I say, keeping my answer as sterile as possible.
"And before that?"
"Military."
She tilts her head. "British, obviously. The accent gives it away, even when you’re trying to sound like an American news anchor."
I don't confirm or deny it.
"Did you get discharged?" she pushes, her curiosity overriding her fear. "Or did you just realize the private sector pays better?"
"I realized," I say slowly, measuring my words, "that the rules of engagement in the military are designed to protect politicians, not soldiers. In the private sector, the rules are simple. You are given a target. You remove the target. The problem is solved."
"By killing them."
"By removing them," I correct.