Chapter 36
Thirty-Six
Chip’s hands remained cuffed behind his back, even within the lavish interior of Mark Farro’s private jet, the man’s hired goon seated across the aisle and pointing a gun Chip’s way.
Another guy sat on a tan leather seat up ahead, Chip’s confiscated laptop open on the tray holder while the man’s nimble fingers tapped at the keys.
Close to three hours passed, and this man hadn’t paused for a break, his flustered pace indicative of fear. Like his life depended on finding Stonewall’s now deleted code.
Chip could predict what went through the guy’s head. Hope that the code was in the OS temp file store. Or if that didn’t work, try to recover it from the hard drive cache. All the typical places deleted data might hide. But now, the plane’s weight shifted, and Chip’s attention fell to a stretch of field appearing below a dipping wing, Harlow’s distinctive landscape prodding the heavy feeling already pulling at his stomach.
Now, all he wanted to do was jump up and down, to cause any sort of distraction to turn this flight around, but then his focus left the trees dotting the Mirabelle River and hit the goon with the gun. The man’s lips were curled in a “try me” expression, and the promise of death wilted Chip’s will to fight.
So he slumped back in his seat, as much as he could without his hands jabbing him in the back.
Of course, Mark would take me here.
Chip thought back to his initial phone call from Mark, back when he’d pretended to be Jay Evans, Encode’s slightly too enthusiastic senior manager. He’d mentioned Stonewall’s unique capabilities and the idea of reverse engineering Chip’s program.
Now, Chip couldn’t stop thinking about all the evil things reverse engineering might achieve. Stolen identities. Broken bank networks. Untold damage…
The Syndicate wasn’t above indiscriminately ruining lives. He’d seen that through his sister’s ordeal. And people who already struggled would lose even more. Maybe everything .
For some inexplicable reason, his mother came to mind. The day of her breakdown. All the rubble. All the blood. All the lows one hit when hope seemed lost. And this time, Chip would play a grand scale part in that outpouring of grief.
I have to find a way to stop this.
He would cling to Dean’s news about Ally and Sarah being safe. That Mark would arrive in Harlow minus the people he sought to target. Only Chip’s life would hang in the balance, the Syndicate likely to keep him alive to get to Stonewall.
He had no illusions. He’d ultimately die. But maybe those close to him would survive.
The uneven field below was not fit for landings, and the plane took on a series of rough bounces, but soon, the plane came to a complete stop, and the gun-wielding goon waved his weapon at Chip to start walking.
He took his reluctant stroll to the exit and passed the guy working on his laptop. The guy stopped to give Chip a glassy stare, his brow holding a light sheen of sweat despite the cabin’s cool interior.
Mark already stood at the exit but hung back, allowing Chip and the goon to leave first. Maybe because he feared any bullets fired would go through Chip and into him… What a chilling thought.
“Welcome home, Mr. Overton.” Mark’s optimistic tone followed Chip down the ramp.
Though tension pulled at his chest, he focused ahead and said nothing. An old barn he didn’t recognize lay on the field’s edge and close to a road; the guy with the gun prodded him to walk faster. Off the stairs, his cuffed hands impeded his balance through the obstacle of unkempt and dry grass.
A white van with North Dakota license plates sat before the open barn doors, the tires caked in semi-dry mud—as though the van had passed through the wetter woods by Mirabelle River—the vehicle’s front radiator area crushed in and the windshield cracked.
The van’s presence signaled more people had come to partake in his demise, and his side-on approach meant he couldn’t yet see inside the barn. The mere inability to know what awaited him sent bile rising through his chest while his forced pace crushed his habitual need to stop and think.
“Chip!”
His name exploded on Sarah’s ragged and torn cry, his eyes slow to adjust to the barn’s darkness before he formed a clear visual.
When he did find her, she knelt amongst a scatter of rotting straw in the barn’s echoey center, hands bound behind her, a man hovering near with a gun pointed at her blood-smeared forehead.
Chip shuffled back a step, only for a different gun to jab him in the ribcage, that jab lurching him forward while his limbs lost sensation and turned cold.
Ally.
They had Ally too. She knelt beside Sarah, her shoulders rounded and strings of her ice-blonde hair—matted in blood—hung over her eyes. He drew near and found her lower lip trembling, her usually loud presence now inordinately silent.
“Surprise.” The goon behind him offered that sarcastic mumble while the men standing over Ally and Sarah displayed wonky-toothed grins.
Mark strode ahead, completely at home amongst the chaos and pointing at Ally.
“Tie Mr. Overton to the sniveling one.” Mark flicked his gaze to Chip, steel-blue eyes uncharacteristically bright, like this scenario was his happy place, and his corporate persona an ill-fitting suit he begrudgingly wore to support this part of his life. “That’s your woman, isn’t she? It’s only right that you feel it when I put a bullet in her brain.”