Chapter 15
FIFTEEN
The plan was in place.
Ash got the text from the team mid-rep, barbell above his chest and sweat slicking his skin. He set the weight down, already moving before he finished reading the message.
His mind was already running through his gear, but he had one more thing on his checklist these days.
Find Ellory.
She was in the computer lab, head down, fingers moving across the keyboard like she could outwork whatever shadows were stealing over them all. The glow of the screen highlighted parts of her face, but he needed to see her eyes.
She didn’t notice he was there until he covered her hand with his.
She jerked her head up, eyes clearing as her concentration broke.
He didn’t say a word, just tugged, and she came—pushing back from the desk and letting him lead her out of the lab and up the stairs at a fast pace.
She knew how to read him, which was a relief since he wasn’t ready to say anything out loud yet.
When they reached his room, he released her hand and moved straight to his go-bag. Muscle memory kicked in for the next steps—unzipping the bag, laying out his gear, checking his weapon.
He stripped out of his gym clothes and reached for the clothes always stacked on the chair in readiness for the next mission.
He felt Ellory’s stare on him and knew she had questions, but she didn’t say a word as she settled on the edge of the bed.
“Order came down the chain,” he said.
She was still before but now she froze.
“One of the properties. Tonight. The window’s right for us to get in.”
His mind had already split—part of it was in this room, part of it already on the other side of that door.
He yanked a shirt over his head.
“So you’re going.”
“Now.”
“My brother?” Her voice came out small.
“If he’s there, we’ll get him out.” He met her gaze then, losing himself for a beat too long in the deep blue and the love sparkling there along with tears.
He zipped his bag.
“Can I go?”
He shook his head. The last thing he wanted was a replay of the time before. “We can’t risk it.”
She spread her hands and stared down at them, blinking. “So I’m just supposed to sit here and worry about you?”
“You do what the other women do. They stay busy. Cook. Do whatever activities women do to keep their minds off the wait.”
She didn’t snap back at his suggestion.
His chest flexed at the sight of her sitting on the edge of the bed, head bowed and her glasses sliding down her cute nose.
“Angelo.”
He pulled her up and kissed her—hard, claiming. A moan escaped her and her head dropped into his palm that was there to cradle it. As their lips met in urgent kisses, he felt his internal clock counting down.
Breaking the kiss, he lifted his head slowly, letting his nose graze hers. He only allowed himself to study her eyes for a heartbeat.
He turned back to his bag and checked the zipper pull. Didn’t look at her.
Fear was a live thing sitting in his chest, and he didn’t have language for it. But he was about to walk out that door in approximately four minutes and the feelings inside him were getting loud in a way he didn’t know what to do with.
The men he served with knew better than to hold back. But he just couldn’t make the words come out of his mouth. Not standing here. Not with the clock running.
When he finally told her how he felt, he was going to have hours and hours to show her too.
But he could do something.
He reached for his phone and opened a message. Typed three numbers and stared at them for a second.
459
He hit send.
Her phone lit up on the bed beside her. From his peripheral, he saw her reach for it and read the screen.
Her brow furrowed and her lips parted just a fraction—the look she got when she had something to puzzle over and was already three steps into solving it.
God, he loved that look.
“What is this? A pin code?” Suspicion edged her voice.
He met her stare.
“The number of pizzas you owe me? The combination to your sock drawer?”
She was so damn adorable and she didn’t even know it.
She pushed to her feet as if she couldn’t contain her energy any longer. She squared up to him, hand on her hip. “The street address of the house you grew up in? Coordinates to your location? What is this?”
He closed his fist over the handles of his duffel, took two steps and dropped a kiss to her lips.
She made a small sound against his mouth and her hand came up to his wrist to hold on longer.
He pulled back enough to memorize her face right this minute—eyes closed for half a second, lashes dark against her cheeks. When she opened her eyes, questions scrolled through them.
“You’re brilliant. You’ll figure it out.”
He made himself walk away. Then he was in motion, rushing through the mansion to join his team.
The last thing he thought before his mind fully switched into ready mode was the message he’d sent her.
Four. Five. Nine.
She’d figure it out.
The darkness outside matched the one in his chest—that old familiar pressure his instincts threw at him when he sensed shadows shifting around him but he just couldn’t identify the threat.
But he had orders. And orders didn’t bend for gut feelings, no matter how loud they got.
* * * * *
She stared at the numbers until they stopped looking like numbers.
459
She’d been sitting here for twenty minutes. The lab was quiet around her, the sounds of the other women somewhere down the hall—Kennedy’s laugh, the clink of plates, the low hum of voices as they found comfort in each other.
She should be there. She knew that. Angelo wanted her to take comfort in the sisterhood they’d formed.
But she stayed in place, coping by manipulating the numbers. She ran through the digits forward, backward and upside down. One of the big nerd jokes was to input 58008 on a calculator, then turn it upside down to spell out boobs.
When she came up against a dead end, she created equations that might equal the number he sent her.
That didn’t work, and she dove deeper like her life depended on it, trying it as a coordinate fragment. A sum, a product, a ratio.
She inverted it, mirrored it and ran it through every pattern she knew, waiting for the meaning to emerge the way numbers usually answered to her.
Nothing.
She bit down on her lower lip. Dammit. What was Angelo trying to tell her?
You’re brilliant. You’ll figure it out.
She was The Accountant. She could solve this.
She picked up her phone and opened his contact. She stared at his number out of habit.
Then an idea struck. The old phone dial layout with letters under numbers.
4—G H I
5—J K L
9-W XY
She went still as the message emerged.
ILY. The shortened abbreviation used in text messages.
I love you.
Swallowing a soft cry that was almost a sob, she placed the phone face down on the desk. Picked it back up. Set it down again. She pressed both hands flat against the surface and sucked in a shaky breath.
The tears came quietly and without drama, just her eyes filling up and spilling over before she could try to stop them. She covered her mouth with her fingers and let them fall because fighting it was pointless.
She might have an analytical mind, but she couldn’t logic her way out of her feelings.
She’d just found Angelo. She’d found her person. Now he was running straight into danger—it was what he did, and he loved it, but that wouldn’t stop her from worrying.
She wiped her face with the back of her hand. Taking a deep breath, she turned back to her screen.
Numbers had always been calming to her, and she let them pull her back in, and she picked up the trail she’d been exploring for days.
She was deeper in Cipher’s financial network than ever, peeling up the edges and locating information outside what most people would see.
She couldn’t shake the feeling that what she was looking for existed outside the pattern. Cipher liked patterns, but he wasn’t stupid—every transaction was designed to send anyone looking in circles, never straight to the next target.
Weeks ago, she’d flagged a dormant account in Pennsylvania and kept moving. She pulled it up now for the sake of thoroughness and circled back to run the full transaction history again.
Her hands stopped moving.
She stared wide-eyed at the screen, unsure of what she was seeing.
The opening date on the account was well before the timeline that had anything to do with Daniel Sheen, aka Cipher.
But three days after his mother was killed in the event that kicked off his reign of terror?
The account had woken up.
She sucked in a breath.
Deposits—big enough but not so big it would draw attention to them—were staggered across two weeks. Each deposit was routed through a different shell. Each shell a different dead end.
The address associated with the account wasn’t the house his mother owned when she died. It was a property outside a town in rural Pennsylvania.
Ellory jerked her head up, staring at nothing while her brain sifted through files.
Why did that location sound familiar?
A dormant account waking up three days after his mother was killed was Cipher returning to his origins. And his mother grew up in Pennsylvania—but where?
Her hands shook as she dug into her file on the terrorist. Five minutes turned into ten.
Then she landed on the one piece of intel that connected all the dots.
With a hard shove away from the desk, she jolted to her feet and was already moving.
The war room was empty. She stood in the doorway and looked at the dead screens and the vacant chairs. A cold blast moved through her chest.
Of course she knew the team was gone. But she’d been hoping Dante remained behind to feed them information as he did sometimes.
She turned and ran.
She found Elin in the small study, her headset around her neck. She looked up when Ellory burst into the room.
“Is there any way to reach them?” she demanded. “The team. Any channel?”
“They’re dark, Ellory. What’s going on? What happened?”
“I found something. They’re going to the wrong house.”
“Oh god.” Elin’s already pale face drained of color. “What did you find?”