38. Gwen
Gwen
The news station in Easton’s suite keeps looping the same ten seconds—the planes colliding over the Atlantic. Metal screaming. Fire blooming. My body still reacts like it’s the first time I’ve seen it. Even my ears ring, like I’m standing too close to the blast.
“I can’t stomach this.” I turn away, gagging, and Mya slips her arm behind my back, pressing a blue vomit bag into my hand. “No, no,” I manage, “I’m not going to puke.” I don’t think so, anyway.
The floor-to-ceiling windows fog at the edges, like our collective breaths are ghosting the glass, and the air itself is trying to hold us in.
“Maybe shut that off?” Mya asks Oliver, but Jesse beats him to it, killing the TV.
Carter didn’t pull in the whole team, just enough bodies to make the air feel tight and the voices mix together. The rest of our people are in their suites with their families and awaiting news.
I hand Mya back the bag and nod my thanks as something chimes on Natasha’s rig. “What was that?” I go over to where she’s working.
Dad and Carter are hovering behind her. Carter makes space for me and joins Easton, who’s quietly standing next to Jesse and Oliver.
“It’s what we suspected.” Natasha’s words pull my eyes back to her screen. “ATC escalated this to a systems compromise. Not a mechanical failure or pilot error. Someone got inside their network.”
I look over her shoulder at the scrolling code, red warnings stacked on top of each other. “A cyberattack from my rig, most likely. Whoever turned it on while Easton and I were downstairs already killed the connection, but the signature matches my rig.”
Zoey, Julian, and the others are en route to Hyde Park, where the signal pinged, but I doubt they’ll find anything by the time they get there.
“The crash could be another deepfake, right?” Easton’s saying exactly what I’ve been praying is the case since Dad told us what happened ten minutes ago.
My stomach knots hard at his question. “How many angles did people capture of it? If we get the raw footage, I can tell if it’s real.”
“Both planes are scheduled to land at Heathrow any minute,” Dad says.
“So if they land,” I murmur, “we have our answer.”
“But the runways won’t be expecting them,” Easton points out. “And if comms are down . . . The videos might be fake, but if we don’t warn Heathrow, the crashes will be real.”
“They won’t believe us without proof.” Natasha gestures to my uncle. “Get Dad on the phone. POTUS can make that call. They’ll listen to him.”
Gray nods and disappears into the guest bedroom, phone already at his ear.
Easton grabs a throw blanket from the couch and wraps it around my shoulders. His knuckles brush my collarbone, like he’s reminding my body it still belongs in this room.
“Thank you,” I whisper, fisting the blanket to my chest.
“Everything will be okay.” His hands settle over my arms, warm even through the blanket. “I promise.” His hooded eyes capture mine, and all the side conversations and chatter become ambient noise as he stands before me. “How can I help you?”
There’s weight to his words. Not just compassion, but something more. Like a man choosing me over everything else.
I’ve never been anyone’s “everything” before. And I don’t know what to make of that.
“You already are,” I force out, wishing we could remain locked in this moment.
“Why flip on the real laptop, not use the clone for this? They have to know we’ll be tracking it.” Oliver’s words have me facing him.
“Maybe because they’re looking to frame me?
” I take a second to piece more of this theory together.
“Jezebel knew you’d go to Australia to chase that lead, then divert to save me.
She counted on you ID’ing Bodhi, then doing everything off the books, never making my abduction public.
” I glance at Easton and lift my chin. “And she both anticipated and wanted you to save me, which is why she kept you two alive.”
“And since my plane landed in Vanuatu that night,” Carter joins in, “we can be blamed for causing that Aussie strike on the compound.”
“Then they baited our team to London with that footage of Molly, planning to use my rig for the attack and pin it on me.”
“But you didn’t go, and they don’t know Julian’s alive, or that his family is working with us,” Easton says. “I assume he’s being careful about being caught on camera while there, so as far as these bastards are concerned, we didn’t fall for their bait.”
“But they moved on with their plan anyway.” I tighten my hold of the blanket, anxiety trying to claw at my chest.
“They need you in London.” Natasha turns in her desk chair to face me. “They know we can easily disprove a deepfake video of you in the city if they planted one of you there like they did with Molly.”
“They’re also hoping turning on my rig will draw me out this time.
” But then . . .? “If this is their plan, then why not just kidnap me and take me straight to London? Save themselves the trouble of all this. Just sit me in a room and blame me for everything they’ve planned.
Or for that matter, why didn’t they just reach out to me at The Sapphire and demand I come to London or else?
” I mime an explosion with my free hand.
“Use a deepfake video like they did back on that island to force my hand. They could simplify things quite a bit by threatening to hurt people if I don’t help out. ”
“Maybe the island has a secondary purpose other than drawing you there. And also”—Natasha gestures with her head to the guys in the room—“the reason she didn’t send you a threatening video at The Sapphire is because she knows you’re too smart to go rogue. You’d have told us what’s going on.”
“That’s why they needed to get me away from everyone.
So I couldn’t rely on you all for help.” I twirl my wrist, catching sight of that scar Easton kissed earlier, and I stall out for a second.
“Not until they wanted that domino to fall. In other words, have Easton and Zoey save me, and wipe out that island.”
“Not that I wouldn’t have done everything in my power to get to you,” Easton begins, “but we were heavily outgunned, so my guess is Jezebel distracted men away from that building so there weren’t more there to fight.
” He closes his eyes, more than likely reliving what happened.
“Having no cameras on the grounds helped us get away, too. She told the guards it was to prevent being hacked and seen on any CCTV, but maybe that wasn’t entirely true.
” He discards a deep, sobering breath before opening his eyes.
My God, they really thought this through.
“A lot of careful planning and predicting how we’d react.
And I bet this air traffic control attack was only the beginning of what they plan to do and blame me for.
” I maintain a hold of the blanket with one hand and push at the pain in my right temple, a headache hovering.
“Since you didn’t report my rig stolen, it’ll look like I’m lying to cover my arse if I say it was now. ”
The room goes quiet after that until Easton asks, “Is there any other program on your laptop you’re particularly worried about them having if this isn’t solely about setting you up?”
“The CCTV nuke,” I rush out. “It’s Julian’s program that he shared with me after we worked together to help his sister last fall.
We can play abracadabra with CCTV footage and make it disappear forever.
But we can also bring it back from the dead.
We built an antidote to the nuke. Thankfully, that part lives on Julian’s rig and my main box—not on the one Jezebel has. ”
“So you’re saying they can wipe out footage that only you and Julian can recover?” Oliver asks, angling his head. “Couldn’t that be used to our advantage if they assume they’re safely covering their tracks with that nuke?”
True. I nod. “Julian also has a tool that monitors when and where the program is used, so if they figure out how to work it—and that’s a big if—we’ll know exactly what footage they wiped, and we can recover it.
They can also backtrack and scrub old footage, so if they try that, we can see what they’re trying to hide, too. ”
“Damn,” Oliver mutters. “So maybe we can turn this problem into a solution.”
“Possibly, but that means they need a hacker almost as good as me. Or Julian, of course. That’s not easy to find.” I lift a shoulder. “And sorry I didn’t mention this before. Julian’s been monitoring our shared programs. We figured we’d bring it up if it became relevant.”
“I assume you don’t go around telling people you have this cyber nuke on your laptop?” Oliver has a point, and nope, I don’t. “And Julian’s dead to the world, so they didn’t find out from him.”
“And only those on my team, the president, and Grandpa know I have it.” I scan the room, then lift one shoulder. “Unless someone we trust slipped and opened their mouth after too much to drink?”
“More than likely they just assumed a hacker like you would have a loaded rig full of goodies,” Natasha says as Gray opens the door and steps into the room.
“The planes landed safely,” he rasps. “The videos were AI.”
The blanket slips from my fingers. “No one died?”
“Not a one,” Gray confirms.
“I’m never going to trust what I see again,” I say under my breath.
“What if that’s the point?” Mya drops onto the couch, and Oliver sits beside her. “Fake attacks. Real chaos.”
“And no one has to die to create a disaster,” Natasha adds. “Flights were grounded. Markets panicked. And money was moved.”
“And someone will get rich off this, I guarantee,” Oliver grumbles.
Carter’s jaw locks. “And we’re the perfect fall guys.”
I look at my father—the man who taught me how to stand my ground. Then at Easton—the man teaching me I don’t have to stand alone.
Gray rubs a hand down his face. “And we report not only to POTUS, but to the man now running for president.”
“President.” Carter echoes back that word, eyes on the floor.
“What is it?” I ask him, because there’s a storm brewing in his head, and it’d be great if he shared.
“There is someone who could benefit from our lives being upended. Someone who’s running ten points behind your father, but a safe twenty ahead of the third contender.
” He slowly looks up at Uncle Gray. “Your father could be ruined if we’re dragged into the spotlight and the world finds out about his secret teams. Not to mention his granddaughter being a cyber terrorist.”
The air around Dad changes. Sharp and electric. The way I bet it does before doors get kicked in.
“Wouldn’t the same hold true for you?” Gray asks before I can even wrap my head around what Carter’s alluding to. “Wouldn’t that burn your mother-in-law?”
The room goes still. Not with fear this time, but with something colder. Political ugliness cut along the lines of deep betrayal. And my stomach drops like it does when turbulence hits.
“No.” Carter fists his hands and shoves them into his pockets. “She would throw me under the bus and say no one is above the law. Play the hero card, all the while claiming ignorance about President Bennett’s secret teams.”
“But my dad wouldn’t do that,” Natasha whispers. “He would never let Gwen be punished for something she didn’t do. He’d drop out of the race to protect us.”
“Even if he didn’t, to prove we’re innocent of this bullshit, we’d have to admit who we really are,” I tack on, my stomach wrenching. “And a lot of Americans will view it as vigilantism.” Kind of is, but still. “So, even if Grandpa stayed in the race, he’d probably lose.”
Feels like we’re constantly trying to hide our secrets from the world lately. Heck, we were up against a literal clock just last year to protect the teams from being exposed.
“Either choice your dad makes, it’d be a win-win for my mother-in-law.
” Carter lets go of a deep, grunty breath, like something else just clicked.
“Also, while Diana’s mom wasn’t in Somalia in 2011, she was the ambassador in Abu Dhabi at the time.
She knew a Delta unit was brought over from Africa to the UAE, and my guess is Susan was also aware of what we were doing in Somalia.
Either the chief of station told her, or the then-secretary of state. But if that’s the case—”
“Susan probably heard through the grapevine about an Aussie killing innocents, and Wyatt being the reason for his discharge,” Natasha finishes for him. “She could be our link, and that’s why Molly’s name didn’t show up in the files.”
“This is a lot of speculation.” Uncle Gray holds up his hand. “We need to slow roll our accusations without any actual evidence. This isn’t just a woman running for president we’re talking about, but your wife’s mother.”
“Thought you two were finally not at each other’s throats?” Easton asks.
“More like tolerating each other’s existence by avoiding one another as much as humanly possible,” Carter says through his teeth. “We all know what power does to people. She got a taste for it as secretary of state, and that wasn’t enough. Now it’s the presidency.”
“She’d do this to her own daughter? Grandson?” I know my mum isn’t all that great, but this is next-level shit. Then again, she wouldn’t be the first evil mum we’ve encountered.
“There’s nothing my mother-in-law would love more than to martyr me for her cause.”
“She does know a lot about us,” Mya says softly. “Which would answer a lot of our questions about how this is being pulled off.”
“Yeah, well, she doesn’t know Julian’s alive. Or about the CCTV nuke. So, if she is tied to this in any way, that still works in our favor,” I remind everyone. “Grandpa promised me he and the president kept that op a secret to protect Julian and his family.”
Carter peers at me, tight lines cutting across his forehead. “Hell, for all I know, the former secretary of state’s heart attack in 2024 was Susan’s doing so she could take the job.”
This is all just . . .
Too much.
“I need to talk to my wife.” Carter nods at Gray. “Get ahold of your dad and tell him to watch his back, before he ends up with a knife in it.” He takes off after that, and the door slams shut behind him.
Worried I’m going to lose it, I do the first thing that comes to mind and turn into Easton’s arms.
He holds me tight, resting his chin on my head as the morning sun finally creeps over the mountains, its light rippling across the dark glass of the windows—distorted, like the truth we’re still trying to untangle.