29. Wynn
WYNN
The clock on the screen continued counting down.
Elise sat inside the Geneva vault with blood running down the side of her face.
Camille knelt beside her.
A masked operative stood behind them.
Beside him, the portable dispersal unit waited to open.
In the second video window, Evan Minser watched from aboard an aircraft.
“Six hours,” Lucas said.
Ghost studied the flight map.
“We still have a problem.”
“How long to Geneva?” Adam asked.
“Three and a half hours if we leave immediately.”
“Faster aircraft?”
“Colonel Demir has two fighters.”
Boone looked around the room.
“Excellent.”
Ghost shook his head.
“They won’t carry the team.”
“They’ll carry Lucas and Wynn,” Adam said.
“No,” Lucas answered.
Adam turned toward him.
“You don’t get to argue with every plan.”
“I do when the plan sends Wynn into Geneva without the Brave.”
“I wouldn’t be alone,” I said.
Lucas frowned.
“You’d only have me.”
“And you would have me.”
“That isn’t reassuring.”
I folded my arms.
“I saved your life twice.”
“Once.”
“Twice.”
“When was the second?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
Despite the clock, Boone laughed.
Lucas didn’t.
His silver eyes remained on the screen.
“We stay together.”
“Then we need another aircraft,” Ghost said.
“Find one.”
“I’m not hiding one in my pocket.”
Boone glanced toward Hawk’s pack.
“Have you checked his?”
Hawk ignored him.
He was studying the live video from the bank.
“There’s something wrong.”
Everyone looked at him.
“What?” Adam asked.
“The vapor beside the case.”
Cold mist drifted across the vault floor.
“It’s already warming,” I said.
“No.” Hawk enlarged the image. “That vapor isn’t coming from the dispersal unit. It’s coming through the floor grate.”
Lucas looked at me.
“What’s beneath the vault?”
“Nothing. The vault is the lowest occupied level.”
“Then where does the ventilation lead?”
I tried to remember the emergency information Elise had given me when we opened the box.
The public lobby occupied the first floor.
Private offices sat above it.
The vault rested three stories underground.
Separate ventilation.
Independent fire suppression.
An emergency-containment system.
My pulse quickened.
“The vault can seal itself.”
“It already looks sealed,” Boone said.
“No. I mean airtight.”
Hawk understood.
“If the bank detects a biological threat…”
“The vault isolates itself from the rest of the building.”
“Can it contain what’s inside that case?” Adam asked.
“For a while.”
“How long?”
“The certification guaranteed six hours.”
Lucas moved toward the terminal.
“Activate it.”
“I can’t do that directly.”
“Why?”
“The system requires authorization from both the chief security officer and the managing director.”
“Both were taken,” Ghost said.
“Yes. But private-vault clients have an emergency-duress function.”
Hawk looked at me.
“What does it do?”
“It alerts security and locks access to the client’s section.”
“That won’t trigger biological containment.”
“No. But it may give you a secure route into the bank’s emergency network.”
Hawk pulled a chair toward the terminal.
“That might work.”
Boone nodded.
“That means yes.”
“That means might.”
“With Hawk, it usually means yes.”
I signed in again.
The bank portal opened.
I activated the duress feature attached to our private-vault account.
A secure emergency channel appeared.
Hawk used it to access the bank’s alarm-management system.
Most of the controls remained inaccessible.
Then he found the vault-status display.
Temperature.
Humidity.
Oxygen level.
No biological warning.
No chemical warning.
“Can you trigger containment?” I asked.
“Not directly.”
“Can you interrupt the sensors?”
“That could force the system into a protective lockdown.”
“Could?”
“It could also disable the sensors entirely.”
Lucas folded his arms.
“Those are very different outcomes.”
“Yes.”
“Which one is more likely?”
“I’ll tell you afterward.”
Boone leaned toward Russ.
“He’s becoming less comforting.”
“He was never comforting.”
The clock reached five hours and fifty-four minutes.
On the screen, Minser leaned closer to his camera.
He couldn’t hear us through the video feed, but someone had alerted him that we were inside the bank’s emergency network.
His smile vanished.
Our terminal rang.
Lucas answered the secure call.
“What are you doing?” Minser demanded.
“Enjoying Turkey.”
“Step away from the bank’s network.”
“No.”
Minser gave a quiet command.
Inside the vault, the masked operative pressed his pistol against Camille’s head.
Elise screamed.
I flinched.
Lucas’s expression turned deadly.
“You’re going to tell him to lower that weapon.”
“You’re going to come to Geneva.”
“You need Wynn and me alive.”
Minser smiled.
“I need both account holders alive. I don’t need everyone else.”
Elise’s face lost all color.
Camille began to cry.
I stepped into view.
“Let Camille go.”
“Mrs. Spencer.” Minser moved closer to his camera. “You continue to disappoint me.”
“I’ve heard that before.”
“Usually from Lucas.”
Lucas looked at me.
“I never said that.”
“It was implied.”
“Wynn.”
Even Minser appeared confused.
Good.
Let him be confused.
Let him focus on me while Hawk worked.
“What do you want?” I asked.
“The drive, access to the box, and the complete encryption sequence.”
“The drive is still inside the box.”
“And it remains encrypted.”
“You can’t access either one without Lucas and me.”
“Not yet.”
“Then killing either of us would be stupid.”
Minser looked toward the image of Camille.
“I don’t need to kill either of you to make my point.”
“Stop!”
Elise struggled against her restraints.
“Please.”
The masked operative pulled back the hammer.
Lucas’s hand closed around the edge of the terminal.
His knuckles turned white.
I saw what it cost him not to threaten.
Not to shout.
Not to promise violence he couldn’t deliver from thousands of miles away.
I moved closer to the screen.
“Elise doesn’t know where we are. She can’t bring us to you.”
“She can authorize access.”
“No, she can’t.”
His expression changed.
I continued before he could speak.
“Banque Laurent removed her authority the moment she was reported missing. That’s why you took the managing director and chief security officer. But neither of them can override a protected joint account without both account holders present.”
Minser’s eyes narrowed.
I was guessing.
Mostly.
He didn’t know that.
“You need Lucas and me alive,” I said. “You need us cooperative. If your man harms Elise or Camille, you’ll get neither.”
Minser studied me.
Behind the terminal, Hawk raised one finger.
One minute.
I needed to keep Minser talking.
“What is inside the dispersal unit?”
“You already know.”
“I know what Kane told you. But do you know what he intends to do after you unlock Fate?”
“I don’t take orders from Kane.”
“Everyone takes orders from someone.”
“Not me.”
“Then why are your operatives trapped three stories beneath Geneva while Kane hides inside a secure command center?”
Minser stopped.
There.
He hadn’t considered it.
“General Kane is protected,” I continued. “Your people are underground with a biological weapon. You think you’re partners? You’re disposable.”
“I built Fate.”
“And Kane controls Meridian.”
“No one controls Meridian.”
“Then why is your name marked for termination inside the encrypted data?”
That was a lie.
I had never opened the Fate directory.
Minser didn’t know that.
His face changed.
Only slightly.
But enough.
“You’re lying.”
“Am I?”
“You never decrypted the drive.”
“You think Ghost trusted the entire encryption sequence to one piece of metal?”
Behind me, Ghost went still.
Lucas glanced toward him.
Minser’s confidence faltered.
The false colonel might have taken the tag, but Minser didn’t know whether we had already copied what it contained.
“What did you see?” he demanded.
Hawk raised two fingers.
Two alarm systems accessed.
Almost there.
I looked directly into the camera.
“I saw what happened to Ghost.”
Minser’s face emptied.
“And Melissa,” I added.
Ghost’s expression hardened.
Minser recovered quickly.
“Careful, Mrs. Spencer.”
“You aren’t the only person who can hurt someone from a distance.”
“Thirty seconds,” Hawk whispered.
Minser looked past me.
He had heard.
His eyes dropped toward the phone in his hand.
“Disconnect them.”
Inside the bank, the operative moved toward the vault’s control panel.
“Hawk.”
“I need ten more seconds.”
The emergency connection began closing.
Minser’s man had found our access point.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
I looked at Elise.
“Fire.”
Her eyes widened.
“Wynn?”
“Start a fire!”
Elise understood.
She kicked the metal chair beside her.
It struck the operative’s legs.
Camille lunged in the opposite direction.
The man spun toward them.
Elise grabbed the fallen chair and slammed it against a small emergency cabinet.
The glass shattered.
She pulled the fire alarm.
The first independent alarm activated.
FIRE DETECTED.
Hawk forced the damaged air-quality sensor into a failure state.
A second warning flashed.
AIR-QUALITY SYSTEM FAILURE.
Two separate emergency conditions.
The bank’s containment system responded automatically.
EMERGENCY CONTAINMENT ENGAGED.
Steel barriers crashed into place inside the vault.
The ventilation grates slammed shut.
Fire suppressant flooded the outer chamber.
The operative shouted.
The camera shook.
Then the inner security partition closed.
Elise and Camille disappeared behind one barrier.
The masked operative and the portable dispersal unit remained trapped behind another.
The screen went black.
A warning filled the terminal.
BIOLOGICAL CONTAINMENT ACTIVE.
VAULT SEALED FOR SIX HOURS.
Boone jumped from his chair.
“Yes!”
Russ almost smiled.
Adam exhaled.
Ghost stared at the screen.
“You trapped Minser’s man with the weapon.”
“Yes.”
“What about Elise and Camille?”
“The emergency client compartment has an independent air supply.”
“How do you know?”
“I read the bank’s emergency-containment certification before placing the drive there.”
Lucas’s mouth curved.
“You always did ask too many questions.”
“It saved us this time.”
Hawk studied the bank system.
“The dispersal countdown stopped.”
The clock had frozen at:
05:51:03.
We had bought six hours.
Maybe.
Then a new warning appeared.
MANUAL OVERRIDE ATTEMPTED.
Minser’s operative was already trying to escape.
“How long can the seal resist him?” Adam asked.
“Six hours if he follows the rules,” I said.
Boone stared at me.
“He doesn’t seem like a rule-following kind of man.”
“No. He isn’t.”
Ghost checked the airfield records.
“We have an aircraft.”
“How long to Geneva?” Lucas asked.
“Three hours and twenty minutes.”
“Make it three.”
“The aircraft doesn’t move faster because you glare at me.”
“Try.”
Colonel Demir spoke from the communications station.
Ghost translated.
“His wife’s containment team is eight minutes away. They’ll secure the server units and biological compartments.”
“Can we leave before they arrive?” Adam asked.
Demir shook his head.
The runway remained locked down.
No aircraft could leave until his wife confirmed the agent had been contained.
Lucas looked at the clock.
“We don’t have eight minutes.”
“We have almost six hours,” I said.
“We have less.”
He pointed toward the manual-override warning.
Another attempt appeared.
Then a third.
The vault seal remained active.
For now.
Adam turned toward Colonel Demir.
“We leave the moment the containment team clears the runway.”
Demir nodded.
The Brave began preparing.
Hawk downloaded the public portions of the bank’s floor plan and emergency layout.
Russ and Boone inventoried the weapons stored inside the tower’s security locker.
Ghost contacted the pilot assigned to the remaining aircraft.
Adam studied every possible route into the vault.
Lucas stayed beside me.
He hadn’t moved.
His eyes remained on the black screen where Elise and Camille had disappeared.
“You saved them.”
“We bought them time.”
“You knew what to do.”
“I guessed.”
“You didn’t look like you were guessing.”
“I’ve had practice pretending.”
His gaze moved toward me.
“How often?”
“What?”
“How often did you pretend with me?”
The question caught me off guard.
“Lucas…”
“I thought you were happy.”
“I was. Until I wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t one moment.”
“I know.”
I looked toward the runway.
Dawn spilled across the mountains.
For the first time in days, the world looked peaceful.
“I pretended I wasn’t afraid when you deployed. I pretended sleeping alone didn’t bother me. I pretended I didn’t notice how far away you remained after you came home.”
My throat tightened.
“And when I gave you the divorce papers, I pretended I wanted you to sign them.”
Lucas closed his eyes.
Pain moved across his face.
“I pretended too.”
“What?”
“That I could live without you.”
His hand found mine.
“I was terrible at it.”
“So was I.”
He pulled me closer.
Not kissing.
Not hiding.
Simply holding me while the Brave worked around us.
“I don’t want us to pretend anymore,” he said.
“Neither do I.”
“When this is over…”
He hesitated.
The great Lucas Spencer.
The man who walked into gunfire without fear.
Suddenly uncertain.
“What?”
“I want you to come home with me.”
My heart stopped.
“For how long?”
His silver eyes held mine.
“As long as you’ll stay.”
Hope filled my chest.
Warm.
Terrifying.
“I don’t know what happens after this.”
“Neither do I.”
“You’ll still be part of the Brave.”
“Yes.”
“And I’ll still be a journalist.”
His arms tightened.
“We’ll talk about that.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“That sounded ominous.”
“I’m working on honesty.”
“You’re not working on subtlety.”
“I was never good at subtle.”
“No. You really weren’t.”
A siren sounded outside.
Vehicles raced toward the airfield.
Colonel Demir’s wife had arrived with the containment team.
Adam raised his voice.
“Brave, move!”
Lucas caught my hand.
We ran toward the stairs.
Then the terminal behind us chimed.
A new message appeared.
Not from Minser.
From General Kane.
One photograph filled the screen.
Janice stood inside the medical facility.
Samir lay unconscious behind her.
A man in a doctor’s coat held a gun against her back.
Beneath the image were six words.
GENEVA OR THE HOSPITAL.
CHOOSE ONE.
Lucas stopped.
Every member of the Brave turned toward the screen.
My stomach dropped.
Kane had divided us again.
Elise and Camille waited inside the vault.
Janice, Samir, and the rescued civilians waited inside the medical facility.
Two locations.
Two attacks.
One team.
Adam looked around the Brave.
This time, there was no way to stay together.