CHAPTER 3
Gemma
Waking up is a slow, confusing process.
First, there is the smell. It’s a sharp, clean scent—cedar, cold rain, and something metallic that I can’t quite place.
Then comes the physical sensation. The side of my face is pressed against a solid, warm surface that rises and falls in a steady, hypnotic rhythm.
My neck aches with a dull, throbbing cramp, and my legs are completely numb from the knees down.
I blink, my eyelashes brushing against a dark wool fabric.
My brain, still sluggish and saturated with exhaustion, tries to piece the data together. Wool. Warmth. Rhythmic breathing.
The memory of the last six hours hits me like a physical blow to the sternum.
Marcus Thorne’s server room. The stolen drive. The man in the tailored suit sitting on my thrift-store sofa with a suppressed handgun. The tactical team pulling up to my apartment building.
I jerk backward so fast the seatbelt locks, cutting sharply into my collarbone.
"Careful," a voice says.
Callum Reed doesn't look at me. His hands are resting lightly on the steering wheel, his profile illuminated by the faint blue glow of the dashboard. He looks exactly the same as he did in my apartment—impossibly calm, his posture perfect—but there’s a new, rigid tension in the line of his jaw.
I press the back of my head against the passenger window, my heart kicking into a frantic, uneven beat. I fell asleep. I actually fell asleep on the shoulder of a professional hitman who kidnapped me.
"How long was I out?" I ask, my voice sounding like gravel. I rub the back of my neck, trying to massage the cramp away.
"Three hours and forty minutes," he replies smoothly.
I look out the windshield. The neon lights and concrete canyons of New York City are completely gone. We are driving up a narrow, winding road surrounded by massive, towering pine trees. The sky above the tree line is bleeding from pitch black into a bruised, dark purple. Dawn is coming.
"Where are we?" I ask, my fingers gripping the edge of my seat.
"Upstate."
"Upstate is a very large geographical area," I point out, the nervous energy starting to bubble up in my chest again. "Are we talking 'apple picking and quaint bed-and-breakfasts' upstate, or 'nobody can hear you scream' upstate?"
He finally turns his head to look at me. The ambient light catches the cold, flat emptiness in his eyes.
"We have arrived," he says, ignoring my question entirely.
He turns the steering wheel sharply. The Audi turns off the paved road and onto a gravel driveway hidden between two massive boulders.
The tires crunch loudly in the absolute silence of the woods.
We drive for another half-mile, the trees pressing so close to the car that branches scrape against the tinted windows.
Then, the trees clear.
The house sitting at the end of the driveway looks like it was dropped out of a modern architectural magazine directly into the wilderness.
It’s a massive structure of dark wood, black steel, and an absurd amount of glass.
It doesn't look like a safe house. It looks like the villain’s lair in a high-budget spy movie.
Callum pulls the car into an attached garage, the heavy metal door closing silently behind us, sealing us in the dark.
He cuts the engine. The sudden absence of the V8’s rumble leaves a ringing silence in my ears.
"Leave your phone in the car," he orders, unbuckling his seatbelt.
"You broke my phone, remember?" I remind him, the irritation briefly overpowering the fear. "You crushed it under your shoe."
"I crushed your burner," he corrects, opening his door. "Leave your personal phone in the center console. The battery is dead, but the GPS chip can still be pinged if they have the right software."
I stare at him through the dim light of the garage. He knows exactly what I have in my pockets. Of course he does.
I dig into my jeans, pull out my dead iPhone, and drop it into the cup holder. It hits the plastic with a hollow thud. My last lifeline to the outside world, gone.
I push my door open and step out. The air in the garage is freezing, biting through my thin t-shirt. I wrap my arms around my waist, shivering violently.
Callum walks around the front of the car.
He doesn't look tired. His suit jacket is slightly creased at the elbows, but otherwise, he looks like he just stepped out of a boardroom.
He walks toward a heavy steel door at the back of the garage, punches a six-digit code into a keypad, and pushes it open.
"Inside," he says.
I don't move. My boots feel glued to the concrete floor.
"I prefer the garage," I lie, my teeth actually chattering. "It has a very rustic, industrial vibe. Builds character."
He stops in the doorway. He doesn't sigh, but the slight drop of his shoulders communicates his absolute lack of patience. "Gemma. Get inside before you freeze to death."
"If I go inside, you lock the door," I say, the reality of the situation finally paralyzing me. "If you lock the door, I can't run. And if I can't run, I have to trust that you aren't going to put a bullet in my head the second we’re out of the cold."
He stares at me. The silence stretches, heavy and uncomfortable. I bite the inside of my cheek, waiting for him to pull the gun, to threaten me, to force me inside.
Instead, he reaches into his jacket, pulls out the black encrypted drive, and tosses it to me.
My hands react on instinct. I catch the small piece of plastic, staring at it in shock.
"You need me to decrypt the rest of the files," he says, his voice flat. "I cannot kill you. You are the only person who knows the architecture of Marcus’s firewall. Now, get inside the house."
He turns and walks into the dark hallway.
I look at the drive in my palm. It’s a logical reason to keep me alive. It makes sense. But as I follow him through the steel door, the cold knot in my stomach doesn't loosen. I am a hacker. I know when someone is giving me a partial data set. He is lying about something.
The interior of the house is just as stark and intimidating as the outside.
Callum flips a switch, and recessed lighting illuminates a massive, open-concept living space. The floors are polished concrete. The furniture is minimalist, all sharp angles and dark leather. But the most terrifying feature is the back wall.
It’s entirely made of glass, floor to ceiling, looking out into the dense, dark forest.
"Are you insane?" I ask, my voice echoing slightly in the large room. I point at the massive windows. "You brought me to a safe house that is literally a fishbowl? Anyone standing in those trees could see us right now. They wouldn't even need a scope."
"The glass is two-inch-thick ballistic polycarbonate," Callum says, walking toward a sleek, black kitchen island.
He begins emptying his pockets, placing his keys, his silver Zippo lighter, and a spare magazine of ammunition onto the marble counter with methodical precision.
"It can stop a .50 caliber round. No one in those trees is shooting through it. "
"That is incredibly reassuring," I mutter, wrapping my arms tighter around myself. "Assuming they don't just walk through the front door."
"The perimeter is wired with motion sensors and seismic detectors," he continues, ignoring my sarcasm.
He takes off his suit jacket, folding it neatly over the back of a barstool.
Underneath, he is wearing a dark, tailored dress shirt.
The holster strapped across his chest is stark black against the fabric.
I look away from the gun, my eyes scanning the kitchen.
I need an anchor. When my brain starts spinning out of control, I need a physical task to ground me.
"Do you have coffee?" I ask.
Callum pauses, his hand resting on the holster. He looks at me as if I just asked him to perform a magic trick. "Coffee."
"Yes. The dark, caffeinated liquid that prevents people from losing their minds. Do you have it?"
"In the cabinet to your left," he says slowly.
I walk over to the sleek, handleless cabinets. I have to press the wood to make it pop open. Inside, I find a bag of expensive, whole-bean espresso and a high-end burr grinder.
"Of course you have whole beans," I grumble, pulling the bag down. "Because God forbid a hitman drinks instant coffee like a normal person."
I focus entirely on the machine on the counter. I measure the beans. I listen to the loud, aggressive grinding noise. It drowns out the silence of the house. It drowns out the fact that I am trapped in the woods with a man who kills for a living.
When the machine finally stops, I turn around.
Callum is standing on the other side of the kitchen island, watching me.
He isn't moving. He isn't checking his weapons. He is just observing me with that same cold, analytical stare he used in my apartment. It makes the skin on the back of my neck prickle.
"Stop doing that," I say, dumping the ground coffee into the portafilter.
"Doing what?"
"Looking at me like I’m a math problem you can't solve." I tamp the coffee down, probably a little too hard. "It’s creepy."
"I’m calculating," he says, his voice low.
"Calculating what?" I snap, locking the handle into the machine and pressing the extraction button. The dark liquid begins to pour into a ceramic mug.
"How long it will take for them to find us."
The mug clinks against the metal grate of the espresso machine. My hand freezes.
I look up at him. "You said nobody knows about this place."
"Nobody did," Callum says. He leans his hands on the marble counter. The physical distance between us is at least six feet, but his presence fills the entire room, pressing the air out of my lungs. "Until two hours ago."
I swallow the bitter taste of panic rising in my throat. "What happened two hours ago?"