Chapter 6
Six
Magnus’s thumb hovered over his phone screen as he stood in Grace’s make-shift command center in her tiny home.
The encrypted message to his family stared back at him.
Protocol Epsilon. A-Team. My location. Now. We’ll need a jet.
He hit send.
The Rebel family had contingency plans for everything—wildfire evacuations, medical emergencies, even zombie apocalypses since Astryde became obsessed with The Walking Dead. Protocol Epsilon meant drop everything, come armed, ask questions later.
His siblings would mobilize without hesitation, their military training and fierce loyalty transforming them from scattered individuals into a coordinated strike team. He couldn’t do this alone.
Pride didn’t matter.
Only bringing his son home mattered now.
Reinforcements would arrive within hours. But hours felt like lifetimes when Oliver was already gone.
Magnus shoved the phone into his pocket just as the burner that Lars had dropped in front of Magnus’s face erupted into its shrill demand for attention.
Grace flinched at the sound, a full-body recoil that she immediately tried to hide. Her hands, which had been steady while showing him encrypted drives and surveillance photos, now trembled as she reached for the phone.
That glimpse of fear hit him harder than any of her explanations had. Whatever she’d done eight years ago, whatever she’d been, she was terrified now. Bone-deep terrified. And she knew exactly who held her child.
“Speaker.” The command was non-negotiable.
His hand covered hers on the phone, feeling the fine tremors running through her fingers. She looked up at him, and he gave her a short nod. They were in this together now, for better or worse.
Grace’s finger hovered over the speaker icon before pressing it like she was defusing a bomb. She set the phone on the counter between them, its black surface reflecting their faces in distorted fragments.
“Grace.” The smooth, cultured voice with a slight Scandinavian accent made Magnus’s skin crawl. “I’m disappointed.”
Magnus’s hands curled into fists, his damaged knuckles screaming in protest. This was the voice of the man who’d taken Oliver.
“Eight years, Grace,” Lars continued. “Eight years of this unnecessary drama. Did you really think you could hide what’s mine forever?”
What’s mine.
The casual ownership in those two words ignited something volcanic in Magnus’s chest. Oliver wasn’t property.
Wasn’t a possession to be claimed or stolen or traded.
He was a little boy who liked dinosaurs and Transformers, who still needed a nightlight but would die before admitting it, who’d finally—finally—called Magnus “Dad.”
“I’ve been patient,” Lars said. “But we both know the truth, don’t we? You belong to me, Grace. You always have. And now… so does my son.”
Magnus stepped toward the phone, but Grace caught his eye, gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head.
“What do you want?” Grace’s voice came out steady, professional.
“Straight to business. I’ve missed that about you.” Lars chuckled. “There’s something I need. Something only someone with your particular skills can acquire. The Aegis Key.”
Grace’s sharp intake of breath told Magnus this meant something significant.
“That’s impossible,” she said. “The Aegis Key is in Patroclus. The facility is—”
“Impenetrable? Yes, I’m aware. That’s why I need you.” Papers rustled on Lars’s end.
“You’re asking me to break into an NSA black site,” Grace said flatly.
Magnus’s head spun. This had escalated from kidnapping to international espionage in the span of seconds. His world of controlled burns and fire lines hadn’t prepared him for this level of insanity.
“I’m not asking anything.” All warmth disappeared from Lars’s voice, leaving something arctic and sharp. “I’m telling you what you’re going to do if you ever want to see our son again.”
A notification tone chimed from the phone. Lars had sent something.
“Watch the video, Grace. See how well I’m taking care of what’s mine.”
Grace’s finger trembled as she tapped the screen. The small display filled with grainy footage, but Magnus could see enough. Oliver was lying on what looked like a leather couch. His Transformers jacket was still on, one arm tucked under his head the way he always slept.
Then a hand entered the frame—male, wearing an expensive watch that probably cost more than Magnus made in a year. He stroked Oliver’s hair with a casual intimacy that made Magnus’s vision go red at the edges.
The video cut out.
Magnus braced himself against the counter, palms flat, arms locked to keep from putting his fist through the wall. He couldn’t think past the image of that hand on Oliver’s hair.
“He’s on my plane heading to one of several possible locations,” Lars said conversationally. “He’ll be comfortable. Well-fed. Safe. For now. But children are so fragile, aren’t they? So many things could go wrong. Accidents happen all the time.”
“If you hurt him—” Grace started.
“I won’t have to. You’re going to retrieve the Aegis Key, you’re going to bring it to me, and you’re going to return to your rightful place in my organization.” His voice dropped, softened into something almost tender. “You’ve always been such a good girl.”
The color drained from Grace’s face. She didn’t flinch. Her shoulders curled inward instead, her whole body pulling smaller. Magnus had never seen anyone go that still.
Something cold slid through Magnus’s gut.
“You have ninety-six hours,” Lars continued. “If you’re not on a plane to Hawaii within six, I’ll know you’re not taking this seriously. If you fail to retrieve the key, if you try to run, if you involve the authorities...”
Another pause, perfectly timed. “The next time you see my son, he will be…less perfect.”
The clinical nature of the threat, not heated or emotional but matter-of-fact, made it infinitely worse. This wasn’t a man making desperate threats.
“Do you understand?” Lars asked.
“Yes.” The word came out clipped, mechanical.
“Grace.”
Her eyes closed. When she spoke again, her voice had quieted, stripped of the steel she’d held onto for the entire call. The voice of someone falling back into a groove worn so deep it was automatic.
“Yes, sir.”
“Good girl.”
The line went dead.
Magnus stared at her. Grace’s eyes were still closed, her throat working around a swallow, and he understood with a sick, lurching clarity that good girl and yes, sir weren’t new words between them.
Lars had trained those responses into her like commands into a dog. That whatever Grace had survived in that man’s world had carved channels in her so deep that eight years of freedom hadn’t filled them in.
The quiet that followed was suffocating. Ninety-six hours. Four days to break into a government black site, to steal classified technology, and save Oliver.
Grace’s composure held for about three seconds. Then it cracked. Her hand flew to her mouth, stifling something between a sob and a scream. She stumbled back from the counter, her legs suddenly unable to hold her weight.
Magnus moved without thinking, catching her before she hit the floor. She collapsed against him, her body shaking with silent sobs that she was trying desperately to contain. She smelled like rain and fear-sweat and something floral he remembered from those two months in Montana.
Memories flooded back with brutal clarity—Annie laughing at something Oliver had said, her hand finding Magnus’s across the dinner table, dancing with Oliver in the kitchen to some terrible pop song on the radio.
But that had all been a lie. Annie had never existed. Only Grace, who’d loved them and left them and brought hell to their doorstep.
Magnus guided her to the couch, sitting her down before her legs gave out completely. She buried her face in her hands, shoulders shaking, making no sound. Even her grief was controlled, contained, silent.
He walked to the window, staring out at the rain-soaked trees, and made a decision.
The anger was still there, burning beneath his skin like coals waiting for oxygen.
But Oliver needed more than his rage right now.
Oliver needed Magnus to be smart, to be everything he’d been as a squad boss on a hotshot crew.
When you were fighting a fire, you didn’t rage at it. You studied it. Found its weaknesses. Cut off its fuel supply. You worked with your team, trusted your training, and did whatever it took to win.
This was just another fire. One measured in hours instead of acres, with stakes infinitely higher than property damage.
“My sister Astryde will be here any minute, and the rest of the family will be here by the end of the day.” He didn’t turn from the window, giving her space to pull herself together. “So, tell me how we get him back.”
The words weren’t a plea. They were an ultimatum and a promise. He was bringing a force down on this monster, and Grace would either be the weapon that guides them or an obstacle. The Rebel family had never met a fight they’d walked away from, especially when family was in trouble.
“Magnus.”
He turned to face her. She stood up and wiped her face, and when her hands dropped, the woman looking back at him wasn’t someone he recognized.
Not Annie with her easy smiles and gentle touches. Not Grace, the terrified mother. This was the weapon she’d claimed to be. The hacker who’d spent eight years preparing to destroy one of the most dangerous men on the planet.
“He just made the biggest mistake of his life,” she said, her voice low and steady.
Magnus raised an eyebrow, waiting.
“Lars has wanted the Aegis Key since before I left him. I was the one he tasked with figuring out how to get it.” She moved to her hidden computers, fingers already flying across the keyboard.
“When I realized that it could break any digital security system on the planet, I started dragging my feet. Told him the encryption was more complex than we’d anticipated. Bought myself time.”
“Time for what?”
“To gather everything I could on him. Weapons deals, assassination contracts, payments to officials — enough to put him away for life.” Her jaw tightened.
“I was going to take it to the authorities. That was the plan. Until I was in the room when he got a call from the director of the CIA personally assuring him that someone who’d double-crossed him had been taken care of. ”
The implication landed like a brick. “He owns people that high up.”
“Going through official channels was a death sentence. So, I hid the evidence in the one place Lars could never reach — embedded in the code within Patroclus itself.” A smile played at the corners of her mouth, sharp as a blade.
“He thinks he’s forcing me on a retrieval mission.
What he’s actually done is send me straight to the evidence that will destroy him. ”
She pulled up building schematics that definitely shouldn’t exist outside classified government servers.
“So we steal both,” Magnus said.
“We steal everything.”
Magnus studied the blueprints, his mind already working through ingress and egress points. “You can’t do this alone.”
“No,” she agreed. “I can’t. But you’re not just bringing military experience. You’re bringing something Lars hasn’t accounted for.”
“What’s that?”
“Someone he can’t predict.” She pulled up another screen without looking at him.
“Lars models everyone as transactional. He knows what mercenaries will do, what politicians will do, what desperate people will do. But he doesn’t have a profile on a man who’ll burn it all down for a kid who isn’t biologically his. ”
The words landed harder than she probably intended. Or maybe exactly as hard as she intended — with Grace, he couldn’t tell anymore.
His phone buzzed. Gunnar.
ETA four hours. What’s the situation?
Magnus showed Grace the screen. “My siblings. All former military. All slightly insane. All completely devoted to Oliver.”
Grace nodded and turned back to her screens.
Magnus watched her fingers fly across the keyboard — steady, certain, nothing like the woman who’d crumbled against him minutes ago. He was about to put Oliver’s life in the hands of someone who’d lied to his face every day for two months, and he’d never seen it coming.
He just hoped this time she was lying to Lars.