Chapter 38
Will
The dark-haired woman stood near the table, arms crossed, studying me with the same low-grade irritation she’d maintained throughout the interrogation. She glanced at Claire. “I’m going to talk to the woman.”
Claire inclined her head, and the two of them joined Percival by the door. “I think we should send Bobcat. He’s better at breaking fingers.”
Breaking fingers?
Percival barely raised one shoulder. “She’s got a point.”
It had to be a bluff. They hadn’t laid a hand on me, but would they hurt Brie?
I couldn’t let that happen. What was I going to do? They’d come in on a boat during the hurricane. They were not the type of people who’d take no for an answer.
The pen tester cover was our nuclear option—it would end any chance of completing our real mission, but it might be our only way out of whatever black site operation this would turn into.
“We’re penetration testers.”
“You’re what?” The dark-haired woman turned to me, squinting.
Claire launched herself at me. “Son of a fucking—”
“It’s the truth,” I said quickly, cutting off her explosion. “Gideon Tremaine hired us to test Mnemis’s defenses, both physical and digital.”
Claire jabbed an accusatory finger in my direction. “I did not blow a three-year undercover operation for a group of fucking pen testers!”
“He said if we were found out, that Derek Moss had the authority to call Tremaine Industries and confirm. Our target was Meridian Data Solutions. They’re in cluster fifty-seven.”
“Percival!” Claire snapped over her shoulder. “Go find Moss. We need to verify this story.”
The man nodded and left the room.
“Three years of my life working as a fucking data analyst,” Claire muttered under her breath, storming toward the door. “Three years of waiting for someone to come after Haddad’s research. And it’s goddamn security consultants!”
The dark-haired woman approached Claire and hissed, “Security consultants? You called us all the way out here—during a fucking hurricane—for this? You said you were sure.”
“You saw the footage I sent you,” Claire whispered. “She went after the Orchid server.”
Orchid server?
“And I told you two days ago, Claire—when you called us back from fucking Warsaw—that you were wrong.”
“And how were you so sure of that, Doc?” Claire drew closer to her, dropping her voice even lower. “Because Percival tells me you have history with one of these—”
The door opened, cutting her off, and Moss entered the room with Percival.
Bad timing, Moss. What were they arguing about? Claire had called this team two days ago. She’d suspected us at least that long?
She’d even sent them footage.
Claire explained the situation to Moss in rapid-fire sentences, her face fully crimson.
Moss nodded, then pulled out his phone. After a moment, he said, “This is Derek Moss, head of security at Mnemis. I need to speak with someone in HR about verifying some penetration testers we’ve detained.
” He paused, listening. “I understand. They claim to be working for Tremaine Industries directly.” Another pause, longer this time.
“You’re transferring me to who?” His eyebrows shot up.
The wait stretched endlessly. Moss held the phone away from his ear slightly, and I heard faint hold music. My wrists ached from the zip ties, but adrenaline kept me focused. This had to work. It had to.
“Mr. Tremaine? This is Derek Moss, head of—” He stared at me as he listened, nodding a few times. “Will Stone, Brie Stone, Pierre Tremblay, Ken Saunders, and Ronnie Smith.” Another pause. “Their real names? One moment.”
Moss raised his eyebrows at me expectantly.
They really thought Ronnie and Ken were part of this. I shook my head. “It’s only the three of us: Will Reaney, Brie Reynolds, and Rav LaPierre—that’s Tremblay.”
The dark-haired woman went very still, her hand rising to touch the side of her neck briefly before dropping back to her side. Nervous habit? Or was there… what had Claire said about history?
Moss supplied our names to the person on the other end of his call—Gideon, apparently. A few more nods later, his lips tightened, and he said, “Of course. If you’ll hold a moment, please.”
Claire came closer. “And?”
Moss set the phone on the table in front of me. “He confirmed it. He hired all three of them. They’re clear.”
“Fucking hell!” Claire looked like she was about to throw something or flip the table. “What about Ken and Ronnie?”
Moss grumbled something. “They’ll probably need some compensation for this.”
“Fuck!” Claire hauled open the door, growling, “I’ll get everyone released.”
Moss produced a knife from his duty belt and sliced through my zip ties. As the plastic fell away, he handed me the phone. “Mr. Tremaine wants to speak with you.”
I pressed it to my ear and stood. “Hello?”
“Will, it’s Drew.” The familiar voice sent a wave of relief flooding through me. “Did you get what you needed?”
“No,” I said, cradling the phone with my shoulder while I rubbed my wrists. “The job went sideways. They have a team monitoring—”
“That’s classified,” snapped the dark-haired woman.
Fine. I wouldn’t provide my team with the details now, but I’d give them a full debriefing once I was out of the data center. “We’ll coordinate our next steps with Gideon once we’re home.”
If there were next steps.
Brie had uploaded some information to her cloud server. Maybe she added a backdoor so she could access the server remotely? You should have asked her about that earlier.
How could you have? You were too busy telling her your feelings to focus on the mission.
Warmth spread through my chest.
That did work out in the end, didn’t it?
“I’ll start running options with him,” said Drew. “We’ll talk soon.”
Before I could respond, the door burst open. Claire held it open, talking to someone outside, in addition to her team inside. “Lark and Sully aren’t responding. Sully disabled the camera in the room where they were holding Brie.”
Were holding. The words stopped my heart.
“The main security office has a feed from outside that room.” She paused, gaze flicking to the ground before landing on me. “We can see two pairs of bloody footprints heading from there through the security checkpoint.”
Drew said something over the phone, but the room began to spin and the phone tumbled from my fingers.
“No guards at the checkpoint,” she finished.
The room erupted. Multiple voices started talking at once. Someone was going to verify the story with someone. Someone else said they were going to check additional footage. Another voice spoke about securing their comms.
But the roaring in my ears overtook it all.
Two sets of bloody footprints.
Either one of them was Brie’s. Or the blood was hers.
“Who are Lark and Sully?” I asked, but no one paid attention to me. Possibly, my voice was too hoarse for them to hear me.
The crowd inside the room moved as one, exiting the holding room and crossing the hallway into the security command center.
Six of the men in tactical gear congregated there, two of them conversing with Mnemis guards who were operating the surveillance cameras.
On one of the large display screens, they had a blown-up image of the door next to the security checkpoint.
In the image, the door was open, frozen on a moment where one of their own had fired his gun at one of the Mnemis guards. Through the open door, I spotted bodies on the floor. Brie was in a chair behind the gunman.
I staggered forward, closer to the display.
Brie. Oh god, Brie.
“Hurry up with the comms,” barked one of the men. Their leader? “Percival, call HQ—I need Lark’s complete profile and psych evaluations.”
Another man moved between the tactical team, checking their radios and jotting something in a notebook.
Moss’s voice cut through the chaos as he charged toward the leader. “Your boss swore no Mnemis personnel would be harmed if we cooperated!”
The leader turned to Moss, ignoring his comments. “We need access to all of your cameras, tracking systems, and anything that can locate him. Lark knows our protocols. We can sort out what happened after we secure him.”
Every radio carried by the tactical team blinked four times, and one of the men—who must have been the communications specialist—said, “Radios are rekeyed. Lark’s off our comms.”
“What about Brie?” I asked again, louder.
The security displays flashed faster and faster, switching from camera to camera through the facility.
“I’m initiating Code Silver.” Moss pulled out his phone, swiping rapidly through an app. The blue warning message on a panel at the back of the room switched to red. An alarm sounded from the hallway, and half the lights changed colors.
An automated voice echoed from speakers in the walls: “Attention all personnel: This is a Code Silver lockdown. Find secure locations immediately. This is not a drill.”
“Where is my wife?” I yelled, and finally someone looked at me.
Claire—the woman behind all of this—actually looked at me and uttered the most useless words I’d ever heard in my life. “We don’t know yet.”
“You have this many fucking cameras and you can’t find her? There are GPS locators in the badges!” Why was I the only one worried about her? “Someone needs to fucking find her!”
“Will?” Rav appeared next to me. “They told—”
“No one’s looking for her!” I grabbed his shirt. “We have to do something.”
“You need to calm down.” He took my hands, surprisingly gently. “Panic never fixes anything.”
“The badge tracking system,” I yelled, the words bursting out of me. “She put her ID badge on before they broke into our room. It has a GPS locator. We can find her.”
“We need eyes on that room to confirm.” Percival approached, pulling down his mask.
“Calice,” muttered Rav as the two men shook and patted each other on the arm. “If ever I needed a friend, this is it.”
“Bobcat, the Lark files are on their way to your inbox,” Percival called to his team’s leader. “I’m moving up to do some recon, and I’m taking this guy with me.”
He pulled a pistol from his holster and checked it. He reversed it to pass to Rav, who declined.
“Give me one minute.” Rav pushed through the crowd into a room in the back.
He returned with a duty belt and protective vest over his shorts and T-shirt, an M4 draped across his body.
To the men in the room, he said, “If Lark has Brie, he’ll need her ID card for access.
That means you can track her with it. Radio us when you find them. ”
“I’m coming with you,” I said.
“No,” said Percival.
But Rav waved for me to join them. “Stay behind me.”
I was not going to watch this unfold over the security feeds. My woman was out there, in danger. I might not have had a weapon strapped to my chest, but I’d do everything in my power to find her.
“The footprints lead into the data center,” Percival said, readying his weapon, but pointing it toward the floor in front of him.
“It’s all residential between here and there.” Rav followed him into the hallway, his gun in the same position. “It’ll take us seven minutes to reach The Grotto, then another minute to the security checkpoint.”
“You take the lead,” said Percival. “We’ll start trading off once we’re close.”
“Good plan.” Rav swapped places with him. But as we neared the interrogation room, he stopped.
The dark-haired woman stood there, her eyes locked on Rav.
“Brooke?” he whispered.
Percival patted Rav’s shoulder twice. “Reunions come later, I’m afraid.”
Rav took a few tentative steps, as though unable to stop looking at her. “What are you—”
We didn’t have time for this. I practically yelled at him, “Rav! Brie’s in danger!”
He was moving again, side-by-side with Percival now. “Any more surprises for me today?”
“That was the big one,” said Percival.
“Do I know this guy?”
“Lark? I don’t think so.”
The hallways through the Reef were empty, while the red lights of the Code Silver flashed intermittently.
Once we arrived at The Grotto, the two men began moving in slow, tactical movements.
It was like watching a choreographed dance as one covered a chokepoint where the common room transitioned into the hallway, then the other swept the space in case anyone was hiding behind something.
But they were so slow now! So cautious! We needed to hurry.
Shit. My phone! The Mnemis app. I tore it out of my pocket, stayed right behind Rav, and texted Brie: Where are you? Are you safe?
There was no reply.
No bouncing dots appeared to tell me she was thinking of an answer.
I followed with another text, just in case she could receive but not reply: I’m coming for you. I love you.