CHAPTER 31 #2
He is staring at the empty chair where Silas was sitting. His hands are still flat on the table, but his knuckles are stark white. The veins in his forearms are bulging against the fabric of his shirt.
He is drowning in self-hatred. I can see it in the rigid line of his jaw. He let his guard down. He left his gun in the car because I asked him to. He tried to be normal for me, and it cost us everything.
"Callum," I say softly.
He doesn't look at me. "I left the weapon."
"It wouldn't have mattered," I tell him, reaching across the table to grab his hand. He tries to pull away, but I grip his fingers tightly. "If you had the gun, you still couldn't have shot him. The sniper in Rome would have pulled the trigger. Having your gun wouldn't have changed the video feed."
He finally turns his head. The darkness in his eyes is absolute. The ghost is back, fully awake and starving for violence.
"He is my former handler," Callum says, his voice a low, dangerous rumble. "He is the man who recruited me into the private sector. He knows exactly how I think. He knows every tactical protocol I use."
"Then we don't use your protocols," I say, my voice hardening.
I am not the terrified girl shivering in a basement anymore. I survived the bullet. I survived Arthur Vance. I am not going to let an aristocratic psychopath in a wool coat murder the only family I have left.
I stand up, pulling Callum to his feet.
"We have fifty-five minutes," I say, my brain already shifting into the cold, analytical logic of code and variables. "We need to get the laptop. We need to get to the beach."
Callum looks down at me. The sheer, unyielding determination in my voice seems to anchor him, pulling him back from the spiral of tactical guilt.
"If you transfer the money, he will kill us on that beach," Callum states. "He cannot leave loose ends. The promise of safety is a lie."
"I know it’s a lie," I say, grabbing my coat from the back of the chair. "I am not going to transfer the money to him, Callum. I am going to build a dead-man's switch. A real one this time."
We walk out of the cafe, stepping into the biting Icelandic wind.
We cross the street to the Range Rover. Callum doesn't open the door for me. He walks straight to the driver’s side, yanks the door open, and reaches into the deep pocket of his heavy winter coat lying on the backseat.
He pulls out the compact Sig Sauer.
He checks the chamber, his movements sharp and aggressive, before sliding the weapon into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back.
He gets into the driver’s seat. I climb into the passenger side.
"What is your plan?" Callum asks, throwing the SUV into gear and tearing out of the parking space.
"Silas wants the decryption keys," I say, staring out the windshield as the town of Vík blurs past us.
"The keys are a string of two hundred and fifty-six alphanumeric characters.
I am going to write a script that ties the final execution command of the transfer directly to a continuous ping from my smartwatch. "
Callum glances at me, his tactical mind instantly grasping the concept. "A biometric tether."
"Exactly. As long as my watch registers a pulse, the transfer remains in escrow. If my heart stops, or if the Bluetooth connection between the watch and the laptop is severed by distance, the script automatically scrambles the routing numbers and deletes the keys permanently."
"If he kills you, the money burns," Callum confirms.
"He won't be able to kill me," I say, looking over at him. "Because the second I prove to him that my pulse is the only thing keeping his four billion dollars alive, you are going to put a bullet in his head."
Callum’s hands tighten on the steering wheel.
The heavy, oppressive guilt that was suffocating him in the cafe is replaced by a sharp, lethal focus. He isn't fighting a phantom threat anymore. He has a target.
"Silas will not come alone," Callum warns, pushing the Range Rover up to ninety miles an hour on the empty highway. "He will have at least four men with him. Highly trained. Ex-military. They will have the perimeter of the plane wreck secured."
"You said he knows how you think," I point out. "He expects you to try and flank him. He expects you to use stealth."
"Yes."
"Then we do exactly what he doesn't expect." I reach into the center console, pulling out the spare magazine for the Glock 19 I know he keeps hidden there. I hold the cold metal in my hand. "We drive straight up to the front door. We give him exactly what he asked for."
Callum stares at the road ahead, the massive glaciers of the Icelandic coast looming in the distance.
He reaches across the console, his hand wrapping around the back of my neck. He doesn't pull me toward him. He just holds me, his thumb pressing hard against my pulse point, feeling the steady, rapid beat of my heart.
"We fight," Callum says, the words a dark, violent vow.
"We fight," I echo.
The peace was beautiful while it lasted. But the monsters are back.
And this time, we are going to bury them in the black sand.