Chapter 15 #2
“A dormant account with no activity until three days after Daniel Sheen’s mother died.”
Elin gripped the edge of the desk. “This is huge, Ellory.”
“I know. We need to contact Con. I-I think I found Cipher’s hub”
And her brother could be there too.
Elin’s silence lasted two seconds. Three. Then she shook her head. “They’re out of contact. We can’t reach them. There’s nothing to do but wait.”
She couldn’t let Elin stop her, but she was already turning.
“Ellory—”
She waved a hand to indicate she heard and understood, but she was already forming a plan.
Rushing into the equipment room, she drew up short, unsure what had brought her here. Gear and devices scattered across the long table, everything left behind by the team. She moved along the table fast, eyes working over everything.
Whatever she took with her, Cipher would find. He would pat her down. Anything in her pockets, her clothes, her shoes—he would strip off her, leaving no way to track her.
Unless…
Her gaze landed on a tracker, small and flat, barely the size of her thumbnail.
She picked it up.
And swallowed it.
She didn’t pause to think twice. Her mind was made up. She was going to that house in Pennsylvania.
In two minutes, she was seated behind the wheel of one of the vehicles on the base, and a push of a button had the gates opening for her. No one was in her ear to stop her from accelerating onto the road.
If she was right about the house being Cipher’s mainframe, there would be computer systems. If she could cut off his money—remove his last asset—then the team would be able to take him down.
The drive was only ninety minutes. Long enough for those second thoughts to catch up.
She was alone with no backup.
She needed Elin.
And before she walked into danger, she needed to tell Angelo that she knew what his message meant.
She grabbed her phone and sent him a text he wouldn’t get until he returned.
4592.
“I love you too,” she whispered, and her heart wobbled. Her stomach did too, and not only with fear.
That tracker felt like a rock inside her stomach even though it was tiny.
The sleepy little town announced itself slowly. The highway bled into two lanes with the trees closing in on either side until the sky was just a strip of deep gray above her.
The address took her off the main road onto a gravel track that wound through old, unpruned trees. The house sat at the end of it like it had always been there and always would be—two stories of white clapboard gone gray with age and a porch that sagged on one side.
A family home. It looked like somebody’s grandmother’s house.
It was a grandmother’s house—Cipher’s.
She sat in the car for a moment with the engine off and just stared at the place.
Somewhere out there, Angelo was being brave. She could be brave too.
She got out of the car.
The gravel was loud under her feet. She moved to the porch and tested the first step. It was solid enough.
She stopped with her hand on the doorframe. The door was at an odd angle, hanging off one hinge.
It might just be age and weather. But her senses whispered this was a trap.
Not an oversight but an invitation.
She stood there for a full ten seconds and let herself feel how wrong this decision was. Let the part of her brain that was not running on adrenaline and desperation have its say. Turn around. Get in the car. Wait for the team.
She thought about Angelo walking into danger every single day because someone had to.
She thought about Cipher escalating, the money moving, the clock ticking, and the team heading in the wrong direction.
She thought about her brother, who might be inside this house right now.
She went in.
She pushed the door open and stood there, letting her eyes adjust to the darkness. The house smelled like dust and a place shut against the world for a long time.
She tiptoed through each room, finding nothing of interest. When she stepped into the hallway, she felt it before she heard it—the displacement of air behind her.
The half-second warning her body gave her that she was not alone.
She started to turn, but a cloth came down over her nose and mouth.
Terror slammed into her heart along with a massive flood of adrenaline in her veins.
She grabbed at the arm behind her head, fingers clawing and her feet kicking. She held her breath for three seconds…four seconds—oh, why did she have to count everything?—her vision already closing in at the edges into a tunnel that she refused to travel down.
Her body made the decision her mind refused to.
She couldn’t hold her breath forever.
She gulped for air and the tunnel snapped into blackness.
The first thing she noticed when she came to was that her neck hurt. Her head was bent forward at a sharp angle. When she lifted it, the tendons in her neck wrenched.
She stifled a cry but noticed something soft against her lips. Cloth.
She opened her eyes, blinking like an owl into the blackness, too aware of the heavy pounding of her heart to think she was dead.
But she couldn’t see.
She was hooded. Just like when Angelo took her to the Blackout base.
Her hands were bound too. And—
Oh god. She was naked.
No, not naked. She still felt the slight pressure of her bra around her ribs and the cloth of her panties under her butt.
The son of a bitch chloroformed me.
He’d stripped her too—probably to search her for wires or trackers. But he’d never find the device he was looking for.
A low whisper of air came from beside her.
She turned her head toward the sound. Her senses were short-circuiting, but she forced herself to think clearly despite the hood and her bonds and the fear crawling up her throat.
Cipher wouldn’t be sitting here with her, breathing like a man trying not to be heard.
This person wasn’t her captor. Which meant he was a prisoner too.
“Hello?” Her whisper was a rough rasp.
“Shh.” A male voice, low and even rougher than hers.
She waited a beat. “Where are we?”
“Shh.”
“Who are you?”
“Shh.”
Endless minutes passed, then she tried again. “How long have you been in here?”
“A while.” Then: “Shh.”
She tried twice more and got the same thing—that single syllable, almost reflexive, like he’d been saying it so long it was the only response he had left. She listened to the quality of the silence.
This person wasn’t angry. He wasn’t threatening.
He had to be a prisoner.
She turned her head toward the sound of his breathing. “I have a plan,” she said quietly.
He didn’t shush her that time.