Chapter 40 Will
Will
Every second crawling through the corridors was another second Brie was out there. Alone, hopefully. Or worse—with the killer.
My hands clenched into fists as Rav and Percival moved methodically, clearing each corner and room off the hallway as though we were on some training exercise instead of racing to save the woman I loved.
Move faster. Christ, move faster.
I bit back the words. These men knew what they were doing. Charging in too fast could get us all killed—including Brie.
We reached the data center security checkpoint, and reality slammed into me. The red signs flashed through the open space, emphasizing the unoccupied guard post. The bloody footprints led through the full-body scanner and down the hall toward the server room.
Behind the desk, the break room door was closed, with a pool of dark liquid spreading out from underneath. Rav and Percival stalked in that direction, their weapons ready.
I started to follow, but Rav said without looking at me, “Will, wait by the X-ray machine.”
Wait? How was I supposed to wait? What if they’d been wrong and she was inside?
Don’t think that way. She’s alive. She’s safe in hiding somewhere.
The men stood on either side of the door, their silent communication making it clear they didn’t just know each other, but they’d worked together and rehearsed actions like this.
Before Rav pushed the door open, Percival put up a hand to stop him. “They’ve found them.”
“Is she safe?” I asked.
He paused, no doubt listening to his team through the headset attached to his helmet, then touched a button on his comms. “I’m at the data center checkpoint. We’ll wait for you here.”
“Where is she?”
Percival swiped his hand toward the break room door, and Rav opened it.
It was no different from the security office. No one was answering my questions. “Answer me!”
Percival went in first, rifle up, and Rav followed him. They vanished into the room while I waited. Useless and helpless.
What was I going to do? Run through security and chase after her? I had no idea where she was.
Unless… I followed the footprints?
But how far would they go? They’d eventually stop, and I’d be stuck trying to find them between a hundred clusters of data servers in five giant server rooms.
“We can use the displays at the desk,” Rav said, as he and Percival returned. “Will, what’s her employee number? It’ll help me find the right security feed.”
“I’m not sure.” I knew her favorite coffee order, the way she fiddled with anything nearby when she was thinking, and the exact tone of her laugh when she found something genuinely funny. The soft sounds she made when I kissed her.
But her Mnemis employee number?
“Try her name.” I darted around to the security terminals with him, every muscle in my body wound tight with the need to act, to move, to do something other than stand here while she was in danger. “What did you find in the break room?”
“What we expected.” Rav slid an ID card through a slot on the side of the terminal, then clipped its retractable cable to his vest. The badge wasn’t his picture, and it was smeared with blood. “Lark killed his partner, then the three guards who worked here.”
The database loaded with agonizing slowness. Each second that ticked by felt like an eternity. Brie could be hurt. Could be dying. Could already be—
No. Stop. She’s brilliant. She’s resourceful. She’s hiding somewhere. That’s all. She hasn’t texted you back because she dropped her phone. That’s all.
Rav scrolled through employee entries, and I wanted to rip the mouse from his hand and do it myself. Faster. Anything faster. He pulled a phone from his pocket and handed it to me. “I think this is Brie’s. She must have left it behind.”
I immediately unlocked the phone in case she’d left me a message. I checked every app I could think of, but found nothing. They must have confiscated it when they took her to the room.
“There.” Rav pointed at a map of Mnemis on the screen. A single red dot pulsed in the Atlantic section.
“Cluster fifty-seven.” Where I’d kissed her against the server rack just hours ago, and lost my will to continue lying to her and myself.
Where she’d accessed the Meridian server.
The Fenix server.
Had she snuck back after Lark killed the guards? Why would she do that? With a killer on the loose!
Rav switched to the camera feeds.
The monitor flickered to life, and my heart stopped. Blue light from the equipment cast everything in an otherworldly glow, broken by the strobing red of emergency signals.
And there was Brie.
She stood in front of the KVM terminal.
A man stood behind her, his body pressed against hers, his knife at her throat.
All the oxygen flew from my lungs, and I gripped Rav’s shoulder just to keep myself vertical. She was trapped. Terrified. One second away from having her throat opened.
No. No, no, no.
“We have to get to her,” I wheezed more than said. “We have to—”
“Will.” Rav grabbed my hand and forced me to look at him. “Breathe.”
But I couldn’t. I couldn’t think past the image of the knife at her throat. The woman who’d whispered ‘I love you’ against my chest, who’d chosen to risk her heart to be with me, was—
Percival pressed his push-to-talk button. “Bobcat, are you seeing this?”
While Percival stepped away to coordinate with his team, Rav said, “Percival couldn’t tell me much, but—”
“Can we trust him?”
“With our lives, yes.”
I pointed at the break room door. “Could they?”
“His team—and Claire—work for a defense contractor called Pendragon Security. They’ve been on a three-year mission to track down some dangerous research.
” Rav turned back to the screen. “Lark had only been with their team for six months, and Percival confided they’ve had a string of bad luck since he joined. ”
“He was a mole all along?”
“Sounds like it.”
“The team will be here in two minutes,” Percival said as he returned. “But you need to be aware, Lark’s our breacher.”
“Tabernac,” muttered Rav. He clicked the mouse a few times, and the video of Brie split into four. One of them began skipping backward in minute-long bursts—Lark with his gun at Brie’s chest. Brie on the ground. Lark further down the cluster. “You’re telling me this lunatic has explosives?”
“Yeah,” said Percival. “We should find out if he’s set any—”
“Already on it.” Rav started another of the video feeds, switching to a different angle and rewinding it as well. “Keep an eye out for him setting charges anywhere.”
Explosives. Of course. Because a knife to Brie’s throat wasn’t enough. The rifle hanging across his chest wasn’t enough.
“Let’s see what they did on their way.” Rav scrolled through a menu for the fourth video, landing on the Atlantic section’s security checkpoint. “They would have gone through—”
He cut off when the video feed appeared. It was live. Three more dead guards on the floor.
Brie was with a man who’d killed everyone on his way to the data center.
“Rav?” My voice was tiny, unable to claw its way out from the panic choking me.
“Hold on.” Whether he was talking to me or to Brie, it didn’t matter.
He was doing his job. His real one—protecting his Reynolds family.
He stared at the four video feeds. One showed Brie typing slowly, while Lark threatened her life.
Three more were scanning backward. Then he paused the second feed, where a trio of men had appeared in a few frames.
“Roll that video forward,” said Percival.
As he did, three technicians appeared on screen, hurrying through the racks while the lockdown announcement warned them to move. They rounded a corner into Lark’s path and froze when they saw him. But instead of firing, Lark shouted something at them, and they bolted.
All three escaped.
Why let them go?
On the live feed, Lark suddenly released Brie and moved toward the middle of the cluster, his attention focused on one of the racks. For a split second, she was free. Why didn’t she run?
Because she’s not stupid, Will. Running would get her killed.
The checkpoint corridor filled with the sound of approaching footsteps. Four of the Pendragon operatives appeared, moving with lethal precision. One of them said, “Sit rep.”
“Lark killed the guards at the next checkpoint, as well.” Percival gestured to the screen where Rav was still running the footage backward. “He has one woman as a hostage.”
Hostage. As if she were some random bystander instead of the most important person in my world.
“Here’s the server room layout.” Rav pulled up a facility map on an adjacent monitor. “It’s a ten-by-ten grid with each server cluster approximately forty feet long.”
“Lots of directions for him to run and hide.” The team leader studied the display. “But we’ve run CQC with this layout.”
They’re talking about this like it’s a tactical exercise. Like Brie’s life is nothing more than another variable.
“Which means he knows your tactics.” Rav backed away from the console. “I’m going in with you.”
The leader shook his head. “You’re not one of us.”
“I don’t care,” Rav said simply. “I’m sure you’re all qualified, but you’re down two team members, and she’s one of mine.”
Percival held up a hand before his leader said anything else. “He’s the JTF2 guy from Operation Clearwater.”
“Fuck me,” said his leader. “You didn’t think that was important enough to share with the rest of us?”
Claire and the dark-haired woman—Brooke, apparently, who also knew Rav—appeared in the corridor together, both women moving with purpose. While the tactical team discussed approach routes, all I could do was ask questions.
“What does Lark want from her?” I asked the women.
Brooke glanced at the monitor. “It’s classified.”
“Bloody fucking hell.” I jabbed my finger toward the monitor. Dead guards, possible explosives, and my scared Brie. “That’s my wife in there! How fucking classified can it possibly be right now?”
Claire frowned, but exchanged a look with Brooke and said, “You don’t need the specifics. But suffice to say, Dr. Sayid Haddad created a very dangerous biochemical weapon.”
“Greek Fire?” I assumed.
“Yes.” Brooke huffed but picked up the story.
“He destroyed all of his research, except what was left on his server here three years ago. The problem is, several people had parts of the research or knowledge of the server, and we’ve been tracking them down since, to ensure no one finishes his research again. ”
“That’s why Claire’s here?”
Brooke nodded. “She and I manipulated the files, so the information is useless, but we left it behind as bait.”
“Bait?” I practically choked on the word. “Seven dead people, and Brie is—”
“Lark needs her to access the server,” Brooke said, her voice matter-of-fact. Clinical. “He’ll keep her alive.”
Until she gave him what he needed. What happened after that?
Brie became a witness.
A liability.
Lark had already killed seven people today. Seven. What was one more to cover his tracks?
“He won’t be able to do anything with the data anyway,” Claire said quietly.
That didn’t sound good. “What do you mean?”
Claire’s expression was grim, almost apologetic. “I also sabotaged some of the wiring on Haddad’s server. The files can be read, but they can’t be copied outside of Mnemis.”
The world tilted. “You what?”
“We’ve used the server to eliminate several hackers trying to grab the data remotely. They get in, the data looks close enough to what they need, and then they waste time troubleshooting the download, giving us time to nab them. It was a brilliant plan.”
“Was! But now, when Brie can’t give him what he wants,” I snarled, stepping toward Claire, my vision narrowing to her face, “he’ll kill her!”
Rage burned through my chest, white-hot and all-consuming. Every protective instinct inside me roared to life.
“Will, calm down,” said Claire, as though she weren’t responsible for calling that murderer into this building and handing Brie over to him.
“No cowboy shit,” Percival said behind me. Probably to Rav, but…
My body reacted; my brain struggled to keep up. I lunged at Claire. She tried to step back, but fury or fear made me faster, my fingers closing around the lanyard hanging from her neck, with all those pretty little white Greek goddess heads.
“What are you doing?” Claire grabbed for the badge, but I yanked it free, the ID snapping from its stupid, weak clip.
I turned to Rav before the Pendragon team had time to move. “I have an idea!”
Rav—looking every bit the soldier, and why did that seem so right at the moment?—turned to me. “What is it?”
“The server above the one Lark’s after,” I said, already passing the Pendragon team. “When you’re moving in, I need someone to enable the ‘tech required’ light. It’ll tell me it’s time to act.”
“What?” Percival asked.
“I’m going in to fix Claire’s fuck-up.” I held up her badge as I backed toward the body scanner. “I’ll be working on the server, keeping him distracted.”
“Come back here,” the team leader demanded. “You’re not going in alone.”
“She’s going to die if he can’t upload that data!” I called from the left turn that would take me to the Atlantic section. “This gives her a chance!”