27 - Donovan
DONOVAN
“You told me this would never happen.”
I said the words coldly, evenly, without raising my voice. I hated raising my voice because it was a sign of weakness. Lack of strength.
But I was on the verge, right now.
“I never said that,” the woman on the screen answered carefully. “I said it was statistically improbable.”
Dr. Elaine Romero looked exactly as she did the first time I’d been introduced to her, on a tree-lined rooftop in Milan. Turtleneck sweater. Wire-rimmed glasses. Dark hair streaked with white, pulled back in such a tight bun her eyes became almond-shaped.
She was seated at a desk four-thousand miles away, and still she looked nervous. That part was good. Fear was power. Fear was control.
But loyalty, driven by fear, could only go so far.
I let out an uncharacteristic sigh of frustration. That particular lesson was something I’d just recently learned.
“You told me it would be untraceable,” I went on. “That everything on the drive would be safe, without the master key.”
“They don’t have the master key,” she answered.
“What the fuck do they have then?”
“They have your data, unfortunately,” Elaine answered truthfully. “Maybe not all of it. Hopefully, only a portion of—”
“HOW THE HELL DID THEY brEAK IT!?” I screamed, hating myself for finally letting go. “AND WHAT PARTS DO THEY HAVE?”
Elaine turned whiter than normal, and she was already one of the palest people I knew. She averted her eyes for a moment; probably out of respect and submission.
FUCK.
I forced myself to stay calm.
What exactly do they have?
The notification had come through barely an hour ago, like a stiletto to the heart. The locket had been broken, the data bank had been breached. The one I’d paid hundreds of thousands to design. The one I’d paid millions to develop.
“Can you track it?” I offered quickly. “Now that’s it’s transmitting again?”
The chief encryption architect for three different first-world nations paused before shaking her head. “Not in any useful sense,” Elaine offered. “At least not right now.”
My fists curled even tighter, under the desk. “And why not?”
“Because the data change transmitter is different than the one they removed or disabled days ago,” she answered smoothly.
“It connected briefly via internet back channels, not GPS. Just long enough to send the data packet indicating it had been opened, as per your original instructions when we first—”
“Elaine?” I seethed.
“Yes?”
“Where the fuck is my data?”
She went right to work, clacking away at a keyboard that remained off-screen.
Everything I had, everything I was — it was all on that one fucking drive.
Proof of influence, of coordination. Recordings of the poorest decisions made by the highest level people, all captured and neatly stored away for when, if ever, such leverage was needed.
The data was too dangerous to keep with me, too damning to store anywhere near my person or property. Which was why, when she’d suggested how small she could design the drive, it seemed perfect to place the most important thing in my world where I could always reach it.
Right around my wife’s slender neck.
Peyton.
My hands clenched even more tightly beneath my desk.
There was a time when I thought she could be redeemed, but what she’d done at the church had been the ultimate betrayal.
My wedding day humiliation was glaringly public; in full view of the whole world, simultaneously.
And it was the way she did it, too. Walking the entire length of the aisle, only to flee so dramatically at the very last moment.
Embarrassment for the sake of embarrassment, at the highest levels.
I was crazy to think there could ever have been an “us.”
Spinning the story in my favor should’ve been easy, under normal circumstances.
A nervous bride, harboring deep anxiety.
A silently supported mental illness, that I’d been so graciously patient about.
I could report on how much I’d loved and comforted her, but the stress had simply been too much.
And now Peyton was spending some time away, at one of the best retreats in the world. Healing. Getting better.
Shit, the explanation practically wrote itself.
No, wedding day jitters could be easily explained.
What couldn’t be explained were the spinning tires of a bright red motorcycle, roaring past us as it rained gravel into my mother’s hair.
High-definition footage of this spectacle had aired on every news channel, for a week straight.
Memes were birthed overnight. Bad ones, featuring a shocked, stupid look on my face.
Right now, I was the laughing stock of social media.
All media, really.
Ungrateful bitch.
I’d been so distracted in the weeks leading up to my wedding I’d missed all the warning signs. And I’d been too nice, too generous. I’d allowed my beautiful fiancée to do anything she wanted, whenever she wanted. There was never a leash. I’d given her far too much in the way of control.
That, I vowed immediately, was a mistake that would never happen again.
“Mr. Prescott?”
The tightness in Elaine’s voice dragged me back to the present. I was staring downward, into my two clenched hands. Rivulets of blood ran down my fingers, where the nails had dug in. I hadn’t done that since childhood.
“There are a few things I can try from here,” Elaine said, attempting to save her own life by not sounding the slightest bit placating. “But whoever did this was good.”
Better than you, I thought bitterly.
“I mean not just good, really good. Seriously talented.”
“I know he’s good,” I growled. “I hired him.”
“Of course, sir.”
She was still typing, still clicking away. Her sharp brown eyes shifted left and right so fast I couldn’t keep up with them.
Sighing, I forced my hands to unclench themselves. The blood that dripped from my fingertips hit the floor in an oddly symmetrical pattern.
“What do you need from me, Dr. Romero?”
“Grant me a few hours,” she replied. “I’ll report back when I know something more.”
“Fine. Don’t keep me waiting.”
The connection closed, and I slid the piece of electrical tape back over the eye of my monitor’s built-in camera. No use in taking chances. I’d already taken enough.
“It’s Theo,” I sighed, turning around.
Roman’s clean-shaven face remained unchanged, his expression as impassive as when I’d asked him to step up and take Colson’s place in the chain of command. He hadn’t wavered then, for even a second. He didn’t waver now.
“He has the data?”
I fought my lip from curling back in disgust. “It’s likely, yes.”
“He’ll be making a copy, then.”
“Maybe,” I allowed. “But so far, he hasn’t yet. The digital flags that would’ve marked such an event weren’t returned in the data packet.”
“Unless he suppressed them.”
His response made me growl, involuntarily. He wasn’t wrong, though. Roman’s stormy gray eyes stayed focused forward, as I digested his point.
“If they begin releasing information…”
“They won’t,” I countered. “Theo’s not reckless; not like Hollis and Jameson. He loves his father too much. He also knows what’ll happen, the second he goes public.”
The former intelligence contractor folded his well-manicured hands neatly in front of him.
Roman was all business, all of the time.
He wore no jewelry, sported no flashy watches.
Even the weapons I knew were secured snugly against his body remained invisible beneath the contours of his tailored, charcoal suit.
“Theo Lachlan is definitely the weakest link,” he agreed. “If there’s a crack to widen, to apply pressure to, it all starts with him.”
“Good.”
“Speaking of cracks, we may have something.”
It was the first good-sounding news in a week. I stood up and put my hands on my desk, totally forgetting the blood on my fingers. Roman did an adequate job of pretending not to notice it.
“It’s unconfirmed as of now,” he added quickly. “So of course—”
“Just say it.”
“We have a reported sighting in one of the tourist districts in Belize. Ambergris Caye. Three men matching general descriptions, with a woman in a straw hat.”
“A straw hat,” I repeated skeptically.
“And sunglasses, yes,” Roman confirmed. “As I said, the report is low confidence. But our local contact flagged their movement as suspicious.”
“Suspicious as in how?”
“Their movements in town seemed almost military. Not like tourists.”
Belize.
It made sense, on the surface. Especially after all Peyton’s doom and gloom complaining about Nantucket.
“Think it’s her?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her,” I admitted. “But Belize is a pretty big jump. An international stretch.”
“Not for Colson Hollis,” Roman countered. “He’s got contacts for miles.”
Yes. Yes, he did.
And that was a problem.
“Send a team to Ambergris Caye,” I ordered, with a wave of my bloodied hand.
“Already done. They’re in the air now.”
My face registered my approval. He was efficient, I’d give him that.
“There have to be ways to incentivize the other two,” I said coldly. “Find them. In the meantime, we lean a little harder in the direction of Lachlan’s father.”
Roman shifted his weight from one long leg to the other. I saw his jaw tighten, but he ultimately nodded.
“You said you gave Theo seventy-two hours to respond?”
“Yes.”
“And this was before the locket’s encryption was broken?”
I bobbed my head slowly.
“Maybe this is his way of replying to you.”