Chapter 28
Will
The hero in my spy thriller stood behind a pillar in a high-security Russian facility. The man he’d been chasing down through three hundred pages— I dropped my e-reader onto the nightstand. I’d already read that part three times.
I rechecked my watch. Was its battery dying? There was no way time was actually moving this slowly.
Brie had finished her shift thirty minutes ago. So where was she?
I pushed myself off the bed, running through every disaster scenario my overactive imagination came up with.
Had security caught Brie accessing something she shouldn’t have?
Were they interrogating her right now, demanding to know how she’d bypassed their security?
Had they discovered Rav’s part and detained him with her?
If they’d been caught, there was no salvaging the mission. She’d confess to being a penetration tester, then they’d come for me. But if that had happened already, I wouldn’t be safely reading in my room, would I?
No one’s pounding on your door yet, Will. Get your anxiety under control.
In the hallway, doors opened and closed, the voices of employees who’d finished their shifts reminding me that Brie still wasn’t back. The hush from the white noise machine should have soothed my nerves, but instead, it was a reminder of my quiet strategy sessions with Brie.
As I reached for my phone to message her, the door swung open.
Brie burst in, her eyes bright with excitement, cheeks flushed. “Will!”
Without giving me a chance to respond, she launched herself at me, throwing her arms around my neck. I staggered back, catching her as she pressed a resounding kiss to my cheek. Her body practically vibrated with energy as she exclaimed, “It worked!”
She’d kissed me. This woman, who’d been carefully maintaining her distance from me for days, had just kissed me. The warmth of her against me after so much coldness felt like stepping into sunlight after weeks of rain.
“Everything went well with security?” I managed, reluctant to release her waist.
“I’ve been dying to talk to you,” she said, pulling back but keeping her hands on my shoulders. “I found the Meridian server’s location!”
“You did?”
“ATL-C57-R15-09,” she recited, her grin impossibly wide.
“Atlantic server room, Row 57, Rack 15, Server 9,” I translated automatically.
She shoved me back playfully, finally breaking our connection. “I knew you’d understand the code!”
“Ronnie drilled the naming convention into me on day one.” I smiled, caught up in her infectious enthusiasm. “But wait, start over. Rav’s plan with the security card worked?”
“Yes!” She grabbed her ID card from around her neck, holding it up triumphantly. Without losing any of her excitement, she said in a hushed tone, “I am now the proud owner of a white-level security badge.”
“Tell me everything,” I said, leaning against the desk, genuinely curious but also wanting to prolong this animated version of Brie.
“Scarlett was amazing,” Brie said, waving her hands as she spoke. “You should have seen her! She marched up to the security desk in this power suit, all cloaked in attitude, demanding her assistant—poor Malcolm—be allowed on the tour.”
Brie shifted her weight from foot to foot, clearly trying not to start pacing. “When the guard said Malcolm wasn’t part of the approved plan, she got this look—you know the one—like she was going to eviscerate him.”
A snort-laugh escaped her, the characteristic sound I’d missed these past few days. “Then she jabbed her finger into his chest—actually poked him!—and said, ‘Call your supervisor. Now.’ The poor guy looked terrified.”
She continued, describing how Rav had worked the card provisioning system so quickly, and how Malcolm had threatened to take their business to competitors.
I couldn’t help but laugh at the way she fanned herself with her hands.
“Then Malcolm signaled me to get in Scarlett’s way, so I leaned down to tie my shoe”—she acted out the part, kneeling, and standing again—“and when I got up, Scarlett slammed straight into me, sending me sprawling on the floor.”
“Are you okay?”
“Are you kidding?” She blew out a sharp breath, shuddering theatrically. “The guard came over to help me, and that’s when Rav finished up. Before I could remind myself to breathe again, he handed me the new ID card.”
“It’s different being in the room, eh?”
“It was so stressful!” She sliced her hand through the air. “I am never doing that again!”
“I can’t blame you.” I nodded along with her. “They ran into Ronnie and me in one of the server rooms. I hadn’t seen her in the blonde wig in a while.”
“I don’t know how they keep their faces straight.” Her excitement was mesmerizing. “I was terrified going through security afterward. My heart was pounding so hard I was sure I was going to trip some sensor. But they just waved me through.”
What I would have given to have seen it all happen. We’d considered having Rav upgrade both of us, but that would have increased the odds of being caught.
“At first, I was worried Rav hadn’t encoded the card properly.
But when I pulled up the Meridian call history, I was able to click on the company name and find all the details, including the location.
” She bounced, shaking her hands, as though to discharge some of the pent-up energy.
How she’d made it through the rest of her shift was beyond me. “It was wild!”
“You’re doing a great job, Brie. You understand that, right?”
“It was a thrill, but I’m perfectly happy to sit behind the computer for the rest of my life.”
As much as I wanted to keep this version of Brie, I had to bring us back to the task at hand. “Now we need to figure out how to leverage your new permissions. Can you access the server from The Bridge?”
“Not a chance.” She let out an exaggerated sigh.
“There are too many people. They all know I’m new and should only have access to the training videos for a couple more days, at least. If anyone looked at my screen and saw me logged into a client’s server?
They’d have security after me so fast. And I forgot to mention: Malcolm told me to be careful around Claire.
He said Gideon found out she’s got some gaps in her history. ”
“What do you mean?”
“Honestly?” She rolled her eyes. “I think it means we keep treating her like she might be dangerous. Nothing really changes, does it?”
“You’re right. So we keep vigilant, and either wait for you to start taking calls,” I said, thinking aloud, “or find an excuse for you to visit the Atlantic server room.”
“Actually,” Brie said, her face brightening, “Ken has some local updates scheduled in there tomorrow. Something about client configuration changes that need to be done on site.”
“Perfect. Can you get assigned to shadow him?”
“So long as I finish a few more training videos tomorrow, he said he’d try to take me with him.” She started pacing. “If I can shake Ken somehow, I can find the Meridian server.”
“Ken and your hardware tech escort. Even if you slip away from them, your lanyard is still green. Anyone who sees you would immediately note the conflict between your apparent clearance level and what you’re attempting to access.”
“If only you could be our escort.”
“I’ve still got a green lanyard.”
“Yeah, Ken wouldn’t fall for that, no matter how keen he is to help me learn.” Her fingers found the wedding band on her left hand, twisting it around. “Could we steal a white lanyard?”
“Maybe?” I shook my head. “It would be risky, but we should touch base with Rav. Maybe he can sneak one out?”
“Maybe.” Brie wandered to the closet and withdrew a zip-front hoodie.
“I do have some good news, though,” I said, partly to convey the information and partly to brighten her mood. “Ronnie and I were working in a maintenance bay, and I found a way to disable the cameras. Ronnie even showed me a bypass code for the security system.”
She pulled the sweater on, leaving it unzipped. “What kind of bypass?”
“It logs a twenty-minute maintenance window on the security feeds,” I explained.
“It lets a tech work without triggering alerts if they need to disconnect something temporarily. The panel has all the camera power connections. If we can coordinate a trip to the Meridian server area, I could disable just the ones covering it.”
“I could text you when Ken and I are heading to the server room. I’d imagine a message like that wouldn’t trigger any security alerts.” She fiddled with the hood ties on her sweater. “Then we both sneak off, meet in Atlantic row fifty-seven, you cut the camera, I log in to the right server?”
“Possible. With the hurricane approaching, the tech staff is very focused on a pre-programmed set of tasks. Perhaps I can access the full shift’s schedule and find a window when the right area is empty.”
Our phones chimed simultaneously with an alert from the Mnemis app. I crossed to the bedside table to check it, then showed it to Brie.
In bold red letters, it read: NOTIFICATION: Hurricane Lorenzo forecast to make landfall tomorrow. Resort evacuation complete. All teams continue to operate in hurricane mode.
Brie stared at my phone, brow furrowing. “I wonder if the hurricane is going to help or hinder us?”
“We’re an amazing team,” I said with more confidence than I felt and dropped the phone on the table. “We can handle anything.”
She laughed suddenly, the sound sending warmth through my chest. “I was so nervous I thought I’d pass out when they scanned my new card.”
“But you didn’t.” I nudged her, almost tipping her over onto the bed. “You pulled it off perfectly.”
She straightened her shoulders, buffing her fingernails on her shirt. “I did, didn’t I?”
The smile that bloomed across her face transformed her entire being.
This wasn’t the cautious, analytical Brie who’d been maintaining a safe emotional distance.
This was the Brie who’d once stayed up three days straight with me to crack a prototype encryption algorithm, who’d danced around my workshop when we successfully built our first machine learning model.
This was my Brie. Brilliant and beautiful and alive with the thrill of accomplishment.
The sight of her like this stirred something deep inside me.
In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to close the distance between us, to frame her face in my hands and tell her how incredible she was.
Tell her how proud I was of her—how much I adored watching her transform from the bundle of nerves she was on the jet, into the woman helping Scarlett pull off a con.
My gaze dropped to her lips, remembering their softness against mine on the beach. The way she’d responded, her body pressed against mine. The memory of our kiss had haunted me for days, and now she was looking at me with something that felt dangerously like an invitation in her eyes.
Something shifted in the air between us, a charged hesitation that made the room feel dramatically smaller. Her rapid breathing matched my own.
Is she ready to cross the line again?
I wanted to say her name. Wanted to tell her how much I craved her. But fear bubbled up inside me. If I moved too fast, she’d bolt. She’d double down on avoiding me, and I’d lose this chance.
As if reading my mind—as she so often did—her voice pitched up and she said abruptly, “I should get ready for bed. Long day tomorrow.”
I should have grabbed her before she could leave. But she was too fast, vanishing into the bathroom and leaving me alone with the ghost of whatever had just passed between us.
I sank onto the bed, running a hand through my hair. This emotional rollercoaster was impossible to navigate. One moment she was leaping into my arms; the next she was running away.
How much longer could I pretend it wasn’t tearing me apart?