7. Mya
7
“We’ll find him, I promise.” Mason stepped into the aisle of Carter’s private jet, blocking the path I’d been pacing since he and Sydney had brought me there. We’d yet to take off, still sitting idle in the private hangar at the airport. “Oliver left on his own. No one took him.”
“I checked the security cameras myself,” Sydney said, coming up behind me. “He left the room, then walked out the front door. He’ll be okay. Probably needed some fresh air.”
Their words sent me spiraling back to two weeks ago, remembering what Oliver had promised me. “I’m not going anywhere, Mya. I’ll never leave unless you truly want me to. Even then, jury is still out since I can be a stubborn pain in the ass.”
My legs gave out on me, and I caught the nearest seat on my way to my knees, trying to slow the fall. “He left me. He said he’d never leave me.”
Mason crouched before me, keeping his hands off me, as I broke down into a spluttering mess of snot and tears.
“He’s out of it. Not thinking clearly. He didn’t leave you. Us,” Gwen Montgomery piped up from the seat I was still holding on to.
I looked at her as she worked on her laptop, her focus solidly on the screen as she tried to track him down in the city. Gwen’s father was a Navy SEAL who worked directly for the President, and her uncle, Grayson Chandler, co-ran Falcon with Carter. She worked with us from time to time. She was a skilled cyber expert, and the one who’d created Oliver’s alias, JJJ. If anyone could find him in this city on the cameras, it was her.
But if she couldn’t, what would that mean?
There was only so much the rest of the team could do walking and driving around the city searching for Oliver at night.
Now that I was a wanted fugitive, I couldn’t join them in the hunt. I hated being on that plane. Helpless. Lost to my thoughts. To the painful memories of what had happened that morning.
“If Oliver’s so out of it, then how’s he managing to avoid being seen on the CCTV footage you’ve been checking?” I whispered, my voice too raw to speak any louder.
Gwen looked over at me, her fingers going still on the keys. “Maybe that’s not such a bad thing since he has the authorities and the Sorens, aka The Collective, after him?”
“But that still means he wanted to get away from me.” The implication hit me hard, rocking me back like a punch to the gut. Releasing the seat, I sat on my heels.
“I’m going to rub your back.” Sydney gave me a heads-up so I didn’t startle in my fragile state. Helpless and hopeless.
“I can’t lose him,” I cried as she smoothed her hand in a circle at the small of my back, soothing me like she would for a simple case of heartburn. Except this was much more like heartache. “He needs me. He shouldn’t be out there alone. It’s not safe.” For so many reasons. “He may not even know his face is on the news yet.”
“He has no money on him, right? He can’t go far. Maybe he’s on his way to the airport now, and he’ll show up here soon, ready to go.” Gwen’s optimism was fake. I could hear it in her tone that she was only trying to keep me calm so I didn’t snap, recognizing my state was brittle. Hell, already broken.
“He, uh, does have money.” Mason’s announcement had me opening my eyes, looking up at him to elaborate. “I set a bag of his things in his room when we arrived. We all keep go-bags on the jet at all times, just in case. Clothes, weapons, burner phone, multiple passports, and cash inside.” He scratched his stubbled jaw. “I took the weapon out, but before we got off the jet to come to the hospital, he asked me to bring it.”
So, he’d not only been conscious without me knowing about it on the jet, but he’d spoken, too? What the hell?
“You didn’t think that was a little suspicious?” Sydney asked him, voicing my own worried thoughts.
“Well, I fucking do now.” Mason shook his head in apology. “But the idea of Oliver splitting never crossed my mind.”
“I’ll pull up a list of the possible aliases he has,” Gwen said, typing again. “I’ll track him that way. If he rents a car, or takes a flight or train, I’ll get his final destination.”
“Oliver’s too smart to be tracked.” My shoulders fell. “If he doesn’t want to be found . . .” I was going to be sick.
Trying to distract myself, my brain took a brief detour to the reason we were in this mess in the first place.
“Where’s Hugo? Do we know if he was even in Thailand yesterday morning?” What’d I do to get him not to trust me?
If only I hadn’t opened my mouth while we’d been walking yesterday, then maybe we would’ve had the meeting as planned.
A fresh wave of guilt burned an ugly path through me, incinerating any last rational thought.
“I don’t know if he was ever in Bangkok or not. Surely a man like him flies private, and he could easily manipulate and cover his tracks the way Carter does in regard to his whereabouts,” Gwen shared. “If Hugo was there, he must’ve suspected something was up prior to the meeting, and he, uh . . .”
“Confirmed it by eavesdropping on our conversation on the way,” I finished for her. “Then canceled.”
“Not your fault,” Sydney piped up, reading my thoughts.
“The Collective is always one step ahead of us.” I covered my face with my trembling hands. “More like three, since the Sorens had Interpol agents and police on standby to intercept us before they’d even eavesdropped on our conversation.” I swallowed. “This is all my?—”
“Nope,” Sydney cut me off. “We’re not doing that. Not today or any other day.”
I appreciated Sydney’s efforts, but no amount of comforting would help. Not with Oliver out there all alone and those responsible for what happened free to live their lives and play with others as if they were just characters in some game.
I reached for Gwen’s seat again, testing my legs like I was Ariel in The Little Mermaid, walking for the first time.
Mason held out his hand, then slowly retracted the offer, remembering I wasn’t ready to be touched by the opposite sex yet. How long would that last? But now wasn’t the time to think about how that Interpol agent had threatened to rape me, all as an evil ploy to have Oliver kill an innocent man. Well, all to break us.
Finally on my feet, Sydney cut around the cabin to stand alongside Mason and face me.
“Bloody hell,” Gwen remarked a second later, her English accent sliding through her panic. “Someone, somehow, just hacked my firewalls and my server and created a chat box in incognito mode. They’re typing now, but it’s encrypted.”
“What are you talking about?” Mason asked as we all keyed in on Gwen.
“It’s this old-school hacking trick that—” She cut herself off. “Ah shit, no time to explain how they’re doing this, but I just decrypted the message. It’s a link to something. A video.”
“Play it,” Sydney prompted, and Gwen shifted her screen to the side so we could all see.
A montage of video footage of our entire team was on screen. Recordings from inside that building where Falcon, all masked, had stormed in to rescue us. Including the moments before where Oliver had killed that man.
There was aerial footage depicting Falcon’s SUVs leaving that building for the airport in Thailand. More images of all of us leaving this airport for the hospital earlier and all maskless.
“Another message.” Gwen clicked it open and began swiping through images. “They hacked the hospital’s surveillance cameras to grab our photos. They have IDs on every one of us. Our real freaking names. Well, only Oliver’s alias still, since that’s what anyone would find connected to him online with a search, but . . .”
“They know who we are,” Sydney clarified, as if still working through the shock of it all. I doubted the shock wore off, but she went ahead and made a call, presumably to alert Carter or Gray of the situation.
“This was a trap.” My knees went weak, but I didn’t fall. “The Sorens used us as bait to draw out our whole team.”
“Those Interpol agents probably had no idea they’d be martyred just to get to us,” Gwen said. “That’s why I could track you all to that location quickly, but it wasn’t easy enough I’d spot it as a trap.”
“They wanted us together so they can?—”
“Kill us,” Gwen finished Mason’s line of thought after opening another message. “Oh, shit. It’s the schematics to our jet. They’re going to take us down from the sky when we take off, aren’t they?”
Make it look like an accident. That’s their MO. “Oliver’s out there all alone, and he has no idea about any of this.”
“Can you type back to this hacker? See who they are and why they’re doing this? How do we know this isn’t another trap?” Mason asked her as Sydney told us the team was coming back to the airport.
I set my hand to my stomach, tears sliding down my cheeks again as I tried to catch my breath. Eyeing the door, I contemplated making a run for it. I wouldn’t leave Singapore with Oliver somewhere out there—even if he’d left me first.
“I’ll try.” Gwen quickly worked her fingers over the keys, her words changing to scrambled symbols just before she hit send.
Bubbles popped up in response, as if this other hacker was typing.
“They answered.” Gwen decrypted the message and read their line out loud: “I’m on your side. Deep under on theirs. Your only choice is to hide. They won’t stop coming for you until you’re all dead.” The transmission ended, and her screen went black. She began angrily stabbing at her keys. “How the hell . . .?” She blinked rapidly. “What do we do now?”
“Getting off this jet in case they’ve managed to get a bomb on here would be a good start.” Mason reached into his pocket and produced his phone.
I had a feeling more bad news was coming, and the look on Mason’s face confirmed it.
“What is it?” I took his phone from him, careful not to touch him in the process. I turned from the others in the cabin to read the message on the screen.
Blocked Number: Tell Mya I had to go and that I’m sorry. Take care of her for me, Mason. I failed her. Don’t you dare fail, too. And don’t reach out, I’m destroying this phone now. – O.
I fell to the floor right along with the phone, tears spilling down my cheeks.
“We have to go, Mya.” Sydney was behind me now, forearms hooking beneath my armpits, urging me to stand. “They know we’re here. It’s not safe.”
I covered my face with both hands, a sob breaking loose.
Memories from that morning, of Oliver trying to save me, pushed through the haze, and every part of me crumbled.
I was destroyed.
Completely and utterly broken.