Chapter 14
AVA
Ava traced the outline of the frame on the mantel, her mind still reeling from the latest revelation. How had she not seen this coming?
How had she been fooled for this long?
It made some semblance of sense after her mind had processed the details, but the lengths Sebastian Bancroft had gone to in order to hide his identify from her had been enormous.
She shuffled to the kitchen, eyeing the table she’d sat at only days before when he’d brought her here to escape a murder charge.
Her head shook as she recalled Raven insisting she return Sebastian’s text. “Well played, Sebastian.”
No wonder “Raven”–or rather, Sebastian–had insisted she remain close. The web of lies and half-truths was unraveling, and she needed to be at the center to untangle it.
She tugged open the refrigerator door and pulled out a bottle of water, unscrewing the cap before she took a long sip.
She pulled open a few kitchen drawers in search of anything useful before she shuffled back to the living room.
He hadn’t locked up the knives, but she didn’t think killing him would do any good.
While he’d locked the door and engaged the alarm when he left, she could easily escape from a window. He hadn’t even bothered to zip tie her wrists.
This unexpected level of trust from Sebastian felt strange, and while the idea of betraying it crossed her mind, she ultimately chose to stay put, curious about the man who was both her captor and, oddly, her ally.
The realization that someone had just tried to kill her hit her like a ton of bricks. The secondary recognition that it had been Chris who had made that possible made her heart ache.
She set the water bottle down on the side table and continued her perusal of the cabin. She didn’t find anything useful. No weapons and more importantly, no communication devices.
With a long sigh, she climbed the stairs and poked around in the rooms upstairs. He’d kept the cabin clean of most things that would have been useful to her like a phone or a laptop.
“This is really unkind, Raven,” she murmured to herself as she left the last bedroom behind.
The sound of the front door slamming greeted her as she hovered at the top of the stairs. Sebastian’s heavy boots thudded across the floor as she descended toward him.
He glanced up at her, his eyebrows raising. “Were you napping?”
“Not quite,” she answered as he tugged off his gloves on tossed them down.
“Seriously?” he asked. “So, you were just pawing through our stuff?”
She crossed her arms, offering him an unimpressed stare. “You’ve kidnapped me multiple times. You’re going to object to me looking around the place I’m being held hostage.”
“You’re not being held hostage, Ava,” he answered, his voice sharp.
“Oh, someone’s in a bad mood all of a sudden.”
He unzipped his dark hoodie and shimmied out of it. “Things aren’t quite going to plan.”
She arched an eyebrow at him. He was definitely more flustered than she’d ever seen him before. He leapt from his perch on the arm of the armchair and stormed to the kitchen with a long sigh.
Bottles clinked together as he yanked open the refrigerator door and grabbed a bottle of water, downing half of it.
Ava followed him, leaning against the doorjamb as she studied him. “Did you talk to Alex?”
“No,” he answered, screwing the cap back on the bottle and tossing it on the table.
“Reason?”
He twisted to face her, his features taut. “Because your husband is sort of an idiot.”
“That’s kind of harsh.”
“Yeah, well, if the shoe fits,” he answered, returning his gaze to the window above the sink.
She pressed her lips together, wondering how she could try to get information from him while also calming his clearly frayed nerves.
“Maybe you should let me handle Alex,” Ava suggested with a casual shrug.
His jaw tensed. “You can’t call Alex again. He could be with anyone right now.”
She heaved a sigh. “Well, clearly you need help with something because you’re a wreck.”
“Oh, am I, Ava?” He spun back to face her. “Am I a wreck? Maybe it’s because things aren’t going at all the way they should. We were doing so well with The Board, but then you had to go and open your mouth to DHS.”
Ava’s lips parted, her jaw dropping open. “Oh, no. No, no. You’re not going to blame this on me. You didn’t exactly inspire confidence in either of the two forms I had contact with. You kidnapped Alex–”
“I didn’t kidnap Alex, and I did everything I could to make sure you found him.” His voice raised, his features tightening.
“Fine, you did. That’s true. But we weren’t doing that well with The Board. We were barely eking out any information whatsoever, and it seems like they were on to you.”
“Yeah, the loss of my safe houses has been a blow.”
“Houses? Plural? How many were compromised?”
He let his gaze fall to the floor as he shook his head. “I don’t know, but I’m not taking a chance. On top of that, the flash drive was compromised when we wiped the drive during the attack, so I don’t even have the files you gave me or the ability to decrypt them.”
“If you’d contact Alex–”
“If he’d answer a text.” Sebastian shouted back.
“What did you send to him?”
Sebastian grabbed his water and strode from the kitchen to the living room, taking another swig from the bottle. “We need to talk. I can help you. Meet me at the old resort at sunset. Raven.”
Ava glanced outside. “You’re going to be late.”
“He never answered to confirm. His phone is still at his house. He’s not coming.”
“Well, you sent the world’s dumbest text, Sebastian.”
“I couldn’t send anything else. I’m not telling him over text about you. Anyone could read it.”
Ava rolled her eyes at him. “You know, I’d really expect you to be better with this espionage stuff.”
He stretched his arms out to the side, his expression annoyed. “Well, I’m sorry I’m failing you, Ava.”
She rubbed the bridge of her nose before she shook her head. “All right, look, I can solve more than one of your problems if you’ll let me.”
His shot his eyebrows up. “Really? Okay, how?”
“I need a laptop–”
“Nope,” he said with a shake of his head.
Ava let her head drop back between her shoulders, her jaw tightening. “Really? We’re still doing this?”
“I can’t have you crawling around the internet, contacting people and letting them know you’re alive.”
“Oh, well, there goes my plan to post a new selfie that says hashtag back from the dead.”
“This isn’t a joke, Ava.”
“I’m not laughing, Sebastian,” she retorted. “Look, I’m serious. You clearly are overwhelmed. We have to start working together if we want to defeat The Board.”
He paced the floor in front of the cold hearth, running a shaky hand through his hair. “I just…”
“What?” she prompted. “Don’t trust me? Yeah, same. You’ve done very little to prove that I can trust you, but I haven’t left. Because I get it. They think I’m dead. And you’re right. We need to get rid of Chris before we can focus on the others. But we need Alex to do that.”
Sebastian heaved a sigh. “Fine, what do you want me to do?”
“Send another text to Alex. Tell him to meet you at the old resort because you’re two ships weathering the storm. He’ll know what that means.”
Sebastian began to type when he froze, glancing up at her. “What?”
“Just say it. He’ll know it.” She crossed her arms as he went back to typing. “I’m surprised you don’t get it.”
“I don’t.”
She shook her head. “The painting I bought. Your painting. Two ships weathering the storm. I told him it reminded me of us.”
He stopped typing again before he returned to it. “Done.”
“Also, please don’t drug him to bring him here. Alex is kind of delicate.”
Sebastian shifted his weight from foot to foot, his arms dropping to his sides. “Are you serious? And this is the man we’re pinning all of our hopes on.”
“He’s a genius. And he has tech skills neither of us can touch. He’s just not very physical, that’s all.”
Sebastian shook his head. “I don’t get it with you two.”
“You don’t have to,” she answered. “Now, give me a laptop, and I’ll get you the file you lost, and with a little more information, I probably can get you the decryption program from your compromised safe house.”
She held out a hand, wiggling her fingers.
With a heavy sigh, he said, “Wait here.”
He stalked across the room and disappeared through the front door, returning a few minutes later with a laptop in hand. “I still don’t understand how you’re going to get that file from Alex. I got into his messaging system at StoneCorp, but his laptop is a vault.”
Ava settled into the armchair as Sebastian leaned over her shoulder. She chuckled, turning on the machine and navigating to a program. “It is…unless you’re me.”
He glanced at her, his brow furrowing.
She tapped on the screen, hacking her way to Alex’s lock screen.
“You can’t hack past this. He’s got so much technology on there…”
“I don’t need to hack past it. I just need to login.” Her fingers flew across the keyboard as she typed in the password that she knew would work. Seconds later, she had access to his entire system.
“Voila,” she said with a grin before she began to navigate through the files.
“Seriously? He uses a password you can guess?”
“Alex and Ava nine twenty,” she answered. “Our wedding date. I never knew why until he finally told me how he felt.”
“How long did he wait, exactly?” Sebastian asked as she found the file she needed and copied it to Sebastian’s hard drive.
“Over a decade,” she answered. “Now, I need an address or account number for your internet service provider.”
“Seriously?” Sebastian asked.
“What? You don’t think I can hack your system with a little information?”
He shrugged. “That was more a question of Alex’s timing, but…also your hacking skills.”
“Come on. You had some tech skills, right?”
“Not a ton. I hired someone to do a lot of what I wanted. Actually, I hired a few people and had the tasks parceled out so no one knew what they were doing, then put everything together.”
Ava shifted in her seat, impressed by his savvy in getting the job done without the tech knowledge he needed to do it. “Good work, Sebastian.”
“Yeah, well, I actually learned something from The Board.” Before he could answer, his cell phone chimed.
He glanced at the display, his knuckles tightening around the device. “He answered. He’s coming.”
He pounded across the virtual keyboard, telling him to come alone.
“He may not do that. He doesn’t like you.”
“I’m not exactly fond of him,” Sebastian answered.
“Let him bring Doc.”
“Absolutely not.” Sebastian straightened, shaking his head. “No way.”
“Alex is going to need support in that house. If he can’t tell Doc, he’s going to go crazy.”
Sebastian slid his eyes closed. “Fine, he can tell the kid, but I’m only going to meet with Alex right now.”
“Fine, whatever. Now, give me your service provider, and I’ll get your program while you’re bringing Alex here.”
He passed the information along before he grabbed his gloves. “Don’t do anything stupid or risky while I’m gone.”
“I’ll play it safe…oh gosh, if we’re going to work together, you really need a nickname and Raven is tainted.”
“What?” His features crinkled as he stared at her.
“You need a nickname. We can’t call you Sebastian all the time—it’s never going to work. We don’t even call Kyle ‘Kyle,’ and that’s just one syllable.”
“Just call me Sebastian.”
“Sure thing, Shadow.”
“No,” he said with a shake of his head.
She glanced back at him, a devious smile on her face. “Mmm, it feels right, and I think Alex will love it.”
He heaved a sigh as he shook his head. “It’s a good thing I like you, Ava.”
She grinned at him as the door banged shut, returning to her work trying to get into Sebastian’s computer.
With any luck, soon, they’d decrypt the file, have a bead on The Board, and she’d be reunited with Alex.
An icy breeze snaked past her, a shiver creeping down her spine. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they were on the edge of something dangerous and uncertain, and hoped the chill wasn’t a premonition of the storm to come.