CHAPTER 5
Gemma
The heavy steel door clicks shut, and the sound reverberates through the basement like a vault sealing.
I stare at the blank metal for a long time. My hand is still resting on the deadbolt. I turned it exactly as he instructed, locking myself inside the underground room, but the physical barrier doesn't make me feel safe. It makes me feel buried.
"Okay," I whisper to the empty room. "Just you, me, and a five-million-dollar target on our backs. No pressure."
I walk back to the mesh chair and sit down.
I pull my legs up, resting my heels on the edge of the seat, and tuck my knees inside the massive cashmere hoodie. The fabric smells so strongly of Callum—that dark, clean mix of cedar and cold rain—that for a brief, irrational second, my brain tricks me into thinking he’s standing right behind me.
I press my nose into the collar and inhale.
It’s a stupid, pathetic reflex. I am seeking comfort from the scent of the man who literally kidnapped me. I force my face away from the fabric, disgusted with my own psychological fragility, and drop my hands onto the mechanical keyboard.
Focus, Hayes. If you don't crack this drive, you don't get to live to complain about the irony.
I pull up the command terminal. Cascading algorithms are essentially digital Matryoshka dolls.
You break one layer of encryption, and it instantly generates two more, using randomized keys based on the exact millisecond you breached the first one.
It’s a trap designed to exhaust brute-force hacking programs.
To beat it, you don't hack the lock. You hack the clock.
If I can write a script that predicts the randomization pattern before it generates, I can slide through the layers without triggering the duplication process.
I start typing.
The loud, aggressive clacking of the mechanical keys fills the cold air.
I let the rhythm anchor me. Line after line of syntax flows across the primary monitor.
This is my territory. Out there, in the woods, Callum is the apex predator.
But in here, inside the architecture of a server, I dictate the rules.
An hour passes. Then two.
The adrenaline that was keeping me upright slowly begins to metabolize, leaving behind a toxic, heavy sludge in my veins. My eyes burn. The harsh white light of the monitors feels like it’s peeling my retinas back.
I hit Execute on the first test script.
The screen flashes, running the sequence. A progress bar appears. Ten percent. Thirty percent. Sixty.
Error 404: Sequence mismatch. Layer duplicated.
"Damn it," I hiss, slamming the heel of my hand against the edge of the desk.
The pain shoots up my wrist, sharp and grounding. I flex my fingers, staring at the failed code. I missed a variable in the timestamp prediction. It’s a rookie mistake. A mistake born of sheer, undeniable exhaustion.
And then, my stomach violently contracts.
It’s not a gentle rumble. It’s a sharp, acidic cramp that folds me forward over the keyboard. I press my arm against my abdomen, groaning.
I try to calculate the last time I ate something that wasn't primarily composed of caffeine or sugar. It was a stale bagel, roughly forty hours ago, before I broke into Marcus Thorne’s server room.
My body isn't just tired; it’s completely out of fuel.
My brain is running on fumes, which means my code is getting sloppy.
If my code gets sloppy, I can't break the drive. If I can't break the drive, we die.
I look at the locked steel door.
Callum was very specific. Lock the door. Do not open it for anyone but me.
I bite the inside of my cheek, tasting the familiar metallic tang of copper. He is upstairs, presumably turning the glass house into a fortress. He doesn't know I’m hitting a wall. He doesn't care about my blood sugar levels; he only cares about the output.
But I refuse to sit in a freezing basement and pass out from hypoglycemia while waiting for a hit squad.
I push the chair back, my boots hitting the concrete floor. I walk over to the door, place my hand on the deadbolt, and turn it. The lock disengages with a loud, heavy thunk .
I pull the door open and step onto the wooden stairs.
The house is dead silent.
I creep up the steps, my heavy boots making entirely too much noise despite my best efforts to walk lightly. I push the door at the top of the stairs open and step into the hallway.
The atmosphere in the house has completely changed.
The morning light is trying to filter through the massive glass windows in the living room, but heavy, dark metal shutters have been pulled halfway down, casting the space in a grim, industrial twilight.
And then I see the dining table.
It is covered in weapons.
There are two black rifles, several matte-black handguns, neat rows of ammunition magazines, and a tactical vest. It looks like a staging area for a small war.
I swallow hard, the reality of the situation crashing over me all over again. I force my legs to keep moving toward the kitchen.
Callum is standing behind the marble island.
He has discarded the dress shirt. He is wearing a fitted, dark gray t-shirt that clings to the broad, heavy lines of his shoulders and chest. He is holding a cloth, methodically wiping down the barrel of a disassembled Glock.
He doesn't look up when I walk into the room, but his jaw tightens visibly.
"I gave you exactly one instruction," he says. His voice is quiet, but it carries across the kitchen like a physical threat.
"I followed it," I reply, stopping on the opposite side of the island. "I locked the door. And then I unlocked it."
He finally looks up. His dark eyes lock onto mine, cold and entirely unimpressed. "Go back downstairs, Gemma."
"I can't." I cross my arms, burying my hands in the oversized sleeves of the cashmere hoodie.
"I’m hitting a wall. I wrote a predictive script, but I missed a variable because my brain is currently functioning at ten percent capacity.
I haven't eaten in two days. If you want me to crack that drive, I need calories. "
He stares at me. I can see the tactical calculation happening behind his eyes. He is weighing the risk of having me out of the secure room against the necessity of my cognitive function.
He sets the cloth down on the marble.
"Fine," he says, his tone clipped.
He walks over to the massive, stainless-steel refrigerator and pulls open the freezer drawer. He rummages around for a second before pulling out a flat, circular cardboard box. He tosses it onto the counter.
It slides across the marble and stops in front of me.
Tony’s Premium Frozen Pepperoni.
I look at the box, then look up at the lethal, highly trained assassin standing across from me.
"You’re kidding," I say.
"It has calories," he replies, turning his back to me to preheat the oven. "Eat it."
"Callum, this is a crime against Italian cuisine. The crust is basically seasoned cardboard. You have a two-thousand-dollar espresso machine, but your food supply consists of gas station pizza?"
"I don't live here," he says, grabbing a baking sheet from a lower cabinet. "It’s a safe house. The supplies are non-perishable or frozen. If you wanted a culinary experience, you shouldn't have stolen from a syndicate boss."
"I didn't know he was a syndicate boss," I mutter, pulling the plastic wrap off the frozen disc of dough and meat. "I thought he was just a regular, run-of-the-mill corrupt billionaire."
"A fatal lack of research."
"I was hired to do a job, not run a background check on his entire ancestry." I drop the frozen pizza onto the baking sheet he slides across the counter. "Besides, Pippa said it was a clean hit."
Callum pauses. He is holding the slide of the handgun, his thumb resting on the metal. "Who is Pippa?"
I freeze. My mouth moves faster than my brain, and I just handed him a piece of personal information.
"Nobody," I say quickly, looking down at the pizza. "Just a friend."
"The friend who texted you during the raid." He doesn't ask it. He states it. "The one who told you to pack."
"She doesn't know anything," I say, my voice hardening. I look up, meeting his gaze squarely. "She’s just a broker. She finds the jobs, I execute them. She doesn't know what was on the drive, and she doesn't know where I am."
Callum watches me for a long moment. He is looking for the lie. I force myself not to bite my cheek. I keep my expression entirely blank. Pippa is the only family I have left, and I will absolutely not let this man drag her into this mess.
"If she’s a broker," Callum says slowly, "she is already burning her own servers to sever ties with you. The syndicate will look for anyone connected to your aliases."
"She’s smart. She knows how to hide."
"I hope so," he says, turning back to his weapon. "For her sake."
The oven beeps, signaling it has reached the correct temperature. I open the door and shove the baking sheet inside, slamming it shut with a little more force than necessary.
I lean against the counter, watching him reassemble the handgun. His hands move with terrifying efficiency. Snap, click, lock. It takes him less than ten seconds to put the weapon back together and slide a loaded magazine into the grip.
"How far away are they?" I ask, the silence in the kitchen pressing against my eardrums.
"They are sweeping the grid," he says, setting the gun down and picking up another magazine, pressing bullets into it with his thumb. "If they are methodical, they will reach the perimeter of this property by nightfall."
"And if they aren't methodical?"
"Then they will use thermal drones to scan the tree line. If they spot the heat signature of the house, they will be here in under two hours."
My stomach twists, completely ruining the appetite I just fought so hard to satisfy. "Can the house withstand an assault?"
Callum stops loading the magazine. He looks around the massive, open-concept living room, his eyes tracing the steel beams and the half-lowered shutters.